1,721,035 research outputs found
Physical and Psychosocial Correlates of Facial Attractiveness
This research aimed to investigate whether and how facial attractiveness relates to physical (height and weight), social (relationship status), and psychological characteristics (personality traits, self-esteem, locus of control, self-evaluated social status, trait anxiety, and time perspective) in a sample of college students. In the first study, 231 participants (males and females) provided a standardized photo of their faces, self-rated their attractiveness, answered some anthropometric and demographic questions, and completed some psychological questionnaires. In a second study, the faces were evaluated for attractiveness by an external group of same-aged judges (N = 236). Attractiveness was negatively correlated with body mass index and with height (only in males). Attractive individuals reported being in a long-term romantic relationship more than others. Self-rated and/or other-rated attractiveness were positively correlated with self-reported social status, self-esteem, and past-positive time perspective, and negatively correlated with trait anxiety, neuroticism, and past-negative time perspective. The findings of this study suggest that more attractive individuals possess characteristics that favor psychological well-being and good mental health and that make them desirable and successful as social or romantic partners. Attractiveness may also be associated with adaptive cognitive biases that promote self-enhancement
PREPARTAL CHRONIC STRESS INCREASES ANXIETY AND DECREASES AGGRESSION IN LACTATING FEMALE MICE
The effects of two types of prepartal chronic stress on maternal behavior, anxiety, and maternal aggression during lactation were assessed in female outbred Swiss mice. Two groups (n = 18 each) were subjected to 10 consecutive daily sessions of restraint stress (RS) or novel environment stress (NES) from Day 4 to Day 14 of pregnancy. A third group (n = 18) was left undisturbed during pregnancy (controls, C group). All females underwent a maternal behavior test (10-min observation after separation and reunion with the pups) on Postpartum Day (PD) 1, an anxiety test (a light-dark conflict test) on PD 6, and a maternal aggression test (5-min exposure to an unfamiliar adult male) on PD 7. NES and RS groups tended to show higher amounts of maternal care. Anxiety increased in the stressed females compared with controls, whereas the opposite was true for maternal aggression. In the RS group, anxiety was negatively correlated with maternal aggression. These results suggest that chronic stress may have produced neuronal and endocrine alterations in the dams, which may have led to increased avoidance of aversive stimuli. The results also support the hypothesis that, in lactating mice, anxiety is inversely related to the probability of displaying intense forms of aggression
Behavioral and mesocorticolimbic dopamine responses to non aggressive social interactions depend on previous social experiences and on the opponent's sex
Testosterone, Cortisol and Empathy: Evidence for the Dual-Hormone Hypothesis
The dual hormone hypothesis posits that basal cortisol and testosterone have a joint effect on motivational and behavioral systems implicated in dominance and aggression, such that traits generally associated with high testosterone manifest more in individuals with low basal cortisol levels. Whether this hypothesis applies to behavioral systems other than dominance remains unclear. In the present study, we investigated the association between basal testosterone, basal cortisol, and empathy in a large population of MBA students. Empathy was assessed with a short version of the Davis’s Interpersonal Reactivity Index and with the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET). Higher testosterone was predictive of lower empathy scores among men and women with low basal cortisol, while this association was reversed among individuals with high cortisol levels. In other words, a high-testosterone profile was found to be predictive of both high and low empathic dispositions depending on the concomitant HPA state. The effect was limited to self-reported empathy as no association was found with the RMET. This pattern of results, which emerged when data for men and women were analyzed together, remained significant only for men when analyses were run separately for the two sexes. These results add empathy to the list of behaviors regulated by the joint action of testosterone and cortisol, as outlined by the dual hormone hypothesis
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Perceived dominance in young heterosexual couples in relation to sex, context, and frequency of arguing
Cortisol reactivity to psychosocial stress mediates the relationship between extraversion and unrestricted sociosexuality
We investigated the hypotheses that extraversion is associated with unrestricted sociosexuality (operationalized as greater sexual experience and greater short-term mating orientation) and that this association is mediated by reduced cortisol reactivity to psychosocial stress. Study participants were heterosexual male college students (n = 109). Extraversion was assessed with the Big Five Inventory and sociosexuality was assessed with the Multidimensional Sociosexuality Orientation Inventory. Cortisol reactivity to psychosocial stress was assessed via three saliva samples collected immediately before, immediately after, and 15 min after the Trier Social Stress Test. Extraversion was associated with greater sexual experience but not with greater short-term mating orientation. As predicted, more extraverted individuals showed a lower increase in cortisol in response to psychosocial stress than less extraverted individuals. Previous sexual experience and short-term mating orientation were negatively correlated with cortisol reactivity to stress. Finally, mediation analyses confirmed our hypothesis that cortisol reactivity to psychosocial stress is a mechanism mediating the association between extraversion and unrestricted sociosexuality. These findings have implications for our understanding of the benefits and costs of different personality traits as well as for our understanding of the determinants or correlates of individual differences in sociosexuality. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd
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