Household Fire Protection Practices in Relation to Socio-demographic Characteristics: Evidence from a Swedish National Survey

The sociodemographic inequalities in the ownership of residential fire safety equipment, fire prevention practices and fire protection knowledge was studied using an inductive and data-driven approach based on the responses to a national Swedish survey containing individual-level data on several dimensions of home fire safety practices (n = 7507). Cluster analysis was used to summarise home fire safety data and sociodemographic characteristics of the sample were then regressed on the data ordinal regression analysis. The results showed significant correlations between the level of fire protection and a range of factors (sex, age, family composition, income, housing type and country of birth), suggesting a positive effect of socioeconomic success. Further, the results imply that having experienced a residential fire has a positive impact on future fire protection practices, and that higher levels of fire protection interest increases the probability of having a functional smoke detector.

Why Do Adults Decide to Learn a Minority Language? A Study of the Motivation(S) of Potential New Speakers of West Frisian

Summary This study focuses on the motivation of adults learning a minority language, based on a tripartite model: integrative and instrumental (Gardner & Lambert, 1959; 1972) and personal (see Benson, 1991) motivation. Adults learning a minority language are potential new speakers, a group that has been described as central to language revitalisation (see Pujolar & O’Rourke, 2018). Since the motivation to learn these languages does not seem to be linked to economic success or wider job opportunities, researchers have taken interest in knowing what drives people to learn a minority language (e.g., O’Rourke & DePalma, 2016). In this study, (potential) new speaker motivations were investigated by means of ten open-ended interviews with adult learners of West Frisian—a minority language spoken in the Netherlands—in two different settings: Afûk Frisian courses (a more traditional learning setting) and Bernlef Frisian courses (a student association that offers informal courses for their members). The results show a predominance of integrative and personal motivation (also found in O’Rourke & DePalma, 2016), but not exclusively (as suggested by Jaffe, 2015) since the language appears to be tightly linked to the province and it is deemed beneficial—to a certain extent—for socioeconomic success in the province.

Evidence that prenatal testosterone transfer from male twins reduces the fertility and socioeconomic success of their female co-twins

During sensitive periods in utero, gonadal steroids help organize biological sex differences in humans and other mammals. In litter-bearing species, chromosomal females passively exposed to prenatal testosterone from male littermates exhibit altered physical and behavioral traits as adults. The consequences of such effects are less well understood in humans, but recent near-doubling of twinning rates in many countries since 1980, secondary to advanced maternal age and increased reliance on in vitro fertilization, means that an increasing subset of females in many populations may be exposed to prenatal testosterone from their male co-twin. Here we use data on all births in Norway (n= 728,842, including 13,800 twins) between 1967 and 1978 to show that females exposed in utero to a male co-twin have a decreased probability of graduating from high school (15.2%), completing college (3.9%), and being married (11.7%), and have lower fertility (5.8%) and life-cycle earnings (8.6%). These relationships remain unchanged among the subsets of 583 and 239 females whose male co-twin died during the first postnatal year and first 28 days of life, respectively, supporting the interpretation that they are due primarily to prenatal exposure rather than to postnatal socialization effects of being raised with a male sibling. Our findings provide empirical evidence, using objectively measured nation-level data, that human females exposed prenatally to a male co-twin experience long-term changes in marriage, fertility, and human capital. These findings support the hypothesis of in utero testosterone transfer between twins, which is likely affecting a small but growing subset of females worldwide.

Vocal Attractiveness

This chapter reviews studies on voice attractiveness from evolutionary, social, and cognitive neuroscience perspectives. Taking this interdisciplinary approach, it explores what makes a voice attractive, and why it matters. Focusing largely on men and women’s preferences for sex-typical sexually dimorphic features in the voice (vocal masculinity and femininity), the chapter discusses the evolutionary underpinnings of fundamental and formant frequencies as vocal indicators of quality. It reviews the many ways in which social, physiological, and neurocognitive mechanisms can combine to influence what we perceive as attractive, from selection on perceivers to choose high-quality mates and cooperative affiliates, to the influence of social context and perceptual biases. For example, fluency of processing and mere exposure effects may drive preferences for average voices. Other topics of discussion include voice modulation, cross-modality in voice and face attractiveness, cross-cultural and individual variation in voice preferences, and the implications of voice attractiveness on reproductive and socioeconomic success.