Weight Location Moderates Weight-Based Self-Devaluation and Perceived Social Devaluation in Women

Overweight and obese (“heavyweight”) people devalue themselves because, it has been proposed, they are socially devalued. However, for women, social valuation depends not only on how much weight they carry but also on where on their bodies they carry it. Here, we investigated whether weight-based self-valuation and perceived social valuation similarly depend on body shape. Study 1, using a nationally representative sample from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES; N = 1,093 reproductive-aged women), showed that, controlling for body fat, weight labeling (by self and others) and wanting to lose weight depended on body shape. Study 2, in a direct test of predictions using an undergraduate sample of women ( N = 215), showed that with increased body fat, women with an abdominal weight distribution reported more self-devaluation (e.g., lower self-esteem) and perceived social devaluation (e.g., higher perceived weight discrimination); women with a gluteofemoral weight distribution, however, were shielded—partially or fully—from these adverse effects of increased body fat.

Evaluating benefits, costs, and social value as predictors of gratitude

Although much is known about cooperation, the internal decision rules that regulate motivations to initiate and maintain cooperative relationships have not been thoroughly explored. Here, we focus on how acts of benefit delivery and perceptions of social value inform gratitude, an emotion that promotes cooperation. We evaluate alternate information-processing models to determine which inputs and internal representations best account for the intensity with which people report experiencing gratitude. Across two experiments (Ns = 257; 208), we test ten models that consider multiple variables: the magnitude of benefits conferred upon beneficiaries, the magnitude of costs incurred by benefactors, beneficiaries’ perception of how much benefactors value their welfare, and beneficiaries’ value for the welfare of their benefactors. Across both studies, only beneficiaries’ change in social valuation for their benefactors consistently predicted gratitude. Results point to future research and contribute to the growing literature linking cooperation, social emotions, and social valuation.

Social emotions are governed by a common grammar of social valuation: Theoretical foundations and applications to human personality and the criminal justice system

Social emotions appear to be behavior-regulating programs built by natural selection to solve adaptive problems in the domain of social valuation—the disposition to attend to, associate with, defer to, and aid target individuals based on their probable contributions to the fitness of the valuer. For example, shame functions to prevent and mitigate the costs of being socially devalued by others, whereas anger functions to correct those people who attach insufficient weight to the welfare of the self. Here we review theory and evidence suggesting that social emotions such as guilt, gratitude, anger, pride, shame, sadness, and envy are all governed by a common grammar of social valuation even when each emotion has its own distinct adaptive function and structure. We also provide evidence that social emotions and social valuation operate with a substantial degree of universality across cultures. This emotion-valuation constellation appears to shape human sociality through interpersonal interactions. Expanding upon this, we explore how signatures of this constellation may be evident in two spheres of human sociality: personality and the criminal justice system.

Weight location moderates weight-based self-devaluation and perceived social devaluation in women

People with overweight and obesity devalue themselves, partially because they are socially devalued. However, for women, social valuation depends not only on how much weight they carry but where on their bodies they carry it. Here, we investigate whether weight-based self-valuation and perceived social valuation also depend on body shape. Study 1, using a nationally-representative sample from NHANES (N = 1,052 reproductively-aged women), showed that, controlling for body fat, weight labeling (by self and others) and wanting to lose weight depended on weight location. Study 2, in a direct test of predictions, using an undergraduate sample of women (N = 215), showed that with increased body fat, women with an abdominal weight distribution reported more self-devaluation (e.g., lower self-esteem) and perceived social devaluation (e.g., higher perceived weight discrimination); women with a gluteofemoral weight distribution, however, were shielded—partially or fully—from these adverse effects of increased body fat.

Forms and Functions of the Social Emotions

In engineering, form follows function. It is therefore difficult to understand an engineered object if one does not examine it in light of its function. Just as understanding the structure of a lock requires understanding the desire to secure valuables, understanding structures engineered by natural selection, including emotion systems, requires hypotheses about adaptive function. Social emotions reliably solved adaptive problems of human sociality. A central function of these emotions appears to be the recalibration of social evaluations in the minds of self and others. For example, the anger system functions to incentivize another individual to value your welfare more highly when you deem the current valuation insufficient; gratitude functions to consolidate a cooperative relationship with another individual when there are indications that the other values your welfare; shame functions to minimize the spread of discrediting information about yourself and the threat of being devalued by others; and pride functions to capitalize on opportunities to become more highly valued by others. Using the lens of social valuation, researchers are now mapping these and other social emotions at a rapid pace, finding striking regularities across industrial and small-scale societies and throughout history.

