Different Populations Agree on Which Moral Arguments Underlie Which Opinions

People often justify their moral opinions by referring to larger moral concerns (e. g., “It is unfair if homosexuals are not allowed to marry!” vs. “Letting homosexuals marry is against our traditions!”). Is there a general agreement about what concerns apply to different moral opinions? We used surveys in the United States and the United Kingdom to measure the perceived applicability of eight concerns (harm, violence, fairness, liberty, authority, ingroup, purity, and governmental overreach) to a wide range of moral opinions. Within countries, argument applicability scores were largely similar whether they were calculated among women or men, among young or old, among liberals or conservatives, or among people with or without higher education. Thus, the applicability of a given moral concern to a specific opinion can be viewed as an objective quality of the opinion, largely independent of the population in which it is measured. Finally, we used similar surveys in Israel and Brazil to establish that this independence of populations also extended to populations in different countries. However, the extent to which this holds across cultures beyond those included in the current study is still an open question.

Vaccine confidence is higher in more religious countries

Vaccine hesitancy is a threat to global health, but it is not ubiquitous; depending on the country, the proportion that have confidence in vaccines ranges from a small minority to a huge majority. Little is known about what explains this dramatic variation in vaccine confidence. We hypothesize that variation in religiosity may play a role because traditional religious teachings are likely to be incompatible with the specific magical/spiritual health beliefs that often undergird anti-vaccination sentiments. In analyses of publicly available data in 147 countries, we find that a country measure of religiosity is strongly positively correlated with country measures of confidence in the safety, importance, and effectiveness of vaccines, and these associations are robust to controlling for measures of human development (education, economic development, and health). The underlying mechanism needs to be examined in future research.

Perceptions of the appropriate response to norm violation in 57 societies

Norm enforcement may be important for resolving conflicts and promoting cooperation. However, little is known about how preferred responses to norm violations vary across cultures and across domains. In a preregistered study of 57 countries (using convenience samples of 22,863 students and non-students), we measured perceptions of the appropriateness of various responses to a violation of a cooperative norm and to atypical social behaviors. Our findings highlight both cultural universals and cultural variation. We find a universal negative relation between appropriateness ratings of norm violations and appropriateness ratings of responses in the form of confrontation, social ostracism and gossip. Moreover, we find the country variation in the appropriateness of sanctions to be consistent across different norm violations but not across different sanctions. Specifically, in those countries where use of physical confrontation and social ostracism is rated as less appropriate, gossip is rated as more appropriate.

Little is known about people’s preferred responses to norm violations across countries. Here, in a study of 57 countries, the authors highlight cultural similarities and differences in people’s perception of the appropriateness of norm violations.

Gender Differences in the Interest in Mathematics Schoolwork Across 50 Countries

Although much research has found girls to be less interested in mathematics than boys are, there are many countries in which the opposite holds. I hypothesize that variation in gender differences in interest are driven by a complex process in which national culture promoting high math achievement drives down interest in math schoolwork, with the effect being amplified among girls due to their higher conformity to peer influence. Predictions from this theory were tested in a study of data on more than 500,000 grade 8 students in 50 countries from the 2011 and 2015 waves of TIMSS. Consistent with predictions, national achievement levels were strongly negatively correlated with national levels of math schoolwork interest and this variation was larger among girls: girls in low-achievement, high-interest countries had especially high interest in math schoolwork, whereas girls in high-achievement, low-interest countries had especially low interest in math schoolwork. Gender differences in math schoolwork interest were also found to be related to gender differences in math achievement, emphasizing the importance of understanding them better.

