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Social thermoregulation theory posits that modern human relationships are pleisiomorphically organized around body temperature regulation. In two studies (N = 1755) designed to test the principles from this theory, we used supervised machine learning to identify social and non-social factors that relate to core body temperature. This data-driven analysis found that complex social integration (CSI), defined as the number of high-contact roles one engages in, is a critical predictor of core body temperature. We further used a cross-validation approach to show that colder climates relate to higher levels of CSI, which in turn relates to higher CBT (when climates get colder). These results suggest that despite modern affordances for regulating body temperature, people still rely on social warmth to buffer their bodies against the cold. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

This study aims to evaluate a number of procedures that have been proposed to enhance cross–cultural comparability of personality and value data. A priori procedures (anchoring vignettes and direct measures of response styles (i.e. acquiescence, extremity, midpoint responding, and social desirability), a posteriori procedures focusing on data transformations prior to analysis (ipsatization and item parcelling), and two data modelling procedures (treating data as continuous vs as ordered categories) were compared using data collected from university students in 16 countries. We found that (i) anchoring vignettes showed lack of invariance, so they were not bias–free; (ii) anchoring vignettes showed higher internal consistencies than raw scores where all other correction procedures, notably ipsatization, showed lower internal consistencies; (iii) in measurement invariance testing, no procedure yielded scalar invariance; anchoring vignettes and item parcelling slightly improved comparability, response style correction did not affect it, and ipsatization resulted in lower comparability; (iv) treating Likert–scale data as categorical resulted in higher levels of comparability; (v) factor scores of scales extracted from different procedures showed similar correlational patterning; and (vi) response style correction was the only procedure that suggested improvement in external validity of country–level conscientiousness. We conclude that, although no procedure resolves all comparability issues, anchoring vignettes, parcelling, and treating data as ordered categories seem promising to alleviate incomparability. We advise caution in uncritically applying any of these procedures. Copyright © 2017 European Association of Personality Psychology

People's just world beliefs are related to how they feel and behave towards others: the stronger people hold beliefs that the world treats them fairly, the more they feel and act pro-socially towards others. It is conceivable, therefore, that pro-social feelings and behaviours towards others can strengthen people's personal belief in a just world, especially when people expect these positive feelings to be returned. Because mimicry enhances pro-social feelings towards others, we argue that mimicry may strengthen peoples' personal just world beliefs via positive feelings for the mimicked person and the expectation that these positive feelings are returned. Moreover, we expect these effects to be more pronounced for men because men have stronger reciprocity beliefs than women. The results of three studies supported this line of reasoning, showing that mimicry made men believe more strongly that the world is personally just to them. Further support for our line of reasoning was obtained by positive feelings for the (non)mimicked person (Study 2) and reciprocity beliefs (Study 3) mediating the effects. Taken together, the findings suggest that mimicry makes men view the world as more just.