Reproductive Strategy and Sexual Conflict: Slow Life History Strategy Inihibts Negative Androcentrism

ReproductiveStrategy and Sexual Conflict: Slow Life History Strategy Inihibts Negative Androcentrism
P. R. Gladden, A. J. Figueredo, D. J. Andrejzak, D. N. Jones, and V. Smith-Castro
Journal of Methods and Measurement in the Social Sciences; 2013


Abstract

Recent findings indicate that a slow Life History (LH) strategy factor is associated with increased levels of Executive Functioning (EF), increased emotional intelligence, decreased levels of sexually coercive behaviors, and decreased levels of negative ethnocentrism. Based on these findings, as well as the generative theory, we predicted that slow LH strategy should inhibit negative androcentrism (bias against women). A sample of undergraduates responded to a battery of questionnaires measuring various facets of their LH Strategy, (e.g., sociosexual orientation, mating effort, mate-value, psychopathy, executive functioning, and emotional intelligence) and various convergent measures of Negative Androcentrism. A structural model that the data fit well indicated a latent protective LH strategy trait predicted decreased negative androcentrism. This trait fully mediated the relationship between participant biological sex and androcentrism. We suggest that slow LH strategy may inhibit negative attitudes toward women because of relatively decreased intrasexual competition and intersexual conflict among slow LH strategists.

Gender Differences in Five Factor Model Personality Traits in an Elderly Cohort

Gender Differences in Five Factor Model Personality Traits in an Elderly Cohort: Extension of Robust and Surprising Findings to an Older Generation

Benjamin P. Chapman, Paul R. Duberstein, Slivia Sörensen, and Jeffrey M. Lyness;
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2031866/
Personality and Individual Differences (October 2007)


Abstract

In college and adult samples, women score higher then men on the Five Factor Model (FFM) personality traits of Neuroticism and Agreeableness. The present study assessed the extent to which these gender differences held in a sample of 486 older adults, ranging in age from 65-98 (M = 75, SD = 6.5), using the NEO-Five Factor Inventory. Mean and Covariance Structure models testing gender differences at the level of latent traits revealed higher levels of Neuroticism (d = .52) and Agreeableness (d = .35) in older women than older men. The consistency of these findings with prior work in younger samples attests to the stability of gender differentiation on Neuroticism and Agreeableness across the lifespan. Gender differences on these traits should be considered in personality research among older, as well as middle age and younger adults.

The Misguided Case for Indigenous Recognition in the Constitution (Part II)

The Misguided Case for Indigenous Recognition in the Constitution (Part II)
Frank Salter (January 2014)

http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2014/01-02/misguided-case-indigenous-recognition-constitution-part-ii/

Indigenous Recognition’s Misguided Case

Indigenous Recognition’s Misguided Case
Frank Salter (December 2013)

http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2013/12/misguided-case-indigenous-recognition-constitution/

The Tall Poppy Syndrome:

"The ethical idea of fairness, with all its many virtues, has sometimes been corrupted into a set of attendant vices. One such vice has been so widely perceived in New Zealand that it has its own name in common speech. New Zealanders call it "the Tall Poppy Syndrome." It might be defined as envy or resentment of a person who is conspicuously successful, exceptionally gifted, or unusually creative.

More than that, it sometimes became a more general attitude of outright hostility to any sort of excellence, distinction, or high achievement - especially achievement that requires mental effort, sustained industry, or applied intelligence. All this is linked to a mistaken idea of fairness as a broad and even-handed distribution of mediocrity. The possession of extraordinary gifts is perceived as unfair by others who lack them. Those who not only possess them but insist on exercising them have sometimes been punished for it.

New Zealand lexicographers believe that tall poppy is an Australian expression, which appears in the Australian National Dictionary with examples as early as 1902. It is also widely used in New Zealand, where it has given rise to a proper noun, an adjective, and even a verb. Successful people are called "poppies", and when abused for their success they are said to be "poppied" by envious others. In 1991, a Wellington newspaper reported that successful businessmen "are being 'tall-poppied' by other New Zealanders."

We were told by many people in New Zealand that the Tall Poppy Syndrome is not as strong as it used to be, and that it never applied to all sorts for achievement. One New Zealander observes that "there is no such thing as a tall poppy playing rugby." Nearly all New Zealanders take pride in  the Music of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and in the mountaineering of Sir Edmund Hillary, who where rarely tall-poppied.

But other bright and creative New Zealanders have been treated with cruelty by compatriots who appear to feel that there is something fundamentally unfair about better brains or creative gifts, and still more so about the determination to use them. This attitude is linked to a bizarre and destructive corruption of fairness, in which talented young people are perceived as tall poppies and are severly persecuted. Perhaps to most deleterious work of the Tall Poppy Syndrome is done in school yards and classrooms among the young. In any society, nothing is more destructive than the persecution of children because they exercise gifts that others lack. It discourages not only excellence itself but the striving for excellence. Taken to an extreme, the great good that is fairness can become an evil, and even a sin - one of the Seven Deadly Sins, which is the sin of envy."

Fairness and Freedom (2012)

David Hackett Fischer

Language Families (World Map)

http://people.umass.edu/~nconstan/201/Language%20Families%20World%20Map.png

Controlling for increased guessing enhances the independence of the Flynn effect from g: The return of the Brand effect

Controlling for increased guessing enhances the independence of the Flynn effect from g: The return of the Brand effect
Michael Anthony Woodley, Jan te Nijenhuis, Olev Must, and Aasa Must
Intelligence, March-April 2014


Highlights

o The true independence of the Flynn effect from g is masked by a Brand effect.

o The Brand effect results from increased guessing on harder test items.

o Controlling the Flynn effect for the Brand effect boosts its independence from g.

Abstract

The cause of the Flynn effect is one of the biggest puzzles in intelligence research. In this study we test the hypothesis that the effect may be even more independent from g than previously thought. This is due to the fact that secular gains in IQ result from at least two sources. First, an authentic Flynn effect that results from environmental improvements and should therefore be strongly negatively related to the g loading (and therefore the heritability) of IQ subtests. Second, a “Brand effect”, which results from an increase in the number of correct answers simply via enhanced guessing. As harder items should encourage more guessing, secular gains in IQ stemming from this Brand effect should be positively associated with subtest g loadings. Analysis of Estonian National Intelligence Test data collected between 1933 and 2006, which includes data on guessing, g loadings and secular IQ gains, corroborates this hypothesis. The correlation between gains via the Brand effect and g loadings is .95, as predicted. There is a modest negative association between raw secular gain magnitude and subtest g loadings (− .18) that increases to − .47 when these are controlled for the Brand effect. Applying five psychometric meta-analytic corrections to this estimate raises it to − .82 indicating that the authentic Flynn effect is substantially more independent from g than previously thought.