Does being a parent make you more socially conservative?

The most interesting articles that came to our attention this week

Disentangling the Effects of Human Development and Gender Egalitarianism on the Gender/Sex Gap in the Five-Factor Model of Personality Traits across Countries. Arij Yehya and colleagues seek to disentangle the effects of human development and gender egalitarianism on sex differences in personality traits across countries. They find that of the two factors, human development is the more important one.

Wedded to Prosperity? Informal Influence and Regional Favoritism. Pietro Bomprezzi and colleagues examine whether leaders exhibit more favouritism to regions of their country where their spouse was born. Using data for 1990–2020, they find that such regions receive substantially more development aid and that development outcomes worsen, rather than improve, as a consequence.

Ideological differences in the expanse of the moral circle. Adam Waytz and colleagues examine differences in the size of the moral circle between liberals and conservatives. Across seven studies, they find that liberals have a wider moral circle than conservatives. They express greater moral concern toward friends relative to family, to the world relative to the nation, and to non-humans relative to humans.

Heatmaps showing differences in the size of the moral circle between liberals and conservatives. (See original caption for descriptions of each number.)