Selective prefrontal-amygdala circuit interactions underlie social and nonsocial valuation in rhesus macaques

Lesion studies in macaques suggest dissociable functions of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and medial frontal cortex (MFC), with OFC being essential for goal-directed decision making and MFC supporting social cognition. Bilateral amygdala damage results in impairments in both of these domains. There are extensive reciprocal connections between these prefrontal areas and the amygdala; however, it is not known whether the dissociable roles of OFC and MFC depend on functional interactions with the amygdala. To test this possibility, we compared the performance of male rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) with crossed surgical disconnection of the amygdala and either MFC (MFC x AMY, n=4) or OFC (OFC x AMY, n=4) to a group of unoperated controls (CON, n=5). All monkeys were assessed for their performance on two tasks to measure: (1) food-retrieval latencies while viewing videos of social and nonsocial stimuli in a test of social interest, and (2) object choices based on current food value using reinforcer devaluation in a test of goal-directed decision making. Compared to the CON group, the MFC x AMY group, but not the OFC x AMY group, showed significantly reduced food-retrieval latencies while viewing videos of conspecifics, indicating reduced social valuation and/or interest. By contrast, on the devaluation task, group OFC x AMY, but not group MFC x AMY, displayed deficits on object choices following changes in food value. These data indicate that the MFC and OFC must functionally interact with the amygdala to support normative social and nonsocial valuation, respectively.Significance StatementAscribing value to conspecifics (social) vs. objects (nonsocial) may be supported by distinct but overlapping brain networks. Here we test whether two nonoverlapping regions of the prefrontal cortex, the medial frontal cortex and the orbitofrontal cortex, must causally interact with the amygdala to sustain social valuation and goal-directed decision making, respectively. We found that these prefrontal-amygdala circuits are functionally dissociable, lending support for the idea that medial frontal and orbital frontal cortex make independent contributions to cognitive appraisals of the environment. These data provide a neural framework for distinct value assignment processes and may enhance our understanding of the cognitive deficits observed following brain injury or in the development of mental health disorders.

Les repas des Marocains

This article provides an overview of Moroccan people’s eating habits, in a context of urbanisation and, more broadly, of ongoing changes in lifestyles and social aspirations. The analysis is mainly based on data from a quantitative survey conducted between 2012 and 2013. It focuses on the differences and commonalities between the meals of Casablanca residents and those of the inhabitants of rural areas in the Souss region. The article points out the existence of differentiated situations between the two contexts, particularly with regard to the number of meals or food sociability. It also shows the importance of certain habits, both in the city and in rural villages, such as the social valuation of certain dishes or products, or the importance of commensality.Résumé : Cet article propose un panorama des habitudes des Marocains relatives aux repas, dans un contexte d’urbanisation et, plus largement, de mutations en cours dans les modes de vie et les aspirations sociales. L’analyse se fonde principalement sur les données d’une enquête quantitative menée entre 2012 et 2013. Elle porte sur les différences et les points de convergence entre les repas des Casablancais et ceux des habitants de communes rurales du Souss. L’article pointe l’existence de situations différenciées entre les deux contextes, s’agissant en particulier du nombre des repas ou encore des sociabilités alimentaires. Il montre aussi la prégnance, en ville comme dans les villages ruraux, de certaines habitudes, telle que la valorisation de certains plats ou produits, ou l’importance de la commensalité.

Entrepreneurship in upper secondary level students

Entrepreneurship is a relevant activity for the challenges of the current global economic crises, which have brought lack of employment opportunities. The present investigation was carried out through a sample of 2,005 upper-middle-level students from 14 campuses of the National College of Technical Professional Education, in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico. The objective was to achieve a typology of entrepreneurship in students at this level. The following variables were identified: Attraction to be an entrepreneur (AT), Initiative (IN), Knowledge of the activity (KN), Resistance to entrepreneur (RE), Dislike to undertake (DU), Social assessment (SA), Leadership (LE) and Determination and Courage (DC). The correlation analysis showed that there is a significant correspondence between the dimension of pleasure for entrepreneurship and the variables of: innovation, knowledge, resistance to entrepreneur and social valuation; likewise, the variable of dislike to undertake showed a negative correlation, and on the other hand, the innovation variable showed correlation with the variables: knowledge, resistance to entrepreneur and social valuation. Again, a negative correlation is observed with the variable of dislike to undertake. Finally, the knowledge variable showed a slight negative correlation with the variable of dislike to undertake.