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By conveying cues of their current fertility, females can provide valuable reproductive information to conspecifics. Our closest relatives, non-human primates, employ diverse strategies, including olfactory cues from the anogenital region, to communicate information about female fertility. While their shared phylogeny with humans suggests that analogous olfactory cues may have been preserved in modern women, empirical evidence is lacking. In a comprehensive two-fold approach, we investigated fertility-related shifts in the chemical composition of women’s vulvar volatiles as well as men’s ability to perceive them. We collected vulvar odour from 28 naturally cycling women (students, academic staff members, and citizen of G¨ ottingen) on up to ten days of their menstrual cycle, focusing on fertile days. For 146 vulvar samples (subsample of n =16 women), we assessed whether their volatile profiles varied in relation to female fertility using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. Simulating a first encounter, 139 men evaluated a total of 274 vulvar odour samples from 28 women, collected on different cycle days. We used hormonal analyses to confirm women’s fertile days. We assessed variation in chemical composition and male odour ratings in relation to women’s conception probability, temporal distance to ovulation, and ovarian hormone levels. We found no evidence for chemical changes allowing tracking of fertility across the cycle. However, in the immediate assessment (i.e., without tracking), no significant effects were found for any predictors except conception risk. Notably, the significance of the conception risk effect varied depending on the model specification. Further, men’s attraction to vulvar odour was not significantly predicted by female fertility. Overall, our data suggests a relatively low retention of chemical fertility cues in vulvar odour of modern women.

Understanding the interplay of persons, situations, and behavior (the Personality Triad) is a key task of psychology. However, previous research has largely focused on Western samples. We examined the Personality Triad across cultures with N = 15,221 participants from 61 countries and one geographic region. Participants reported on one situation from their daily lives. We examined (1) situation characteristic–behavioral state, (2) trait–behavioral state, and (3) trait–situation characteristic associations, as well as (4) trait × situation characteristic interactions predicting behavioral states. We focused on six traits (Big Five, Honesty-Humility), seven situation characteristics (Duty, Intellect, Adversity, Mating, pOsitivity, Negativity, Sociality), and three self-reported behavioral states (Agency, Enthusiasm, Self-Negativity). Importantly, we included 15 country-level variables (collectivism, self-construal, cultural value orientations, tightness, independent and interdependent happiness, national socioeconomic status) as moderators that might contribute to country differences in the Personality Triad. Bayesian multilevel models showed sizable and expected situation characteristic–behavioral state and trait–behavioral state associations with a high degree of generalization across countries, some cultural differences, and moderator effects contradicting theoretical expectations. For instance, we found weaker situation characteristic effects in collectivistic cultures and stronger trait effects in embedded cultures. Trait–situation characteristic associations were meaningful but smaller, and trait × situation characteristic interactions were small and less often significant (although we observed some expected interactions). We found little evidence for country differences in the latter two relations. We discuss implications and future directions for cross-cultural work on the Personality Triad, including replications and extensions using intensive-longitudinal designs.

This study aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Revised Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI-R) in a Ukrainian sample. A sample of 469 adults aged 18–60 years (M = 27.8, SD = 8.9, 20% males) completed Q&A form on sociodemographic data, Ukrainian translation of the SOI-R, measures of personality organization, and meanings of sexual behavior. A three-factor original model with correlated latent variables showed a good fit to the Ukrainian data: χ2 = 60.7, p < 0.001, χ2/df=2.5, NFI=0.962, CFI=0.976, TLI=0.964, GFI=0.970, SRMR=0.059, RMSEA=0.06. Cronbach’s α for internal consistency was high (0.77–0.86 for total score and subscales). Convergent validity was established by significant positive correlations of SOI-R subscales with personality diffuseness and meanings of sexual behavior related to satisfaction of personal needs. In line with prior research, this study revealed that unrestricted sociosexuality was more characteristic of men, younger individuals, singles, and those with lower levels of formal education. The results suggest that the Ukrainian version of the SOI-R scale is a reliable and valid measure of sociosexual orientation, accurately measuring the diversity of this important aspect of human sexual behavior.

Real-life social interactions often unfold continuously and involve dynamic cooperation and competition, yet most studies rely on discrete games that do not capture the adaptive and graded nature of continuous sensorimotor decisions. To address this gap, we developed the Cooperation-Competition Foraging game—an ecologically grounded paradigm in which pairs of participants (dyads) navigate a continuous shared space under face-to-face visibility, deciding in real-time to collect rewarded targets either individually or jointly. Dyads (n = 58, 116 participants) spontaneously converged on distinct stable strategies along the cooperation-competition spectrum, forming three groups: cooperative, intermediate, and competitive. Despite the behavioral complexity, our computational model, which incorporated travel path minimization, sensorimotor communication, and recent choice history, predicted dyadic decisions with 87% accuracy, and linked prediction certainty with ensuing dynamics of spatiotemporal coordination. Further modeling revealed how sensorimotor factors, such as movement speed and skill, shape distinct strategies and payoffs. Crucially, we quantify the cost of cooperation, demonstrating that in many dyads prosocial tendencies outweigh the individual bene ts of exploiting skill advantages. Our versatile framework provides a predictive, mechanistic account of how social and embodied drivers promote the emergence of dynamic cooperation and competition, and offers rigorous metrics for investigating the neural basis of naturalistic social interactions, and for linking personality traits to distinct strategies.

