Chronic and immediate refined carbohydrate consumption and facial attractiveness.

The Western diet has undergone a massive switch since the second half of the 20th century, with the massive increase of the consumption of refined carbohydrate associated with many adverse health effects. The physiological mechanisms linked to this consumption, such as hyperglycaemia and hyperinsulinemia, may impact non medical traits such as facial attractiveness. To explore this issue, the relationship between facial attractiveness and immediate and chronic refined carbohydrate consumption estimated by glycemic load was studied for 104 French subjects.

Using portraits to quantify the changes of generalized social trust in European history: A replication study.

A portrait is an exercise of impression management: the sitter can choose the impression she or he wants to create in the eyes of others': competence, trustworthiness, dominance, etc. Indirectly, this choice informs us about the qualities that were specifically valued at the time the portrait was created. In a previous paper, we have shown that cues of perceived trustworthiness in portraits increased in time during the modern period in Europe, meaning that people probably granted more importance to be seen as a trustworthy person.

Temporal discounting mediates the relationship between socio-economic status and social trust.

Social trust and income are associated both within and across countries, such that higher income typically correlates with increased trust. While this correlation is well-documented, the psychological mechanisms sustaining this relationship remain poorly understood. One plausible candidate is people's temporal discounting: on the one hand, trust has a strong time component-it exposes the individual to immediate costs in exchange of uncertain and delayed benefits; on the other hand, temporal discounting is robustly influenced by income.