Stephanie Atwood

A comprehensive cognitive science requires broad sampling of human behavior to justify general inferences about the mind. For example, the field of psycholinguistics relies on a rich history of comparative study, with many available resources that systematically document many languages. Surprisingly, despite a longstanding interest in questions of universality and diversity, the psychology of music has few such resources. Here, we report the Expanded Natural History of Song Discography, an open-access corpus of vocal music (n = 1007 song excerpts), with accompanying metadata detailing each song’s region of origin, language (of 413 languages represented here), and one of 10 behavioral contexts (e.g., work, storytelling, mourning, lullaby, dance). The corpus is designed to sample both broadly, with a large cross-section of societies and languages; and deeply, with many songs representing three well-studied language families (Atlantic-Congo, Austronesian, and Indo-European). This design facilitates direct comparison of musical and vocal features across cultures, principled approaches to sampling stimuli for experiments, and evaluation of models of the cultural evolution of song. In this paper we describe the corpus and provide two proofs of concept, demonstrating its utility. We report (1) a conceptual replication of previous findings that the acoustical forms of songs are predictive of their behavioral contexts, including in previously unstudied contexts (e.g., children’s play songs); and (2) similarities in acoustic content of songs across cultures are predictable, in part, by the relatedness of those cultures.

A comprehensive cognitive science requires broad sampling of human behavior to justify general inferences about the mind. For example, the field of psycholinguistics relies on a rich history of comparative study, with many available resources that systematically document many languages. Surprisingly, despite a longstanding interest in questions of universality and diversity, the psychology of music has few such resources. Here, we report the Expanded Natural History of Song Discography, an open-access corpus of vocal music (n = 1007 song excerpts), with accompanying metadata detailing each song’s region of origin, language (of 413 languages represented here), and one of 10 behavioral contexts (e.g., work, storytelling, mourning, lullaby, dance). The corpus is designed to sample both broadly, with a large cross-section of societies and languages; and deeply, with many songs representing three well-studied language families (Atlantic-Congo, Austronesian, and Indo-European). This design facilitates direct comparison of musical and vocal features across cultures, principled approaches to sampling stimuli for experiments, and evaluation of models of the cultural evolution of song. In this paper we describe the corpus and provide two proofs of concept, demonstrating its utility. We show that (1) the acoustical forms of songs are predictive of their behavioral contexts, including in previously unstudied contexts (e.g., children’s play songs); and (2) similarities in acoustic content of songs across cultures are predictable, in part, by the relatedness of those cultures.

Across six preregistered studies (N = 1,292; recruited from university subject pools and Prolific Academic), we investigate how face perception along the dimensions of gender/sex and race can vary based on immediate contextual information as well as personal experience. In Studies 1a and 1b, we find that when placing stimuli along a continuum from male to female, cisgender participants sort prototypical gender/sex faces in a bimodal fashion and show less consensus and greater error when placing faces of intermediate gender/sex. We replicate and extend these findings to race in Study 2. In Study 3, we test whether sorting patterns can be influenced by preexisting experiences, and find evidence that transgender/nonbinary participants show less error than cisgender heterosexual participants when sorting intermediary faces. Finally, in Studies 4 and 5, we test whether cisgender participants' judgments of intermediary faces along the continuum are influenced by the specific circumstances under which they are asked to sort. Here, we find that changing the sorting framework to include a third category resulted in less error when placing intermediary faces along the continuum than when participants were provided with only two category labels or two categories and a line at the midpoint, suggesting that new perceptual categories introduced with minimal training can be adopted quickly and successfully in a perceptual task. These data suggest that both long-term life experiences and quick experimental interventions can shape how we think about gender/sex and race. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Despite growing global interest in lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, and queer/questioning (LGBTIQ+) research, variations in measurement practices across countries have remained underexplored. In this work, we focused on two fundamental aspects of measurement vital to understanding the experiences of LGBTIQ+ people. Specifically, we documented current measures of sex, gender, and sexual orientation used in national mental well‐being‐related surveys and reviewed whether the mental well‐being scales in those surveys have been validated for LGBTIQ+ people. We employed a stratified sampling strategy and evaluated national surveys from a list of randomly selected countries representing 10% of global nations (N = 21). Fewer than half of the countries measured sexual orientation and fewer than one‐third measured gender beyond the binary in their national surveys. Among the countries that measured gender or sexual orientation, the response options and question phrasing were often not inclusive. In addition, most of the mental well‐being scales lacked validity evidence for LGBTIQ+ populations. Finally, we outline recommendations for the future of reimagining LGBTIQ+ research in terms of measurement, highlighting the importance of research engagement with the global LGBTIQ+ community.

Inequalities and discrimination based on gender identity, sexual orientation, and sex characteristics remain pervasive worldwide. Scholars have collaborated to address structural and social barriers in LGBTIQ+ research, creating a substantial literature base. However, much of this work focuses on specific segments of the population, overlooks resilience‐ and strengths‐based approaches, and is predominantly conducted in the U.S. and other Western countries. In this introduction article, we discuss how this special issue extends previous research by uniting scholars globally to collaboratively reimagine the lens through which scientists conduct LGBTIQ+ research. By exploring diverging needs across subgroups of LGBTIQ+ people, discussing the (dis)advantages of various methodological choices, and offering a better understanding of how unique legal and social landscapes affect LGBTIQ+ individuals globally, this special issue aims to provide a comprehensive picture of the current state of research combined with concrete directions for redress. Given that barriers to conducting LGBTIQ+ research differ significantly by nation, we conclude this introductory article by calling for a research community that is more aware of unequal power dynamics within academia, willing to take action to reduce disparities in the global academic system, and inclusive of voices from underrepresented groups.

