Exploring Within-Gender Differences in Friendships Using an Online Social Network.

People tend to befriend others similar to themselves, generating a pattern called homophily. However, existing studies on friendship patterns often rely on surveys that assess the perspective of relatively few participants on their friendships but do not measure actualized friendship patterns. Here, we used data from a large Slovakian online social network to assess the role of gender, age, and body mass index (BMI) in same-gender online connections among more than 400,000 users.

A Slim Majority: The Influence of Sex Ratio on Women's Body Dissatisfaction and Weight Loss Motivations.

The current investigation examined whether women's perceptions of the sex ratio (ratio of women to men) in the local population influence their body dissatisfaction and weight loss motivations. A higher ratio of women to men in a given population signifies a relative abundance of same-sex mating competitors, intensifying female intrasexual competition. Five studies (N = 1,776) tested the hypotheses that women's perceptions of a female-skewed sex ratio would correspond to increased feelings of intrasexual competitiveness and perceptions of unfavorable mating prospects, which would, in turn, be associated with heightened body dissatisfaction and weight loss motivations.

Worth the Risk? Greater Acceptance of Instrumental Harm Befalling Men than Women.

Scientific and organizational interventions often involve trade-offs whereby they benefit some but entail costs to others (i.e., instrumental harm; IH).

Demographic and sociocultural predictors of sexuality-related body image and sexual frequency: The U.S. Body Project I.

Body image is a critical component of an individual's sexual experiences. This makes it critical to identify demographic and sociocultural correlates of sexuality-related body image: the subjective feelings, cognitions, and evaluations related to one's body in the context of sexual experience. We examined how sexuality-related body image differed by gender, sexual orientation, race, age, and BMI.

Demographic and sociocultural predictors of face image satisfaction: The U.S. Body Project I.

Despite substantial literature surrounding how people process and perceive faces, there is very little research investigating how people evaluate their own faces. We examined how gender, body mass, race, age, and sexual orientation were linked to people's satisfaction with the appearance of their eyes, nose, facial shape, and face overall among 11,620 adults recruited via Mechanical Turk. Most people mostly or definitely agreed they were happy with their facial appearance.

Engagement with Emerging Forms of Sextech: Demographic Correlates from a National Sample of Adults in the United States.

Social technology is ever-evolving, and increasingly offers novel domains for sexual experiences. In the current study, we investigated demographic correlates of engagement with emerging forms of , defined here as internet-based applications, platforms, or devices used for sexual pleasure. Our web-based, demographically representative sample included 7,512 American adults aged 18-65 years, with a near-even gender split of men/women and moderate racial diversity (63% White).

Sextech Use as a Potential Mental Health Reprieve: The Role of Anxiety, Depression, and Loneliness in Seeking Sex Online.

Depression, anxiety, and loneliness have long been recognized as global mental health concerns. To temporarily relieve psychological distress, self-soothing behavior is common, including engagement in sexual behaviors that are linked to positive mental well-being. Considering the COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated many mental health ailments alongside physical distancing regulations, we specifically examined online sexual behavior via the use of emergent digital sexual technologies, or sextech.

Our Grandmothers' Legacy: Challenges Faced by Female Ancestors Leave Traces in Modern Women's Same-Sex Relationships.

Investigations of women's same-sex relationships present a paradoxical pattern, with women generally disliking competition, yet also exhibiting signs of intrasexual rivalry. The current article leverages the historical challenges faced by female ancestors to understand modern women's same-sex relationships. Across history, women were largely denied independent access to resources, often depending on male partners' provisioning to support themselves and their children.

Moralization of Covid-19 health response: Asymmetry in tolerance for human costs.

We hypothesized that because Covid-19 (C19) remains an urgent and visible threat, efforts to combat its negative health consequences have become moralized. This moralization of health-based efforts may generate asymmetries in judgement, whereby harmful by-products of those efforts (i.e.

Dual pathways to bias: Evaluators' ideology and ressentiment independently predict racial discrimination in hiring contexts.

Despite organizations' professed commitment to fairness, thousands of employees file race-based discrimination claims every year. The current article examines how people deviate from impartiality when evaluating candidates in hiring decisions. Researchers have argued the ideological endorsement of elitism (i.

Behavioral immune system activity predicts downregulation of chronic basal inflammation.

Here, we present a mechanistically grounded theory detailing a novel function of the behavioral immune system (BIS), the psychological system that prompts pathogen avoidance behaviors. We propose that BIS activity allows the body to downregulate basal inflammation, preventing resultant oxidative damage to DNA and promoting longevity. Study 1 investigated the relationship between a trait measure of pathogen avoidance motivation and in vitro and in vivo proinflammatory cytokine production.

Progesterone and women's anxiety across the menstrual cycle.

Animal models and a few human investigations suggest progesterone may be associated with anxiety. Progesterone naturally fluctuates across the menstrual cycle, offering an opportunity to understand how within-person increases in progesterone and average progesterone levels across the cycle correspond to women's anxiety. Across two longitudinal studies, we simultaneously modeled the between- and within-person associations between progesterone and anxiety using multilevel modeling.

Adopting a dyadic perspective to better understand the association between physical attractiveness and dieting motivations and behaviors.

The relationship between women's objective physical attractiveness and their dieting motivations and behaviors may depend upon their social environment-specifically, their romantic partners' attractiveness-such that less attractive women with more attractive partners may be particularly motivated to diet. Theoretically, men's dieting motivations should not depend on their partners' attractiveness. We tested this possibility using a sample of 223 U.

Self-control, cultural animals, and Big Gods.

As Norenzayan et al. cogently argue, religions that proliferated most successfully did so because they facilitated prosociality and cooperation in large-scale, anonymous groups. One important way that religion promotes cooperation may be through improving self-control.

Grief functions as an honest indicator of commitment.

Grief is a puzzling phenomenon. It is often costly and prolonged, potentially increasing mortality rates, drug abuse, withdrawal from social life, and susceptibility to illness. These costs cannot be repaid by the deceased and therefore might appear wasted.