AB0105 CHECKPOINT MOLECULES AND PREGNANCY: ENHANCED SPD-L1 PREDICTS FLARE IN RA PREGNANCY AND POSTPARTUM

Background:

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a female-predominant autoimmune disease that may affect women in childbearing age, making family planning an important issue for their life. There is a need for better understanding the mechanisms modulating RA in pregnancy and develop prognostic marker regarding adverse pregnancy outcome such as reduced birth weight and preterm delivery. As a crucial organ for peripheral tolerance during pregnancy, the placenta is expressing constitutively programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1), major ligand of the inhibitory receptor PD-1 (Zhang et al, 2015). We hypothesize that the PD-1 pathway plays a central inhibitory role in regulating the course of the disease and pregnancy outcome in RA.

Objectives:

To investigate the relationship between PD-1 pathway, disease activity during pregnancy/postpartum and pregnancy outcome in RA.

Methods:

We measured soluble PD-1 and PD-L1 levels by ELISA in serum samples of 27 pregnant RA patients and 25 healthy pregnant controls at different time points during pregnancy and postpartum. As for pregnancy controls, we analyzed serum samples from 28 non-pregnant RA patients and 18 non-pregnant healthy controls. The data was analyzed in correlation with disease activity (measured by DAS28-CRP) and pregnancy outcome (defined as preterm delivery and birth weight). Statistics were calculated by Mann-Whitney U test and Wilcoxon test, correlations by Spearman rank test.

Results:

In healthy pregnancy, sPD-L1 increases significantly in the 1sttrimester (p = 0,0198) and decreases significantly postpartum (p = 0,0029). sPD-L1 values are higher in non-pregnant RA patients compared to non-pregnant healthy controls (p = 0,047) and there are no significant changes during RA pregnancy. Postpartum sPD-L1 values are significantly higher in RA patients compared to healthy controls (p = 0,0014), Fig. 1. Notably, regarding disease activity, we noticed a significant positive correlation between the overall sPD-L1 values in RA and DAS28-CRP (p= 0.0104), Fig. 2. No significant correlation was seen between sPD-L1, birth weight and preterm delivery. For sPD-1 we focused on 3rdtrimester and postpartum, however, there was no difference between healthy controls and RA patients and no correlation with disease activity or pregnancy outcome.

Conclusion:

In healthy pregnancy, we observed an increase of sPD-L1, which decreases after delivery. This supports the hypothesis, that PD-1 pathway may be involved in shaping the physiological fetal-maternal tolerance. In RA higher sPD-L1 values are measured already in non-pregnant patients compared to healthy controls and there is no physiological decrease postpartum. Intriguing, sPD-L1 correlates positively with RA disease activity, reflecting a possible functional antagonism towards the inhibitory function of membrane bound PD-L1 molecules. However, the detailed function of sPD-L1 need to be further delineated. Nevertheless, sPD-L1 may have the potential to serve as prognostic marker for flares in RA pregnancy. Regarding the rather rarely observed adverse pregnancy outcome, larger cohorts need to be investigated.

References:

[1]Zhang YH, Tian M, Tang MX et al. Recent Insight into the Role of the PD-1/PD-L1 Pathway in Feto-Maternal Tolerance and Pregnancy. Am J Reprod Immunol. 2015 Sep;74(3):201-8.

Disclosure of Interests:

Ana-Luisa Stefanski: None declared, Klara Eriksson: None declared, Astrid Zbinden: None declared, Peter Villiger Consultant of: MSD, Abbvie, Roche, Pfizer, Sanofi, Speakers bureau: Roche, MSD, Pfizer, Frauke Förger Grant/research support from: Unrestricted grant from UCB, Consultant of: UCB, GSK, Roche, Speakers bureau: UCB, GSK

AB1294-HPR LOW CONCENTRATIONS OF BIOLOGIC DMARDS IN BREASTMILK OF PATIENTS TREATED DURING LACTATION

Background:

There is very limited information about the passage of biologics into breast milk and into the peripheral blood of breastfed infants. However, based on pharmacological properties of biologic DMARDs (bDMARDs) lactation may not be discouraged in patients with chronic inflammatory rheumatic disease to treat or prevent postpartum relapses. We here report two cases treated with bDMARDs during lactation: one woman with Muckle-Wells syndrome (MWS) treated with canakinumab and one woman with microscopic polyangiitis (MPA) treated with rituximab.

