Commentators have noted that the issue stands taken by each side of the American ‘‘culture war’’ lack conceptual consistency and can even seem contradictory. We sought to understand the psychological underpinnings of culture war attitudes using Moral Foundations Theory. In two studies involving 24,739 participants and 20 such issues (e.g. abortion, immigration, same-sex marriage), we found that...

Introduction Many young women experience irregular or heavy vaginal bleeding in the course of their development. In most cases, the abnormal bleeding is due to anovulation and immaturity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian feedback mechanisms. However, abnormal bleeding may be the presenting sign of multiple medical illnesses that require long-term treatment and follow-up, and pediatricians m...

Androphilia refers to sexual attraction and arousal to adult males, whereas gynephilia refers to sexual attraction and arousal to adult females. Previous research has demonstrated that Samoan male androphiles (known locally as fa'afafine) exhibit significantly higher altruistic tendencies toward nieces and nephews than do Samoan women and gynephilic men. The present study examined whether adapt...

Before 1900, Blacks typically occupied the swampy portions of New Orleans, Louisiana. As the city embarked on an ambitious Progressive Era public works project to improve drainage in the 1890s, it began to overhaul environmental conditions. This process, if carried out according to rational engineering principles, would serve the entire city equitably. At the same time as the improvements, Jim ...

Why do people behave aggressively toward romantic partners, and what can put the brakes on this aggression? Provocation robustly predicts aggression in both intimate and nonintimate relationships. Four methodologically diverse studies tested the hypothesis that provocation severity and relationship commitment interact to predict aggression toward one’s romantic partner, with the aggression-prom...

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Helping and sharing among humans is often motivated by empathy and accompanied by a sense of satisfaction. To determine whether similar self-rewarding mechanisms may underpin assistance among nonhuman primates, eight female brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) underwent testing in a simple choice paradigm. Paired with a partner, subjects could select either a "selfish" option that rewarded onl...

The authors proposed a novel explanation for cultural differences in ingroup favoritism (dialecticism) and tested this hypothesis across cultures/ethnicities, domains, and levels of analysis (explicit vs. implicit, cognitive vs. affective). Dialecticism refers to the cognitive tendency to tolerate contradiction and is more frequently found among East Asian than North American cultures. In Study...

Dispositional tendencies toward appetitive motivation have been hypothesized to be related to the development of psychopathology. Moreover, decreased left-frontal cortical activity has been reported in depression and has been related to low-trait positive affect and high-trait negative affect. The present study tested the hypothesis that relatively greater left- than right-frontal cortical acti...