This Saturday evening instead of crap, a look at a few science research/reports published recently on various subjects related to the clusterfuck that’s 2020, and maybe some hope or whatever for the coming new year.
(Illustration found here).
So to begin: An odd new study indicates we learn as we get older to value a human more than either dogs or pigs. As a kid, we’d rather keep alive 10 dogs over one human — researchers from Yale and Harvard Psychology Departments, and the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford, found we got that understanding ‘late in development‘ and came mostly about by interacting with other humans.
Findings published Dec. 15 at SAGE Journals,
Abstract:
Is the tendency to morally prioritize humans over animals weaker in children than adults?
In two preregistered studies (total N = 622), 5- to 9-year-old children and adults were presented with moral dilemmas pitting varying numbers of humans against varying numbers of either dogs or pigs and were asked who should be saved.
In both studies, children had a weaker tendency than adults to prioritize humans over animals.
They often chose to save multiple dogs over one human, and many valued the life of a dog as much as the life of a human.
Although they valued pigs less, the majority still prioritized 10 pigs over one human.
By contrast, almost all adults chose to save one human over even 100 dogs or pigs.
Our findings suggest that the common view that humans are far more morally important than animals appears late in development and is likely socially acquired.
How about cats?
Another study, this one on gender in the workplace — female bosses are better than males (in fact, way-better) in expressing empathy with employees’ problems with depression. From Psych News Daily last Thursday:
The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Gothenburg, and appeared in the journal BMC Public Health.
The authors say their study is the first to investigate gender in managers’ attitudes towards employee depression.
Their work also reflects the growing academic focus on mental health issues in the workplace.
…
The study found that twice as many male managers as female managers had a “high negative attitude” towards employee depression.
For the male managers, the figure was 24-percent (429 out of 1,762), versus only 12-percent for the female managers (110 out of 901).
The male responses were significantly more negative than the female responses on 11 of the questionnaire’s 12 statements.
The only statement without a significant difference between the male and female managers’ responses was “It is stressful to work with staff members who have depression.”
…
One explanation for these findings is that the prevalence of depression tends to be higher for women than for men.
This might result in women having more personal experience of depression.
And that in turn might lead to women being more tolerant of depression in general.
Previous research has also found that men are less open-minded towards people with mental illness.For example, the authors write, the finding that female managers were less likely to report having negative attitudes towards employee depression may be because “women are socialized into espousing empathy to a higher extent than men.”
Likewise, the authors refer to prior research showing that “women are subject to much stronger expectations than men that they will behave altruistically,” and may be more concerned about “backlash effects from violating these stereotypes.”
If that’s the case, Kamala Harris will be a good empathic VP, huh. Depression is way-part of our human landscape right now.
Continuing on with science and mental shit, another study indicates politically conservative people are disposed to have greater confidence in their judgments, while political liberals are inclined to second guess themselves. GOP-like folks want to solve a problem quickly, while Democrats sometimes waffle about with results — via PsyPost, also last Thursday:
Several studies have found that differences in cognitive styles are related to differences in political orientation.
But the new study, conducted by Benjamin C. Ruisch, a postdoctoral fellow at Leiden University, and Chadly Stern, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, was the first to systematically examine differences in confidence.
…
“Trump, conversely, followed a very different political path. Although he was openly opposed by many high-profile Republican leaders, he defied the polls to receive the Republican presidential nomination and, ultimately, win the presidency. His surprising political success, in no small part, was driven by the unwavering confidence of his supporters: Despite the apparently overwhelming odds, the opposition from Republican leadership, and the emergence of a number of political scandals, Trump’s support among American conservatives was, and remains, remarkably and unprecedentedly stable.”“The more that we thought about it, the more that this liberal-conservative ‘confidence gap’ seemed as though it could explain a lot of what was happening on the US political stage,” Ruisch explained.
“The potential implications for the political sphere in particular were a big part of what motivated our initial interest in this research question, as well as some of the follow-up work that we’re doing now.”
Republicans, too, in a bubble:
“That said, though, these differences in deliberation versus intuition only appear to be part of the story. Our results suggest that there are other, yet-unidentified factors that also help give rise to these ideological differences in confidence. One factor that we’re currently examining is the degree to which a person is exposed to alternative viewpoints and differing opinions. There is some evidence that conservatives tend to live in more homogeneous communities, surrounded by people with similar backgrounds and life experiences.”
Why GOPers can’t really govern, they’re just in it for the power. Read the whole piece, pretty-much verifies a lot of shit.
In a similar vein, a study via The University of Chicago Press, Journals (no date indicated).
The Abstract tells the tale:
During election campaigns, parties attack each other’s nonideological traits such as competence and integrity.
However, it is unclear to what extent valence attacks reduce voter support for the target party.
Drawing from theories on left-right personality and associated cognitive flexibility, we argue that valence attacks harm the electoral performance of leftist but not rightist parties.
The relative openness of leftist voters makes them more willing to accept negative information about their party and act on it.
In contrast, the relative closedness of rightist voters makes them less likely to reconsider their political preferences in the face of negative information.
We find robust evidence for our argument at the aggregate and individual levels, using original data on media coverage of party campaigns in 10 European countries.
We also provide experimental evidence in support of our argument.
The findings have important implications for research on nonideological rhetoric in party competition.
No matter the hard-ass reality, Republicans are rock-solid in their beliefs. Even if it’s wrong or racist or will cause harm to others — explains a lot.
And finally, a subject fairly-important right now: Masks and social distancing. In Physics of Fluids, by the American Institute of Physics, found wearing masks may not be enough — per EurekaAlert last Tuesday:
Every material tested dramatically reduced the number of droplets that were spread.
But at distances of less than 6 feet, enough droplets to potentially cause illness still made it through several of the materials.“A mask definitely helps, but if the people are very close to each other, there is still a chance of spreading or contracting the virus,” said Krishna Kota, an associate professor at New Mexico State University and one of the article’s authors.
“It’s not just masks that will help. It’s both the masks and distancing.”
…
They blocked the flow of the droplets in the tube with five different types of mask materials — a regular cloth mask, a two-layer cloth mask, a wet two-layer cloth mask, a surgical mask, and a medical-grade N-95 mask.Each of the masks captured the vast majority of droplets, ranging from the regular cloth mask, which allowed about 3.6-percent of the droplets to go through, to the N-95 mask, which statistically stopped 100% of the droplets.
But at distances of less than 6 feet, even those small percentages of droplets can be enough to get someone sick, especially if a person with COVID-19 sneezes or coughs multiple times.A single sneeze can carry up to 200 million tiny virus particles, depending on how sick the carrier is.
Even if a mask blocks a huge percentage of those particles, enough could escape to get someone sick if that person is close to the carrier.“Without a face mask, it is almost certain that many foreign droplets will transfer to the susceptible person,” Kota said.
“Wearing a mask will offer substantial, but not complete, protection to a susceptible person by decreasing the number of foreign airborne sneeze and cough droplets that would otherwise enter the person without the mask.
Consideration must be given to minimize or avoid close face-to-face or frontal human interactions, if possible.”The study also did not account for leakage from masks, whether worn properly or improperly, which can add to the number of droplets that make their way into the air.
What if you’re a anti-masker GOPer, or a Trump nut (same thing!), what then?
