Carbon monoxide

It's good for you! (via)

Does conforming to traditional gender roles lead to better or worse sex?

Better.

Or, worse.

(Both abstracts are from Barking up the Wrong Tree.)

An excerpt from the second article (here's the whole thing as a PDF; I've omitted citations and added paragraph breaks here):

We propose that men and women who invest in gender norms are more likely to base self-esteem on others’ approval and thus feel less sexual autonomy and consequently experience less sexual satisfaction. . . .

Research on gender roles typically focuses on how adherence to gender norms is problematic for women’s mental health, academic performance, and subjective sexual experiences. Restrictive gender norms, which undermine women’s power, competence, and agency, help account for women’s higher rates of depression, poorer standardized scores, and higher discontent with sex.

However, the argument that gender roles are more problematic for women than for men contrasts with evidence that investment in gender norms is a risk factor for both men and women. We argue that although gender roles per se may be more problematic for women than for men, investment in gender norms (i.e., feeling pressure to conform to gender norms) is equally problematic for women and men.

With regard to gender roles, the expectation that women should be subservient and cater to their partners affords women less autonomy in their intimate relationships with men. In addition however, both men and women who invest in gender norms may be vulnerable to diminished autonomy because they feel pressure to conform and base their self-esteem on what other people think of them. . . .

We argue that both men and women who invest in gender conformity feel as though they need to meet these ideals to gain others’ approval. Although preliminary evidence suggests that those who invest in gender normativity feel better about themselves when they are engaged in gender-normative activities, our results suggest that elevated affect and self-esteem could be a short-term boost related to feeling as though one has others’ approval.

Previous research suggests that boosts and drops in self-esteem related to succeeding and failing at contingencies of self-worth are related to increases in symptoms of depression over time. . . .

Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to the question of whether women and men should conform to gender norms. On one hand, research suggests that women and men may gain others’ approval or at the very least avoid others’ disapproval or negative evaluations if they follow gender norms. On the other hand, men and women who feel compelled to follow norms may sacrifice their own needs and desires, which can prevent the development of satisfying and authentic intimate relationships with others.

Not only does rock music not cause suicide, but...

. . . "merely describing a song as ‘suicide-inducing’ or ‘life-affirming’ leads listeners to perceive it as such."

So, "by labelling music as suicide-inducing, campaigners and legislators may be helping to create the problem they aim to eradicate."

How well do you know your friends or your partner?

Don't just know your friend's or partner's qualities — "casual acquaintances" can do that. What requires being closer to them, and what will improve the friendship or relationship, is if you know what they find annoying. (via)

Who proselytizes?

Those who believe less.

So says a paper about 3 psychological experiments called: "When in Doubt, Shout!"

Why would this be the case? Maybe there's a spectrum that explains why people hold their beliefs strongly. On one end of the spectrum, people value truth for its own sake. Their aim is to figure out what's actually true, and believe that. (I'm not saying anyone's motives are so pure; this is a theoretical extreme.)

On the other end of the spectrum, people select their beliefs, as Robin Hanson has explained, "to signal loyalty and ability." Hanson is keeping a list of signs you may be closer to that end of the spectrum. (The original list was just the first 11, but he added more based on feedback in his comments section and the comments in this post by Tyler Cowen.)

I'm not convinced by all Hanson's points. (He wasn't either; he crossed out one of them.) Here's one "sign" I disagree with:

17. You are especially eager to drop names when explaining positions and arguments.

If Hanson dislikes name-dropping, fair enough . . . but I still don't think name-dropping suggests that you're more interested in signaling loyalty than in pursuing truth for its own sake. Maybe you just like giving credit where credit is due. Or maybe you do like to show off your knowledge of specific commentators; this could be to signal, "Look, I cite Howard Zinn, so I fit in with our left-wing milieu," but it could just as well be to signal that you're not afraid to challenge the conventional wisdom of that milieu since you mention Thomas Sowell. Conversely, those who want to signal group loyalty through their beliefs might prefer not to attribute those beliefs to specific individuals but to state them as free-standing maxims — things "everyone knows" rather than one person's opinion.

But I do agree with most of Hanson's "signs," especially these:

9. You find it easy to conclude that those who disagree with you are insincere or stupid. . . .

13. You care more about consistency between your beliefs than about belief accuracy.

14. You go easy on sloppy arguments by folks on “your side.” . . .

18. You find it hard to list weak points and counter-arguments on your positions.

19. You feel passionately about a topic, but haven’t sought out much evidence.

20. You are reluctant to not have an opinion on commonly discussed topics.

A commenter on Tyler Cowen's post does the inevitable turning of the tables:

This list is an attempt to signal Robin Hanson's ability to find truth, but ends up being a signal of Robin Hanson's ability to attribute signaling to all human actions, and inability to distinguish between merely not-truth motives, and actively loyal or able motives.

Is there discrimination against single people?

Yes, according to a 2007 study -- here's the abstract:

Providing the first empirical evidence of discrimination against singles, participants in multiple experiments favored married couples over various types of singles and failed to recognize such differential treatment as discrimination. In four experiments, undergraduates and rental agents read descriptions of multiple applicants for a rental property and chose one. The applicant pool, varying across experiments, included a married couple and different types of singles. Although the applicants were similar on substantive dimensions, participants consistently chose the married couple over the singles and explicitly stated that the applicants' marital status influenced their choice.

In Experiment 5, participants read examples of housing discrimination against singles and other more recognized stigmatized groups. Participants rated discrimination against singles as more legitimate than discrimination against virtually all of the other groups.

I got that from a blog post called "Are single people unfairly stereotyped?" on the wonderfully informative blog Barking up the Wrong Tree. That post also links to another study, in which people had to rate other people, and themselves, on a variety of metrics ("personality characteristics" and "overall well-being"). Single people were rated by others as worse than "partnered" people on all the metrics, even though single people rated themselves just as highly as partnered people rated themselves. One exception was "satisfaction with relationship status" -- single people were, not surprisingly, less satisfied than partnered people with their relationship status.

Barking up the Wrong Tree adds:

I haven't seen a very definitive book on being single and this one isn't terribly relevant for guys.

Well, there's Singled Out by Bella DePaulo, who's one of the co-authors of the first study. Here's DePaulo having a conversation on the topic with my mom, Ann Althouse: