Alec T. Beall

Women Are More Likely to Wear Red or Pink at Peak Fertility

Although females of many species closely related to humans signal their fertile window in an observable manner, often involving red or pink coloration, no such display has been found for humans. Building on evidence that men are sexually attracted to women wearing or surrounded by red, we tested whether women show a behavioral tendency toward wearing reddish clothing when at peak fertility. Across two samples (N = 124), women at high conception risk were more than 3 times more likely to wear a red or pink shirt than were women at low conception risk, and 77% of women who wore red or pink were found to be at high, rather than low, risk. Conception risk had no effect on the prevalence of any other shirt color. Our results thus suggest that red and pink adornment in women is reliably associated with fertility and that female ovulation, long assumed to be hidden, is associated with a salient visual cue.

Happy Guys Finish Last: The Impact of Emotion Expressions on Sexual Attraction

This research examined the relative sexual attractiveness of individuals showing emotion expressions of happiness, pride, and shame compared with a neutral control. Across two studies using different images and samples ranging broadly in age (total N = 1041), a large gender difference emerged in the sexual attractiveness of happy displays: happiness was the most attractive female emotion expression, and one of the least attractive in males. In contrast, pride showed the reverse pattern; it was the most attractive male expression, and one of the least attractive in women. Shame displays were relatively attractive in both genders, and, among younger adult women viewers, male shame was more attractive than male happiness, and not substantially less than male pride. Effects were largely consistent with evolutionary and socio-cultural-norm accounts. Overall, this research provides the first evidence that distinct emotion expressions have divergent effects on sexual attractiveness, which vary by gender but largely hold across age.

Individual differences in activation of the parental care motivational system: assessment, prediction, and implications.

We report on the development, validation, and utility of a measure assessing individual differences in activation of the parental care motivational system: The Parental Care and Tenderness (PCAT) questionnaire. Results from 1,608 adults (including parents and nonparents) show that the 25-item PCAT measure has high internal consistency, high test-retest reliability, high construct validity, and unique predictive utility. Among parents, it predicted self-child identity overlap and caring child-rearing attitudes; among nonparents, it predicted desire to have children. PCAT scores predicted the intensity of tender emotions aroused by infants, and also predicted the amount of time individuals chose look at infant (but not adult) faces. PCAT scores uniquely predicted additional outcomes in the realm of social perception, including mate preferences, moral judgments, and trait inferences about baby-faced adults. Practical and conceptual implications are discussed.

The impact of weather on women's tendency to wear red or pink when at high risk for conception.

Women are particularly motivated to enhance their sexual attractiveness during their most fertile period, and men perceive shades of red, when associated with women, as sexually attractive. Building on this research, we recently found that women are more likely to wear reddish clothing when at peak fertility (Beall & Tracy, 2013), presumably as a way of increasing their attractiveness. Here, we first report results from a methodological replication, conducted during warmer weather, which produced a null effect. Investigating this discrepancy, we considered the impact of a potentially relevant contextual difference between previous research and the replication: current weather. If the red-dress effect is driven by a desire to increase one’s sexual appeal, then it should emerge most reliably when peak-fertility women have few alternative options for accomplishing this goal (e.g., wearing minimal clothing). Results from re-analyses of our previously collected data and a new experiment support this account, by demonstrating that the link between fertility and red/pink dress emerges robustly in cold, but not warm, weather. Together, these findings suggest that the previously documented red-dress effect is moderated by current climate concerns, and provide further evidence that under certain circumstances red/pink dress is reliably associated with female fertility.

Infections and Elections: Did an Ebola Outbreak Influence the 2014 U.S. Federal Elections (and if so, How)?

In the studies reported here, we conducted longitudinal analyses of preelection polling data to test whether an Ebola outbreak predicted voting intentions preceding the 2014 U.S. federal elections. Analyses were conducted on nationwide polls pertaining to 435 House of Representatives elections and on state-specific polls pertaining to 34 Senate elections. Analyses compared voting intentions before and after the initial Ebola outbreak and assessed correlations between Internet search activity for the term “Ebola” and voting intentions. Results revealed that (a) the psychological salience of Ebola was associated with increased intention to vote for Republican candidates and (b) this effect occurred primarily in states characterized by norms favoring Republican Party candidates (the effect did not occur in states with norms favoring Democratic Party candidates). Ancillary analyses addressed several interpretational issues. Overall, these results suggest that disease outbreaks may influence voter behavior in two psychologically distinct ways: increased inclination to vote for politically conservative candidates and increased inclination to conform to popular opinion.