Objectives:

To determine the level of rituximab and canakinumab in breast milk, in sera of breastfed infants as well as in sera of the mother and to calculate the average daily infant dose and the relative infant dose.

Methods:

Serum and milk levels of Rituximab were measured by ELISA using commercially available coating and detection antibodies. For Canakinumab an ELISA was established by coating of plates with recombinant human IL-1beta and detection of Canakinumab in samples by a polyclonal anti-human IgG coupled to HRP. In both cases separate standard curves for serum and milk were established. Serum samples and milk samples of unexposed healthy controls were used to determine the lower limit of quantification.

Results:

One patient with MWS received canakinumab 150 mg s.c. to treat a worsening of her disease ten days postpartum. She continued to breastfeed her child. The average concentration of canakinumab in milk samples collected on 10 consecutive days was 15.8 ng/ml. The average daily infant dose was 0.002 mg/kg/day. The relative infant dose, which refers infant to maternal exposure on a dose/weight basis, was 0.11%. There was no detectable canakinumab in the serum of the infant.

One patient with MPA received rituximab 500 mg i.v. as a remission maintenance therapy four months postpartum. She continued to breastfeed her child. The average concentration of rituximab in milk samples collected on 4 consecutive days was 3.71 ng/ml. The average daily infant dose was 0.001 mg/kg/day. The relative infant dose was 0.01%. There was no detectable rituximab in the serum of the infant.

Conclusion:

Only minimal concentrations of canakinumab and rituximab can be detected in breastmilk. For both bDMARDs, the relative infant dose was below 1% of the maternal dose, which is considered unlikely to be of clinical concern. The lack of detectable levels of canakinumab and rituximab in the infants’ sera supports the notion of low oral bioavailability of large monoclonal antibodies. Together, the results are similar to those seen in TNF inhibitors which are regarded to be compatible with breastfeeding, yet more data are needed (1, 2, 3).

References:

[1]Götestam Skorpen C, Hoeltzenbein M, Tincani A, Fischer-Betz R, Elefant E, Chambers C, da Silva J, Nelson-Piercy C, Cetin I, Costedoat-Chalumeau N, Dolhain R, Förger F, Khamashta M, Ruiz-Irastorza G, Zink A, Vencovsky J, Cutolo M, Caeyers N, Zumbühl C, Østensen M. The EULAR points to consider for use of antirheumatic drugs before pregnancy, and during pregnancy and lactation. Ann Rheum Dis. 2016 May;75(5):795-810. doi: 10.1136/annrheumdis-2015-208840. Epub 2016 Feb 17.

[2]Clowse ME, Förger F, Hwang C, Thorp J, Dolhain RJ, van Tubergen A, Shaughnessy L, Simpson J, Teil M, Toublanc N, Wang M, Hale TW. Minimal to no transfer of certolizumab pegol into breast milk: results from CRADLE, a prospective, postmarketing, multicentre, pharmacokinetic study. Ann Rheum Dis. 2017 Nov;76(11):1890-1896. doi: 10.1136/annrheumdis-2017-211384. Epub 2017 Aug 16.

[3]Matro R, Martin CF, Wolf D, Shah SA, Mahadevan U. Exposure Concentrations of Infants Breastfed by Women Receiving Biologic Therapies for Inflammatory Bowel Diseases and Effects of Breastfeeding on Infections and Development.Gastroenterology. 2018;155(3):696–704. doi:10.1053/j.gastro.2018.05.040

Disclosure of Interests:

Astrid Zbinden: None declared, Klara Eriksson: None declared, Frauke Förger Grant/research support from: Unrestricted grant from UCB, Consultant of: UCB, GSK, Roche, Speakers bureau: UCB, GSK

The Relation Between Gender Egalitarian Values and Gender Differences in Academic Achievement

