IQ and Mental Health, Bias Against Men in the Courtroom, and Declining Trust in Institutions
IQ and Mental Health, Bias Against Men in the Courtroom, and Declining Trust in Institutions
My latest Linkfest
Welcome to the latest N3 Newsletter Linkfest: a collection of links to papers and articles that grabbed my attention over the last few weeks. On the menu this time…
The nature and nurture of our fundamental beliefs about the world
How psychopathy and narcissism shape political behavior
How feminism shapes attitudes to hookup culture
Bonobos’ dark secret
Evidence that men get longer sentences than women for the same crimes
Political bias in science funding
New installments of regular Linkfest features such as Animal Behavior, Woke Watch, and Healthy Living.
Hope you enjoy it!
You can access the complete collection of Linkfests here.
Hot Off the Press: Recent Findings in Psychology
Social Psychology
OK, this one isn’t a recent finding, but it is cool. You’ve probably heard of the “better than average” effect: the finding that most people rate themselves as above average on almost every positive trait. Well, psychologists have also documented a “better than myself” effect. If you ask people to evaluate themselves on a range of traits, then later give them their answers back disguised as the average answers of their peers, they rate themselves as higher on those traits than they had the first time. Link.
The famous Marshmallow Test might not be all it’s cracked up to be. A new study failed to replicate the classic finding that preschoolers’ ability to resist eating a marshmallow predicts success in later life. The study found no connection between people’s Marshmallow Test performance at age 4 and their earnings, health, mental health, or other life outcomes at age 26. As the authors conclude, “These findings suggest that delay of gratification as measured by the Marshmallow Test [emphasis added] is not an early skill that predicts long-term trajectories.” Link.
Clinical Psychology
Higher IQ in late adolescence is associated with lower rates of mental illness, according to a new preprint. This holds even among brothers in the same family, ruling out the possibility that something in the family home simultaneously makes people both more intelligent and less prone to psychological difficulties. Link.
According to a widespread stereotype, artists are more prone to mental illness than the average person. Stereotypes aren’t always accurate, of course - but new research suggests that this one might be. Examining the biographies of 199 famous people, the authors concluded that rates of mental illness are higher among famous artists than among equally famous athletes or scientists. Link.
Personality Psychology
According to a new paper, personality predicts “smoking behavior” - or as non-psychologists call it, “smoking.” On average, smokers are more extraverted than non-smokers, but less conscientious, agreeable, and neurotic. Link.
Behavior Genetics
Primal world beliefs are our most basic beliefs about the world - for example, whether it’s safe or dangerous, just or unjust, meaningful or meaningless. A new study finds that, like basically everything, primal world beliefs are significantly heritable, with heritability estimates ranging from 21% to 49%. Furthermore, as with most traits, the shared family environment has little effect on our primal world beliefs: People who grow up together aren’t much more similar in these beliefs than those who grow up apart. (N = ~9,000.) Link.
Political Psychology
A new trend in the politically polarized U.S. is ideology poking: that is, displaying products bearing political messages deliberately designed to annoy or offend people on the other side. According to a recent paper, ideological poking is closely connected with one of the Dark Triad traits: psychopathy. To be clear, this doesn’t mean that pokers are all psychopaths; plenty of non-psychopaths poke and plenty of psychopaths don’t. What it does mean, though, is that the higher your psychopathy score, the more likely you are to poke - and the average poker has a somewhat higher psychopathy score than the average non-poker. Link.
Narcissism predicts political polarization. This little factoid may help to explain a trend you’ve probably noticed: the fact that politicians and other cultural elites - journalists, business leaders, actors, and the like - tend to be more polarized than most people you know. The explanation is that people who go into elite professions tend to be above average in narcissism. Link.