Individual Differences in Activation of the Parental Care Motivational System: An Empirical Distinction Between Protection and Nurturance

Previous research reveals that individual differences in parental caregiving motives have implications (among both parents and nonparents) for a wide range of psychological outcomes. Here we report reanalyses of existing data sets to examine the extent to which these outcomes are uniquely predicted by two conceptually distinct factors underlying the parental caregiving motive: protection and nurturance. In doing so, we also psychometrically validate a brief self-report measure designed to efficiently assess individual differences in protection and nurturance. Results reveal that individual differences in parental protection uniquely predict a specific subset of attitudes and judgments (e.g., endorsement of restrictive parenting practices, harsher moral judgments of adults who violate social norms), whereas individual differences in parental nurturance uniquely predict a different subset of attitudes and judgments (e.g., nonparents desire to have children, preferences for committed romantic partners, more lenient moral judgments of children who violate social norms).

Evolution, motivation, and the mating/parenting trade–off

Abstract An evolutionary perspective on motivation implies an inverse relation between two motivational systems – one that regulates mate acquisition and the other that regulates parental care-giving. Study 1 (N = 2252) used correlational methods to test whether an inverse relation manifests at the level of chronic individual differences. Results revealed that short-term mating orientation (STMO) was inversely associated with a nurturant disposition toward children, but was positively associated with a protective disposition toward children. Studies 2 and 3 used experimental methods to test whether the inverse relation manifests at the level of temporary cognitive accessibility. Study 2 (N = 92) revealed that women (but not men) reported lower levels of STMO following an experimental procedure designed to activate the parental care motivational system. Conversely, results from Study 3 (n = 308) suggest that both men and women reported lower levels of tender emotional responses towards infants following an experimental procedure designed to activate the mate acquisition motivational system. Together, these results provide novel evidence bearing on the psychological manifestations of a mating/parenting trade-off, while also implicating additional variables that may affect the nature of these manifestations.

Evidence That an Ebola Outbreak Influenced Voting Preferences, Even After Controlling (Mindfully) for Autocorrelation: Reply to Tiokhin and Hruschka (2017):

“Did an Ebola outbreak influence the 2014 U.S. federal elections (and if so, how)?” We addressed this question in a previous article (Beall, Hofer, & Schaller, 2016), in which analyses on preelection polling data were reported. Results indicated that the outbreak was associated with increased intentions to vote for conservative candidates and also increased inclination to conform to local voting norms. A Commentary by Tiokhin and Hruschka (2017) reports new analyses of these data after first detrending key variables. On the basis of these new results, Tiokhin and Hruschka’s Commentary concludes that there is “no evidence that an Ebola outbreak influenced voting preferences in the 2014 elections after controlling for time-series autocorrelation.” The conclusion that there is “no evidence” is questionable, for two reasons. First, it does not take into account results (reported by Beall et al.) that did control for autocorrelation and did produce evidence linking the Ebola outbreak to changes in voting preferences. Second, the new analyses reported in Tiokhin and Hruschka’s Commentary have their own inferential shortcomings. Beall et al. reported two complementary analytic strategies to examine whether the Ebola outbreak was associated with changes in a voter-intention index. The primary strategy focused on the ongoing outbreak itself—treating the outbreak as an “intervention”—and compared preoutbreak and postoutbreak voterintention-index values. The second strategy did not focus directly on the outbreak but instead on Google searches for “Ebola”—treating an Ebola-search-volume index as an “assay” of the psychological salience of the outbreak—and examined correlations between the Ebola-search-volume index and the voter-intention index. (Americans searched for “Ebola” much more often during the month after the onset of the outbreak than they did before—which is why the Ebola-searchvolume index may have some inferential utility as an indicator of the outbreak.) Tiokhin and Hruschka’s Commentary focuses only on the second strategy. This omission matters because it is the first strategy (preoutbreak vs. postoutbreak comparison) that most directly addresses the research question (because it focuses explicitly on the outbreak, not on Internet search behavior), and it is within the context of that more direct strategy that Beall et al. did—in Study 1—report analyses that corrected for autocorrelation. Study 1 employed nationwide polling data to test whether the outbreak coincided with a change in Americans’ voting intentions. The results (depicted graphically in Beall et al., Fig. 1, p. 599) revealed that it did. There was a change in the temporal trajectory of the voter-intention index (a pattern that, within the politicalscience literature, has been labeled a wave effect; Shaw, 1999): Compared with the preoutbreak trajectory, the postoutbreak trajectory was toward greater support for conservative candidates—which indicates a cumulative impact of the ongoing outbreak. Beall et al. reported analyses that separately estimated preand postoutbreak trends. Results—which addressed inferential issues associated with autocorrelation—showed that the 718183 PSSXXX10.1177/0956797617718183Schaller et al.Reply to Tiokhin and Hruschka (2017) research-article2017