Gender differences in achievement exhibit variation between domains and between countries. Much prior research has examined whether this variation could be due to variation in gender equality in opportunities, with mixed results. Here we focus instead on the role of a society's values about gender equality, which may have a more pervasive influence. We pooled all available country measures on adolescent boys' and girls' academic achievement between 2000 and 2015 from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) assessments of math, science, and reading. We then analyzed the relation between gender differences and country levels of gender egalitarian values, controlling for country levels of living standards and indicators of gender equality in opportunities. Gender egalitarian values came out as the most important predictor. Specifically, more gender egalitarian values were associated with improved performance of boys relative to girls in the same countries. This pattern held in reading, where boys globally perform substantially worse than girls, as well as in math and science where gender differences in performance are small and may favor either boys or girls. Our findings suggest a previously underappreciated role of cultural values in moderating gender gaps in academic achievement.

Cultural Variation in the Effectiveness of Feedback on Students' Mistakes

One of the many things teachers do is to give feedback on their students’ work. Feedback pointing out mistakes may be a key to learning, but it may also backfire. We hypothesized that feedback based on students’ mistakes may have more positive effects in cultures where teachers have greater authority over students, which we assume to be cultures that are high on power distance and religiosity. To test this hypothesis we analyzed data from 49 countries taking part in the 2015 wave of the TIMSS assessment, in which students in the 4th and 8th grades were asked whether their teachers in mathematics and science told them how to do better when they had made a mistake. For each country we could then estimate the association between the reported use of mistake-based feedback and student achievement. Consistent with our hypothesis, the estimated effect of mistake-based feedback was positive only in certain countries, and these countries tended to be high on power distance and religiosity. These results highlight the importance of cultural values in educational practice.

Using Models to Predict Cultural Evolution From Emotional Selection Mechanisms

Cultural variants may spread by being more appealing, more memorable, or less offensive than other cultural variants. Empirical studies suggest that such “emotional selection” is a force to be reckoned with in cultural evolution. We present a research paradigm that is suitable for the study of emotional selection. It guides empirical research by directing attention to the circumstances under which emotions influence the likelihood that an individual will influence another individual to acquire a cultural variant. We present a modeling framework to translate such knowledge into specific and testable predictions of population-level change. A set of already analyzed basic cases can serve as a toolbox.

Generosity pays: Selfish people have fewer children and earn less money

Does selfishness pay in the long term? Previous research has indicated that being prosocial (or otherish) rather than selfish has positive consequences for psychological well-being, physical health, and relationships. Here we instead examine the consequences for individuals' incomes and number of children, as these are the currencies that matter most in theories that emphasize the power of self-interest, namely economics and evolutionary thinking. Drawing on both cross-sectional (Studies 1 and 2) and panel data (Studies 3 and 4), we find that prosocial individuals tend to have more children and higher income than selfish individuals. An additional survey (Study 5) of lay beliefs about how self-interest impacts income and fertility suggests one reason selfish people may persist in their behavior even though it leads to poorer outcomes: people generally expect selfish individuals to have higher incomes. Our findings have implications for lay decisions about the allocation of scarce resources, as well as for economic and evolutionary theories of human behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Republicans Value Agency, Democrats Value Communion

Drawing on the theory of the “Big Two” content dimensions of social judgment—agency and communion—the author proposes that several findings about partisan differences in the United States can be integrated into one hypothesis: Republicans tend to put greater value on agency, while Democrats put greater value on communion. Moreover, on the basis of these values, Republicans and Democrats should judge their own groups as particularly superior on agency and communion, respectively. These hypotheses gained support in three studies on partisan values and ingroup bias, suggesting that the agency-communion framework may be useful for researchers studying how political groups differ in their worldviews, biases, and attitudes.

