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Claessens S, Kyritsis T, Atkinson QD. Cross-national analyses require additional controls to account for the non-independence of nations. Nat Commun 2023; 14:5776. [PMID: 37723194 PMCID: PMC10507061 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-41486-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/02/2022] [Accepted: 09/06/2023] [Indexed: 09/20/2023] Open
Abstract
Cross-national analyses test hypotheses about the drivers of variation in national outcomes. However, since nations are connected in various ways, such as via spatial proximity and shared cultural ancestry, cross-national analyses often violate assumptions of non-independence, inflating false positive rates. Here, we show that, despite being recognised as an important statistical pitfall for over 200 years, cross-national research in economics and psychology still does not sufficiently account for non-independence. In a review of the 100 highest-cited cross-national studies of economic development and values, we find that controls for non-independence are rare. When studies do control for non-independence, our simulations suggest that most commonly used methods are insufficient for reducing false positives in non-independent data. In reanalyses of twelve previous cross-national correlations, half of the estimates are compatible with no association after controlling for non-independence using global proximity matrices. We urge social scientists to sufficiently control for non-independence in cross-national research.
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Affiliation(s)
- Scott Claessens
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
| | - Thanos Kyritsis
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
| | - Quentin D Atkinson
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
- School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
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2
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Heiman SL, Claessens S, Ayers JD, Guevara Beltrán D, Van Horn A, Hirt ER, Aktipis A, Todd PM. Descriptive norms caused increases in mask wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sci Rep 2023; 13:11856. [PMID: 37481635 PMCID: PMC10363160 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-38593-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/15/2023] [Accepted: 07/11/2023] [Indexed: 07/24/2023] Open
Abstract
Human sociality is governed by two types of social norms: injunctive norms, which prescribe what people ought to do, and descriptive norms, which reflect what people actually do. The process by which these norms emerge and their causal influences on cooperative behavior over time are not well understood. Here, we study these questions through social norms influencing mask wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Leveraging 2 years of data from the United States (18 time points; n = 915), we tracked mask wearing and perceived injunctive and descriptive mask wearing norms as the pandemic unfolded. Longitudinal trends suggested that norms and behavior were tightly coupled, changing quickly in response to public health recommendations. In addition, longitudinal modeling revealed that descriptive norms caused future increases in mask wearing across multiple waves of data collection. These cross-lagged causal effects of descriptive norms were large, even after controlling for non-social beliefs and demographic variables. Injunctive norms, by contrast, had less frequent and generally weaker causal effects on future mask wearing. During uncertain times, cooperative behavior is more strongly driven by what others are actually doing, rather than what others think ought to be done.
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Affiliation(s)
- Samantha L Heiman
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University Bloomington, 1101 E 10th St, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA.
| | - Scott Claessens
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
| | - Jessica D Ayers
- Department of Psychological Science, Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA
| | | | - Andrew Van Horn
- Department of Physics, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA
- Department of Art History, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA
| | - Edward R Hirt
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University Bloomington, 1101 E 10th St, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA
| | - Athena Aktipis
- Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
| | - Peter M Todd
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University Bloomington, 1101 E 10th St, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA
- Cognitive Science Program, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA
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3
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Claessens S, Sibley CG, Chaudhuri A, Atkinson QD. Cooperative and conformist behavioural preferences predict the dual dimensions of political ideology. Sci Rep 2023; 13:4886. [PMID: 36966181 PMCID: PMC10039865 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-31721-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/05/2022] [Accepted: 03/16/2023] [Indexed: 03/27/2023] Open
Abstract
Decades of research suggest that our political differences are best captured by two dimensions of political ideology. The dual evolutionary framework of political ideology predicts that these dimensions should be related to variation in social preferences for cooperation and group conformity. Here, we combine data from a New Zealand survey and a suite of incentivised behavioural tasks (n = 991) to test whether cooperative and conformist preferences covary with a pair of widely used measures of the two dimensions of political ideology-Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) and Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA)-and related policy views. As predicted, we find that cooperative behaviour is negatively related to SDO and economically conservative policy views, while conformist behaviour in the form of social information use is positively related to RWA and socially conservative policy views. However, we did not find the predicted relationships between punitive and rule following behaviours and RWA or socially conservative views, raising questions about the interpretation of punishment and rule following tasks and the nature of authoritarian conformist preferences. These findings reveal how cooperative and conformist preferences that evolved to help us navigate social challenges in our ancestral past continue to track our political differences even today.
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Affiliation(s)
- Scott Claessens
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Floor 2, Building 302, 23 Symonds Street, Auckland, 1010, New Zealand
| | - Chris G Sibley
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Floor 2, Building 302, 23 Symonds Street, Auckland, 1010, New Zealand
| | - Ananish Chaudhuri
- Department of Economics, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
- CESifo, Munich, Germany
| | - Quentin D Atkinson
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Floor 2, Building 302, 23 Symonds Street, Auckland, 1010, New Zealand.
