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1. Sustaining the potential for cooperation as female competitive strategy

   https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2021.0440  

   Cassar, Alessandra; Rigdon, Mary (January 2023, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences)

   The lower female competitiveness often found in economic experiments presents a puzzle. If accumulating wealth and reaching high status affords women essential benefits for themselves and their children, why do women appear less competitive? By looking at behavioural strategies from a cooperative breeding perspective, we propose that women may have evolved an adaptation to strategically suppress competitiveness to elicit cooperation for the benefit of raising offspring. To support this idea, we review the literature that shows that women's behaviour is, in general, more reactive than men's to the social conditions of the different games. In particular, we focus on our experimental work where we show that women are not less competitive than men once the games evoke a parenting frame (by substituting cash with rewards that could benefit the participants' offspring), a gender-typical one (by using vouchers for prizes acceptable as domain of female interests), or include a prosocial option (by allowing winners to share some of the gains with losers). We conclude that, for women, nurturing the potential for cooperation intertwines with competitiveness to produce a complex, adaptive female social strategy. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Cooperation among women: evolutionary and cross-cultural perspectives’. 

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2. Personal and perceived partner orgasm pursuit: A daily diary study about the gendered orgasm gap

   https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075251316579  

   Wolfer, Carly; Carmichael, Cheryl_L (February 2025, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships)

   Interdependence theory reveals the robust influence romantic partners have on each other’s outcomes. However, research on “the orgasm gap”—that men orgasm significantly more often than women in partnered (hetero) sex—relies largely on women-only samples and ignores gendered interpersonal influences. We apply interdependence theory and investigate how gendered interpersonal orgasm goal pursuit (OGP) underlies orgasm inequity in relationships. With a 21-day diary study of heterosexually partnered individuals (N= 127, 18–40 yrs), we tested a novel experience sampling assessment of interdependent OGP that measures event-level personal OGP, partner OGP, and perceived partner OGP. Results from multi-level models on 566 sex events revealed that men were 15x more likely to orgasm, and were more satisfied, than women. Men reported higher personal and perceived partner OGP, and lower partner OGP than women during sex. Higher levels of personal and perceived partner OGP during sex were associated with greater orgasm likelihood and satisfaction. Moreover, perceived partner OGP moderated the link between personal OGP and satisfaction, such that personal OGP was associated with greater satisfaction at high, but not low, levels of perceived partner OGP. Personal OGP is thus unlikely to yield satisfying orgasms and sex without (perceived) collaboration from a partner. This research exposes an orgasm pursuit gap, in favor of men’s orgasm, that contributes to inequity in partnered sex between men and women. We discuss how sexual pleasure equity requires symmetric pursuit of orgasm goals and interdependent strategies, rather than dwelling on women’s individual level barriers to orgasm. 

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3. Unavoidable structures in infinite tournaments

   https://doi.org/10.1090/proc/16940  

   Benford, Alistair; DeBiasio, Louis; Larson, Paul (October 2024, Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society)

   We prove a strong dichotomy result for countably-infinite oriented graphs; that is, we prove that for all countably-infinite oriented graphs $G$, either (i) there is a countably-infinite tournament $K$such that $G⊈K$, or (ii) every countably-infinite tournament contains aspanningcopy of $G$. Furthermore, we are able to give a concise characterization of such oriented graphs. Our characterization becomes even simpler in the case of transitive acyclic oriented graphs (i.e. strict partial orders). For uncountable oriented graphs, we are able to extend the dichotomy result mentioned above to all regular cardinals $\mathrm{\kappa <\#comment/>}$; however, we are only able to provide a concise characterization in the case when $\mathrm{\kappa <\#comment/>}={\mathrm{\aleph <\#comment/>}}_1$. 

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4. Hydration in relation to water insecurity, heat index, and lactation status in two small‐scale populations in hot‐humid and hot‐arid environments

   https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.23447  

   Bethancourt, Hilary J.; Swanson, Zane S.; Nzunza, Rosemary; Huanca, Tomas; Conde, Esther; Kenney, W. Larry; Young, Sera L.; Ndiema, Emmanuel; Braun, David; Pontzer, Herman; et al (June 2020, American Journal of Human Biology)

   Abstract ObjectivesThis study compared the prevalence of concentrated urine (urine specific gravity ≥1.021), an indicator of hypohydration, across Tsimane' hunter‐forager‐horticulturalists living in hot‐humid lowland Bolivia and Daasanach agropastoralists living in hot‐arid Northern Kenya. It tested the hypotheses that household water and food insecurity would be associated with higher odds of hypohydration. MethodsThis study collected spot urine samples and corresponding weather data along with data on household water and food insecurity, demographics, and health characteristics among 266 Tsimane' households (N = 224 men, 235 women, 219 children) and 136 Daasanach households (N = 107 men, 120 women, 102 children). ResultsThe prevalence of hypohydration among Tsimane' men (50.0%) and women (54.0%) was substantially higher (P < .001) than for Daasanach men (15.9%) and women (17.5%); the prevalence of hypohydration among Tsimane' (37.0%) and Daasanach (31.4%) children was not significantly different (P= .33). Multiple logistic regression models suggested positive but not statistically significant trends between household water insecurity and odds of hypohydration within populations, yet some significant joint effects of water and food insecurity were observed. Heat index (2°C) was associated with a 23% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.09‐1.40,P= .001), 34% (95% CI: 1.18‐1.53,P < .0005), and 23% (95% CI: 1.04‐1.44,P= .01) higher odds of hypohydration among Tsimane' men, women, and children, respectively, and a 48% (95% CI: 1.02‐2.15,P= .04) increase in the odds among Daasanach women. Lactation status was also associated with hypohydration among Tsimane' women (odds ratio = 3.35, 95% CI: 1.62‐6.95,P= .001). ConclusionThese results suggest that heat stress and reproductive status may have a greater impact on hydration status than water insecurity across diverse ecological contexts. 

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5. Pitfalls of Embodiment in Human-Agent Experiment Design

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3652988.3673958  

   Hale, James; Schweitzer, Lindsey; Gratch, Jonathan (September 2024, ACM)

   The intelligent virtual agent community often works from the assumption that embodiment confers clear benefits to human-machine interaction. However, embodiment has potential drawbacks in highlighting the salience of social stereotypes such as those around race and gender. Indeed, theories of computer-mediated communication highlight that visual anonymity can sometimes enhance team outcomes. Negotiation is one domain where social perceptions can impact outcomes. For example, research suggests women perform worse in negotiations and find them more aversive, particularly when interacting with men opponents. Research with human participants makes it challenging to unpack whether these negative consequences stem from women’s perceptions of their partner or greater toughness on the part of these men opponents. We use a socially intelligent AI negotiation agent to begin to unpack these processes. We manipulate the perceived toughness of the AI by whether or not it expresses anger — a common tactic to extract concessions. Independently, we manipulate the activation of stereotypes by randomly setting whether the interaction has embodiment (as a male opponent) or has only text (where we obscure gender cues). We find a clear interaction between gender and embodiment. Specifically, women perform worse, and men perform better against an apparently male opponent compared to a disembodied agent – as measured by the subjective value they assign to their outcome. This highlights the potential disadvantages of embodiment in negotiation, though future research must rule out alternative mechanisms that might explain these results. 

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