Social learning may lead to population level conformity without individual level frequency bias

A requirement of culture, whether animal or human, is some degree of conformity of behavior within populations. Researchers of gene-culture coevolution have suggested that population level conformity may result from frequency-biased social learning: individuals sampling multiple role models and preferentially adopting the majority behavior in the sample. When learning from a single role model, frequency-bias is not possible. We show why a population-level trend, either conformist or anticonformist, may nonetheless be almost inevitable in a population of individuals that learn through social enhancement, that is, using observations of others’ behavior to update their own probability of using a behavior in the future. The exact specification of individuals’ updating rule determines the direction of the trend. These results offer a new interpretation of previous findings from simulations of social enhancement in combination with reinforcement learning, and demonstrate how results of dynamical models may strongly depend on seemingly innocuous choices of model specifications, and how important it is to obtain empirical data on which to base such choices.

Intellectual disability in children aged less than seven years born moderately and late preterm compared with very preterm and term-born children - a nationwide birth cohort study

BACKGROUND

Prematurity has been shown to be associated with an increased risk of intellectual disability (ID).

METHOD

The aim was to establish whether the prevalence of ID, defined as significant limitations in both intellectual (intelligence quotient below 70) and adaptive functioning among moderately preterm (MP; 32⁺⁰ -33⁺⁶  weeks) and late preterm (LP; 34⁺⁰ -36⁺⁶  weeks) infants, is increased compared with that in term infants (≥37⁺⁰  weeks). Antenatal and neonatal risk factors for ID among gestational age groups were sought. The national register study included all live-born infants in Finland in 1991-2008, excluding those who died before one year age, or had any major congenital anomaly or missing data. A total of 1 018 256 infants (98.0%) were analysed: very preterm (VP; <32⁺⁰  weeks, n = 6329), MP (n = 6796), LP (n = 39 928) and term (n = 965 203).

RESULTS

By the age of seven years, the prevalence of ID was 2.48% in the VP group, 0.81% in the MP group, 0.55% in the LP group and 0.35% in the term group. Intracranial haemorrhage increased the ID risk in all groups. Male sex and born small for gestational age predicted an increased risk in all but the MP group.

CONCLUSIONS

The prevalence of ID decreased with increasing gestational age. Prevention of intracranial haemorrhages may have a beneficial effect on the neurodevelopmental outcomes of neonates.

Cross-Cultural Differences in Emotional Selection on Transmission of Information

Research on cultural transmission among Americans has established a bias for transmitting stories that have disgusting elements (such as exposure to rats and maggots). Conceived of as a cultural evolutionary force, this phenomenon is one type of emotional selection. In a series of online studies with Americans and Indians we investigate whether there are cultural differences in emotional selection, such that the transmission process favours different kinds of content in different countries. The first study found a bias for disgusting content (rats and maggots) among Americans but not among Indians. Four subsequent studies focused on how country interacts with kind of emotional content (disgusting vs. happy surprises and good news) in reactions to transmission of stories or information. Whereas Indian participants, compared to Americans, tended to be less interested in, and excited by, transmission of stories and news involving common disgust-elicitors (like rats), the opposite pattern held for transmission of happy surprises and good news (e.g., the opening of a new public facility). We discuss various possible explanations and implications.

Cooperation and Shared Beliefs about Trust in the Assurance Game

Determinants of cooperation include ingroup vs. outgroup membership, and individual traits, such as prosociality and trust. We investigated whether these factors can be overridden by beliefs about people's trust. We manipulated the information players received about each other's level of general trust, "high" or "low". These levels were either measured (Experiment 1) or just arbitrarily assigned labels (Experiment 2). Players' choices whether to cooperate or defect in a stag hunt (or an assurance game)--where it is mutually beneficial to cooperate, but costly if the partner should fail to do so--were strongly predicted by what they were told about the other player's trust label, as well as by what they were told that the other player was told about their own label. Our findings demonstrate the importance for cooperation in a risky coordination game of both first- and second-order beliefs about how much people trust each other. This supports the idea that institutions can influence cooperation simply by influencing beliefs.