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4
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Sheehan O, Watts J, Gray RD, Bulbulia J, Claessens S, Ringen EJ, Atkinson QD. Coevolution of religious and political authority in Austronesian societies. Nat Hum Behav 2023; 7:38-45. [PMID: 36357777 PMCID: PMC9883158 DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01471-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/14/2020] [Accepted: 09/22/2022] [Indexed: 11/12/2022]
Abstract
Authority, an institutionalized form of social power, is one of the defining features of the large-scale societies that evolved during the Holocene. Religious and political authority have deep histories in human societies and are clearly interdependent, but the nature of their relationship and its evolution over time is contested. We purpose-built an ethnographic dataset of 97 Austronesian societies and used phylogenetic methods to address two long-standing questions about the evolution of religious and political authority: first, how these two institutions have coevolved, and second, whether religious and political authority have tended to become more or less differentiated. We found evidence for mutual interdependence between religious and political authority but no evidence for or against a long-term pattern of differentiation or unification in systems of religious and political authority. Our results provide insight into how political and religious authority have worked synergistically over millennia during the evolution of large-scale societies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Oliver Sheehan
- Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
| | - Joseph Watts
- grid.419518.00000 0001 2159 1813Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany ,grid.29980.3a0000 0004 1936 7830Religion Programme, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand ,grid.29980.3a0000 0004 1936 7830Centre for Research on Evolution, Belief, and Behaviour, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
| | - Russell D. Gray
- grid.419518.00000 0001 2159 1813Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany ,grid.9654.e0000 0004 0372 3343School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
| | - Joseph Bulbulia
- grid.9654.e0000 0004 0372 3343School of Humanities, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand ,grid.267827.e0000 0001 2292 3111School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
| | - Scott Claessens
- grid.9654.e0000 0004 0372 3343School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
| | - Erik J. Ringen
- grid.189967.80000 0001 0941 6502Department of Anthropology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA USA
| | - Quentin D. Atkinson
- grid.419518.00000 0001 2159 1813Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany ,grid.9654.e0000 0004 0372 3343School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
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Claessens S, Kyritsis T. Partner choice does not predict prosociality across countries. Evol Hum Sci 2022; 4:e54. [PMID: 37588938 PMCID: PMC10426035 DOI: 10.1017/ehs.2022.51] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/26/2022] [Revised: 11/06/2022] [Accepted: 11/08/2022] [Indexed: 11/22/2022] Open
Abstract
Why does human prosociality vary around the world? Evolutionary models and laboratory experiments suggest that possibilities for partner choice (i.e. the ability to leave unprofitable relationships and strike up new ones) should promote cooperation across human societies. Leveraging the Global Preferences Survey (n = 27,125; 27 countries) and the World Values Survey (n = 54,728; 32 countries), we test this theory by estimating the associations between relational mobility, a socioecological measure of partner choice, and a wide variety of prosocial attitudes and behaviours, including impersonal altruism, reciprocity, trust, collective action and moral judgements of antisocial behaviour. Contrary to our pre-registered predictions, we found little evidence that partner choice is related to prosociality across countries. After controlling for shared causes of relational mobility and prosociality - environmental harshness, subsistence style and geographic and linguistic proximity - we found that only altruism and trust in people from another religion are positively related to relational mobility. We did not find positive relationships between relational mobility and reciprocity, generalised trust, collective action or moral judgements. These findings challenge evolutionary theories of human cooperation which emphasise partner choice as a key explanatory mechanism, and highlight the need to generalise models and experiments to global samples.
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Affiliation(s)
- Scott Claessens
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
| | - Thanos Kyritsis
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
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Krems JA, Claessens S, Fales MR, Campenni M, Haselton MG, Aktipis A. An agent-based model of the female rivalry hypothesis for concealed ovulation in humans. Nat Hum Behav 2021; 5:726-735. [PMID: 33495572 DOI: 10.1038/s41562-020-01038-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/11/2019] [Accepted: 12/17/2020] [Indexed: 01/29/2023]
Abstract
After half a century of debate and few empirical tests, there remains no consensus concerning why ovulation in human females is considered concealed. The predominant male investment hypothesis states that females were better able to obtain material investment from male partners across those females' ovulatory cycles by concealing ovulation. We build on recent work on female competition to propose and investigate an alternative-the female rivalry hypothesis-that concealed ovulation benefited females by allowing them to avoid aggression from other females. Using an agent-based model of mating behaviour and paternal investment in a human ancestral environment, we did not find strong support for the male investment hypothesis, but found support for the female rivalry hypothesis. Our results suggest that concealed ovulation may have benefitted females in navigating their intrasexual social relationships. More generally, this work implies that explicitly considering female-female interactions may inspire additional insights into female behaviour and physiology.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jaimie Arona Krems
- The Oklahoma Center for Evolutionary Analysis (OCEAN), Department of Psychology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA
| | - Scott Claessens
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.,Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA.,Interdisciplinary Cooperation Initiative, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
| | - Melissa R Fales
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.,Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Marco Campenni
- Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA.,Interdisciplinary Cooperation Initiative, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA.,Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
| | - Martie G Haselton
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.,Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.,Department of Communication, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.,Institute for Society and Genetics, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Athena Aktipis
- Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA. .,Interdisciplinary Cooperation Initiative, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA. .,Center for Evolution and Medicine, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA. .,Arizona Cancer Evolution Center, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA. .,Biodesign Center for Biocomputation, Security and Society, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA.