The past half‐decade has seen an exponential rise in proposed and debated anti‐trans legislation in the United States. These bills are often positioned at the center of divisive political debates between Republicans (who typically support these laws) and Democrats (who typically do not). In the process of discussing these debates, there has been widespread dissemination of anti‐trans rhetoric that has the potential to impact public opinion. In this review, we approach this rhetoric through the lens of social psychology with a specific focus on instances where anti‐trans legislation is portrayed as beneficial for the rights of other vulnerable groups of people, such as cisgender women and children. We identify psychological constructs reflected in anti‐trans rhetoric and then review existing literature on the consequences and beliefs associated with these constructs. Based upon this review, we argue that the kind of reasoning used to promote anti‐trans laws—specifically, essentialist beliefs and benevolent sexism—is actually associated with outcomes that are detrimental to the very groups these laws purport to protect. Given these potentially adverse effects of essentialism and benevolent sexism, we reflect on ways to reduce the impact of these psychological constructs in everyday life and suggest some alternatives to these laws that would improve the lives of both cisgender and transgender individuals. Next, we briefly discuss other forms of anti‐trans rhetoric and suggest ways that social psychology can be used to positively reframe rhetoric and policy to promote the welfare of transgender and gender‐diverse individuals. We close our paper with a brief discussion of limitations and summary of our ideas.

Previous work has shown the robust nature of gender bias in both children and adults. However, much less attention has been paid toward understanding what factors shape these biases. The current preregistered study used parent surveys and child interviews to test whether parents' conversations with their children about and modeling of gender intergroup relations and/or children's self-guided interests about gender (self-socialization) contribute to the formation of gender attitudes, status perceptions, and gender intergroup behaviors among young 4- to 6-year-old children. Our participant sample also allowed us to explore variation by child gender, ethnicity (Asian-, Black-, Latiné-, and White-American), and U.S. geographical region (Northeast, Pacific Northwest, West, Southeast, and Hawaii). Data suggest that children whose parents reported they were especially active in seeking information about gender tended to allocate more resources to same-gender versus other-gender children and expressed less positive evaluations of other-gender children in comparison to children who were less active. By contrast, we found that parents' conversations with their children about gender intergroup relations and about gender-play stereotypes showed few connections with children's gender attitudes. In terms of demographic differences, boys raised in households with more unequal versus equal division of labor perceived that men had higher status than women, but few differences by ethnicity or geographic region emerged. In sum, our study suggests that both self- and parent socialization processes are at play in shaping early gender attitudes, status perceptions, and gender intergroup behavior, although self-socialization seemed to play a larger role. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Across six pre-registered studies (N = 1292; recruited from university subject pools and Prolific Academic), we investigate how face perception along the dimensions of gender/sex and race can vary based on immediate contextual information as well as personal experience. In Studies 1a and 1b we find that when placing stimuli along a continuum from male to female, cisgender participants sort prototypical gender/sex faces in a bimodal fashion and show less consensus and greater error when placing faces of intermediate gender/sex. We replicate and extend these findings to race in Study 2. In Study 3, we test whether sorting patterns can be influenced by pre-existing experiences, and find evidence that transgender/nonbinary participants show less error than cisgender heterosexual participants when sorting intermediary faces. Finally, in Studies 4 and 5, we test whether cisgender participants’ judgments of intermediary faces along the continuum are influenced by the specific circumstances under which they are asked to sort. Here, we find that changing the sorting framework to include a third category resulted in less error when placing intermediary faces along the continuum than when participants were provided with only two category labels or two categories and a line at the midpoint, suggesting that new perceptual categories introduced with minimal training can be adopted quickly and successfully in a perceptual task. These data suggest that both long term life experiences and quick experimental interventions can shape how we think about gender/sex and race.

Many studies argue that synchronized movement increases prosocial attitudes and behavior. We reviewed meta-analytic evidence that reported effects of synchrony may be driven by experimenter expectancy, leading to experimenter bias; and participant expectancy, otherwise known as placebo effects. We found that a majority of published studies do not adequately control for experimenter bias and that multiple independent replication attempts with added controls have failed to find the original effects. In a preregistered experiment, we measured participant expectancy directly, asking whether participants have a priori expectations about synchrony and prosociality that match the findings in published literature. Expectations about the effects of synchrony on prosocial attitudes directly mirrored previous experimental findings (including both positive and null effects)—despite the participants not actually engaging in synchrony. On the basis of this evidence, we propose an alternative account of the reported bottom-up effects of synchrony on prosociality: the effects of synchrony on prosociality may be explicable as the result of top-down expectations invoked by placebo and experimenter effects.

Prior work finds a consistent association between race and gender: people associate Asian with female and Black with male. We used mouse-tracking to examine whether different US racial/ethnic groups hold this same association (Study 1) and compared Asian-American participants to ethnically Chinese participants in China (Study 2). In Study 1, White and Hispanic participants showed the expected “race is gendered” effect, and the strength of the effect did not differ between men and women. However, participants with a counter-stereotypical racial-gender identity (Black women and Asian men) showed weaker race-gender associations. The same pattern emerged for East Asian participants in Study 2, both among people living in the United States and China. These data provide the first evidence of moderation in Asian-female, Black-male associations, and further reveal the importance of considering intersectional identities in social cognition and social perception.