Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Psychology
Supporting study registration to reduce research waste
Published: 2024-06-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Research suffers from many inefficiencies. These lead to much research being avoidably wasted, with no or limited value to the end user (e.g. an estimated 82-89% of ecological research, and 85% of medical research). Here, we argue that the quality and impact of ecological research could be drastically improved by registration: pre-registration, and registered reports. However, without a [...]
IPDToolkit: An R package for simulation and Bayesian analysis of iterated prisoner’s dilemma game-play under third-party arbitration
Published: 2024-06-03
Subjects: Anthropology, Political Science, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Recently, researchers have begun studying the role that third-party arbitration may play in the evolution of cooperation. Using the iterated prisoner’s dilemma (IPD), they show that arbitration can mitigate the negative effects of perception errors on the stability of cooperative strategies. Open questions, both theoretical and empirical, however, remain. To promote research on the role of [...]
Behavioral flexibility is related to foraging, but not social or habitat use behaviors, in a species that is rapidly expanding its range
Published: 2024-05-24
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Psychology
The ability of other species to adapt to human modified environments is increasingly crucial because of the rapid expansion of this landscape type. Behavioral flexibility, the ability to change behavior in the face of a changing environment by packaging information and making it available to other cognitive processes, is hypothesized to be a key factor in a species’ ability to successfully adapt [...]
The Pest Management Attitude scale: a tool for measuring consensus between experts and practitioners in invasion biology
Published: 2023-11-17
Subjects: Life Sciences, Other Anthropology, Other Psychology, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Systems Biology
Quantifying attitudes towards invasive alien species (IAS) is fundamental to understand the extent to which conservation scientists agree and can collaborate in their management. We tested the Pest Management Scale (PMS), originally invented to quantify attitudes towards invasive alien mammals in New Zealand, as a tool to quantify broader attitudes towards IAS among bioinvasion experts in [...]
Individualisation and Individualised Science: Integrating Disciplinary Perspectives
Published: 2023-05-05
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Economics, Medical Sciences, Philosophy, Psychology, Public Health, Sociology
Recent trends in a range of scientific fields have seen a shift towards research and methods concerning individual differences and individualisation. This article brings together various scientific disciplines—ecology, evolution, and animal behaviour; medicine and psychiatry; public health and sport/exercise science; sociology; psychology; economics and management—and conceptually integrates [...]
Psychological and Cultural Factors Influencing Antibiotic Prescription
Published: 2023-01-02
Subjects: Biology, Economics, Geography, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology, Psychiatry and Psychology, Psychology, Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Humans have inundated the environment worldwide with antimicrobials for about one century, giving selective advantage to antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Therefore, antibiotic resistance has become a public health problem responsible for increased mortality, and extended hospital stays because the efficacy of antibiotics has diminished. Hospitals and other clinical settings have implemented [...]
A framework for improving the reproducibility of data extraction for meta-analysis
Published: 2022-12-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Psychology, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Extracting data from studies is the norm in meta-analyses, enabling researchers to generate effect sizes when raw data are otherwise not available. While there has been a general push for increased reproducibility in meta-analysis, the transparency and reproducibility of the data extraction phase is still lagging behind. Unfortunately, there is little guidance of how to make this process more [...]
Psychological and Cultural Factors Influencing Antibiotic Prescription
Published: 2022-06-20
Subjects: Bacteriology, Child Psychology, Health Psychology, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology, Psychiatry and Psychology, Psychological Phenomena and Processes, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sociology, Sociology of Religion
Humans have been giving a selective advantage to antibiotic-resistant bacteria worldwide by inundating the environment with antimicrobials for about one century. As a result, the efficacy of antibiotics has been impaired. Antibiotic resistance is a public health problem, responsible for increases in mortality and extended stays at hospitals. Hospitals and other clinical settings have implemented [...]
Survival of the luckiest
Published: 2022-02-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Opposite dynamics are behind natural selection and sexual selection. While the fittest survives in natural selection, the survivor will most likely be the luckiest when both dynamics are combined.
Day and night camera trap video is effective for identifying wild Asian elephants
Published: 2021-07-24
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Comparative Psychology, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Camera traps provide a virtual window into the natural world of wild animals, as they provide a noninvasive way to capture anatomical and behavioral information. Regular monitoring of wild populations through the collection of behavioral and demographic data is critical for the conservation of endangered species like the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). Identifying individual elephants can [...]
Understanding determinants of the intention to purchase rhino horn in Vietnam through the Theory of Planned Behaviour and the Theory of Interpersonal Behaviour
Published: 2021-04-11
Subjects: Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social Psychology
Demand for rhino horn in Asian markets is driving a rhino poaching crisis in Africa. This study examined rhino horn demand using the theory of planned behaviour and the theory of interpersonal behaviour. We conducted a survey of 427 individuals in Hanoi, Vietnam, including 281 rhino horn users and 146 non-users. We empirically tested all constructs of the two theories predicting intention to [...]
Human social organization during the Late Pleistocene: Beyond the nomadic-egalitarian model
Published: 2021-03-13
Subjects: Anthropology, Archaeological Anthropology, Behavior and Ethology, Biological and Physical Anthropology, Biological Psychology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Many researchers assume that until 10-12,000 years ago, humans lived in small, mobile, relatively egalitarian bands composed mostly of kin. This “nomadic-egalitarian model” informs evolutionary explanations of behavior and our understanding of how contemporary societies differ from those of our evolutionary past. Here, we synthesize research challenging this model and propose an alternative, the [...]
Pathways linking biodiversity to human health: A conceptual framework
Published: 2020-09-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Public Health, Epidemiology, Geography, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Nature and Society Relations, Other Psychology, Psychology, Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Biodiversity is a cornerstone of human health and well-being. However, while evidence of the contributions of nature to human health is rapidly building, research into how biodiversity relates to human health remains limited in important respects. In particular, a better mechanistic understanding of the range of pathways through which biodiversity can influence human health is needed. These [...]
Time is money. Waiting costs explain why selection favors steeper time discounting in deprived environments.
Published: 2019-12-04
Subjects: Other Psychology, Other Social and Behavioral Sciences, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Individuals exposed to deprivation tend to show a characteristic behavioural syndrome suggestive of a short time horizon. This pattern has traditionally been attributed to the intrinsically higher unpredictability of deprived environments, which renders waiting for long term rewards more risky (i.e. collection risks are high). In the current paper, based on a simple dynamic life history model, we [...]
The Evolutionary Psychology of Scientific Publishing: Cost-Benefit Optimization of Players in the Game
Published: 2019-07-10
Subjects: Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Peer reviewed scientific publishing is critical for communicating important findings, interpretations and theories in any branch of science. While the value of peer review is rarely doubted, much concern is being raised about the possible biases in the process. I argue here that most of the biases originate in the evolved innate tendency of every player to optimize one’s own cost benefits. [...]