Women wearing makeup are perceived by others as more attractive, competent, dominant, and more socially prestigious. Individuals differ in how much and how frequently they use makeup. Some studies ...show that women with lower self-esteem use more makeup, probably to hide imperfections. However, women with higher self-esteem can also use makeup to attract attention. This study verified whether social and general self-esteem and body image are associated with makeup usage in Brazilian women. We collected data from 1,483 women (Mage = 31.08; SD = 11.15) about body image (appearance orientation and appearance evaluation), social self-esteem, general self-esteem, and makeup usage (frequency of makeup usage, time spent applying makeup per day, and money spent on makeup per month). Appearance orientation positively predicted frequency of makeup usage, time spent applying makeup, and money spent on makeup, whereas appearance evaluation inversely predicted money spent on makeup per month. Social self-esteem and general self-esteem also positively predicted money spent on makeup, but in different directions. The results suggest that the significance given to appearance and social interactions are importantly associated with makeup usage in women.
Despite significant progress, there is still a gender gap in science all over the world, especially at senior levels. Some progressive countries are recognizing the need to address barriers to gender ...equality in order to retain their best scientists and innovators, and ensure research excellence and social and economic returns on the investment made by taxpayers each year on training women scientists. We investigated the gender distribution of: (i) the productivity scholarship (PS) holders of the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, CNPq,
= 13,625), (ii) the members of the Brazilian Academy of Science (Academia Brasileira de Ciências, ABC,
= 899), and (iii) the amount of funding awarded for top quality research ("Universal" Call of CNPq,
= 3,836), between the years of 2013 and 2014. Our findings show evidence for gender imbalances in all the studied indicators of Brazilian science. We found that female scientists were more often represented among PS holders at the lower levels of the research ranking system (2). By contrast, male scientists were more often found at higher levels (1A and 1B) of PS holders, indicating the top scientific achievement, both in "Engineering, Exact Sciences, Earth Sciences", and "Life Sciences". This imbalance was not found in Humanities and Social Sciences. Only 14% of the ABC members were women. Humanities and Applied Social Sciences had a relatively low representation of women in the Academy (3.7%) compared to Engineering, Exact and Earth Sciences: 54.9% and Life Sciences: 41.4%. Finally, female scientists obtained significantly more funding at the lower level of the research ranking system (2), whereas male scientists obtained significantly more funding at the higher levels (1A and 1B). Our results show strong evidence of a gender imbalance in Brazilian science. We hope that our findings will be used to stimulate reforms that will result in greater equality in Brazilian science, and elsewhere.
The present study investigates the twinning rates in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, during the years 2003-2014. The data were drawn from the Brazilian Health Department database of Sistema de ...Informações de Nascidos Vivos de São Paulo-SINASC (Live Births Information System of São Paulo). In general, more information is available on the incidence of twinning in developed countries than in developing ones. A total of 24,589 twin deliveries and 736 multiple deliveries were registered in 140 hospitals of São Paulo out of a total of 2,056,016 deliveries during the studied time period. The overall average rates of singleton, twin, and multiple births per 1,000 maternities (‰) were 987.43, 11.96 (dizygotic (DZ) rate was 7.15 and monozygotic (MZ) 4.42), and 0.36, respectively. We further regressed maternal age and historical time period on percentage of singleton, twin, and multiple birth rates. Our results indicated that maternal age strongly positively predicted twin and multiple birth rates, and negatively predicted singleton birth rates. The historical time period also positively, although weakly, predicted twin birth rates, and had no effect on singleton or multiple birth rates. Further, after applying Weinberg's differential method, we computed regressions separately for the estimated frequencies of DZ and MZ twin rates. DZ twinning was strongly positively predicted by maternal age and, to a smaller degree, by time period, while MZ twinning increased marginally only with higher maternal age. Factors such as increasing body mass index or air pollution can lead to the slight historical increase in DZ twinning rates. Importantly, consistent with previous cross-cultural and historical research, our results support the existence of an age-dependent physiological mechanism that leads to a strong increase in twinning and multiple births, but not singleton births, among mothers of higher age categories. From the ultimate perspective, twinning and multiple births in later age can lead to higher individual reproductive success near the end of the reproductive career of the mother.
Concerns about the veracity of psychological research have been growing. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, ...or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution to these and other current methodological challenges. The Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) is a distributed network of laboratories designed to enable and support crowdsourced research projects. These projects can focus on novel research questions or replicate prior research in large, diverse samples. The PSA’s mission is to accelerate the accumulation of reliable and generalizable evidence in psychological science. Here, we describe the background, structure, principles, procedures, benefits, and challenges of the PSA. In contrast to other crowdsourced research networks, the PSA is ongoing (as opposed to time limited), efficient (in that structures and principles are reused for different projects), decentralized, diverse (in both subjects and researchers), and inclusive (of proposals, contributions, and other relevant input from anyone inside or outside the network). The PSA and other approaches to crowdsourced psychological science will advance understanding of mental processes and behaviors by enabling rigorous research and systematic examination of its generalizability.
Love is a phenomenon that occurs across the world and affects many aspects of human life, including the choice of, and process of bonding with, a romantic partner. Thus, developing a reliable and ...valid measure of love experiences is crucial. One of the most popular tools to quantify love is Sternberg’s 45-item Triangular Love Scale (TLS-45), which measures three love components: intimacy, passion, and commitment. However, our literature review reveals that most studies (64%) use a broad variety of shortened versions of the TLS-45. Here, aiming to achieve scientific consensus and improve the reliability, comparability, and generalizability of results across studies, we developed a short version of the scale—the TLS-15—comprised of 15 items with 5-point, rather than 9-point, response scales. In Study 1 (
N
= 7,332), we re-analyzed secondary data from a large-scale multinational study that validated the original TLS-45 to establish whether the scale could be truncated. In Study 2 (
N
= 307), we provided evidence for the three-factor structure of the TLS-15 and its reliability. Study 3 (
N
= 413) confirmed convergent validity and test–retest stability of the TLS-15. Study 4 (
N
= 60,311) presented a large-scale validation across 37 linguistic versions of the TLS-15 on a cross-cultural sample spanning every continent of the globe. The overall results provide support for the reliability, validity, and cross-cultural invariance of the TLS-15, which can be used as a measure of love components—either separately or jointly as a three-factor measure.
In the html version of this article the affiliation details for Marco Antonio Correa Varella were incorrectly given as ‘eduLab21, Ayrton Senna Institute, São Paulo, 05423-040, Brazil’, but should ...have been ‘Department of Experimental Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, 05508-030, Brazil’. This has now been corrected in the HTML version of the Article. The PDF version of the Article was correct at the time of publication.