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8
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Claessens S, Fischer K, Chaudhuri A, Sibley CG, Atkinson QD. The dual evolutionary foundations of political ideology. Nat Hum Behav 2020; 4:336-345. [PMID: 32231279 DOI: 10.1038/s41562-020-0850-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 41] [Impact Index Per Article: 10.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/17/2019] [Accepted: 03/03/2020] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Abstract
Research over the last fifty years has suggested that political attitudes and values around the globe are shaped by two ideological dimensions, often referred to as economic and social conservatism. However, it remains unclear why this ideological structure exists. Here we highlight the striking concordance between these dual dimensions of ideology and independent convergent evidence for two key shifts in the evolution of human group living. First, humans began to cooperate more and across wider interdependent networks. Second, humans became more group-minded, conforming to social norms in culturally marked groups and punishing norm-violators. We propose that fitness trade-offs and behavioural plasticity have maintained functional variation in willingness to cooperate and conform within modern human groups, naturally giving rise to the two dimensions of political ideology. Supported by evidence from across the behavioural sciences, this evolutionary framework provides insight into the biological and cultural basis of political ideology.
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Affiliation(s)
- Scott Claessens
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
| | - Kyle Fischer
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
| | - Ananish Chaudhuri
- Department of Economics, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.,CESifo, Munich, Germany
| | - Chris G Sibley
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
| | - Quentin D Atkinson
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. .,Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany.
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9
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Neilands P, Claessens S, Ren I, Hassall R, Bastos APM, Taylor AH. Contagious yawning is not a signal of empathy: no evidence of familiarity, gender or prosociality biases in dogs. Proc Biol Sci 2020; 287:20192236. [PMID: 32075525 PMCID: PMC7031662 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2019.2236] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/24/2019] [Accepted: 01/21/2020] [Indexed: 12/30/2022] Open
Abstract
Contagious yawning has been suggested to be a potential signal of empathy in non-human animals. However, few studies have been able to robustly test this claim. Here, we ran a Bayesian multilevel reanalysis of six studies of contagious yawning in dogs. This provided robust support for claims that contagious yawning is present in dogs, but found no evidence that dogs display either a familiarity or gender bias in contagious yawning, two predictions made by the contagious yawning-empathy hypothesis. Furthermore, in an experiment testing the prosociality bias, a novel prediction of the contagious yawning-empathy hypothesis, dogs did not yawn more in response to a prosocial demonstrator than to an antisocial demonstrator. As such, these strands of evidence suggest that contagious yawning, although present in dogs, is not mediated by empathetic mechanisms. This calls into question claims that contagious yawning is a signal of empathy in mammals.
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Affiliation(s)
- Patrick Neilands
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, 1010, New Zealand
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10
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Drillet P, Zermout Z, Bouleau D, Mataigne J, Claessens S. Selective oxidation of high Si, Mn and Al steel grades during recrystallization annealing and steel/Zn reactivity. ACTA ACUST UNITED AC 2004. [DOI: 10.1051/metal:2004154] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/14/2022]
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11
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Fryns JP, Vinken L, Claessens S, Marien J, Geutjens J, Van den Berghe H. Dysosteosclerosis in a mentally retarded boy. Acta Paediatr Belg 1980; 33:53-6. [PMID: 7405588] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [MESH Headings] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/25/2023]
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12
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Claessens S, Stuyck J, Martens M. [Repeat exploratory arthrotomy of the knee]. Acta Orthop Belg 1976; 42:183-6. [PMID: 1036658] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [MESH Headings] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/25/2022]
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13
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Lauweryns JM, Claessens S, Boussauw L. The pulmonary lymphatics in neonatal hyaline membrane disease. Pediatrics 1968; 41:917-30. [PMID: 5654839] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [MESH Headings] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/16/2023] Open
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