Although mental disorders are highly prevalent among older adults, evidence suggests that they underutilize psychotherapy. However, formal estimates of their actual representation in routine clinical settings are scarce. This study applied a representation quotient approach to identify and quantify age-related disparities in outpatient psychotherapy utilization in Germany.

Different women experience hormonal contraceptives differently, reporting side effects on their sexuality that range from negative to positive. But research on such causal effects of hormonal contraceptives on psychological outcomes struggles both to identify average causal effects and capture the high heterogeneity in women’s treatment responses. In this study, we leveraged longitudinal data to improve our ability to separate the causal effects of hormonal contraceptives from other sources of association, including observed and unobserved confounding, reverse causality, and attrition. In this programmatic registered report (programmatic registered stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/kj3h2; date of in-principle acceptance: 28/09/2023), we analyzed data from up to 5,041 women (23,130 observations), who participated in PAIRFAM, a German longitudinal panel dataset consisting of 14 waves, using Bayesian multilevel regressions. To deal with confounding and probe the robustness of findings, we implemented two analysis approaches: adjusted regression analysis and inverse probability of treatment weighting approach. We found evidence for positive average treatment effects of hormonal contraceptives on sexual frequency and sexual satisfaction, but no robust evidence for effects on desired sexual frequency. Furthermore, to move beyond average treatment effects, we analyzed heterogeneity in treatment responses. We found relatively high heterogeneity in individual treatment effects on sexual frequency and sexual satisfaction. Interindividual differences were not systematically related to individual treatment effects, and those treatment effects did not predict women’s decisions about which contraceptive method to use in the long run. Our results contribute to understanding the effects of hormonal contraceptives on sexuality in a naturalistic setting, where women adapt their choice of contraceptive method to their own experiences.

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When assessing text, supervised natural language processing (NLP) models have traditionally been used to measure targeted constructs in the organizational sciences. However, these models require significant resources to develop. Emerging “off-the-shelf” large language models (LLM) offer a way to evaluate organizational constructs without building customized models. However, it is unclear whether off-the-shelf LLMs accurately score organizational constructs and what evidence is necessary to infer validity. In this study, we compared the validity of supervised NLP models to off-the-shelf LLM models (ChatGPT-3.5 and ChatGPT-4). Across six organizational datasets and thousands of comments, we found that supervised NLP produced scores were more reliable than human coders. However, and even though not specifically developed for this purpose, we found that off-the-shelf LLMs produce similar psychometric properties as supervised models, though with slightly less favorable psychometric properties. We connect these findings to broader validation considerations and present a decision chart to guide researchers and practitioners on how they can use off-the-shelf LLM models to score targeted constructs, including guidance on how psychometric evidence can be “transported” to new contexts.

Social decision-making requires individuals to balance self-interest with mutual benefit, continuously adapting their behavior to the intentions and actions of others. While classical economic games have provided important insights into cooperation and competition, they typically rely on discrete, turn-based decisions that fail to capture the fluid and reciprocal nature of real-world social interactions. The present study used a novel transparent Dyadic Interaction Platform and a novel Cooperation–Competition Foraging task to examine how the interpersonal personality traits agency and communion shape dynamic, real-time social behavior. In this task, pairs of participants (dyads) jointly or individually collected targets with variable payoffs, allowing cooperative and competitive strategies to emerge naturally as both partners continuously observed eachother’s gaze, actions, and outcomes. Using a round-robin design, we assessed how interpersonal traits and partner-specific adaptations jointly predicted dyadic strategic outcomes. Within each session, dyads gradually converged toward stable interaction modes, with increasing cooperation across sessions. Higher mean communion within dyads predicted enhanced cooperation, indicating that shared affiliative tendencies promote jointly oriented behavior. Additionally, behavior in each session was significantly influenced by prior dyadic history, indicating experience-dependent adaptation. These findings demonstrate that continuous, transparent interaction paradigms reveal how stable personality traits and dynamic partner feedback jointly shape social strategies. By linking personality traits from the Interpersonal Circumplex to behavioral adaptations, this study contributes to bridging the gap between traditional game-theory approaches and ecologically valid models of real-world social decision-making.

Previous research has shown that attractiveness perceptions of male body parts and modalities correlate with each other. These findings support the one ornament hypothesis, according to which individual body parts and modalities have a common underlying latent cause and vicariously function as an indicator of genetic quality during mate choice. In contrast, the multiple messages hypothesis suggests that different body parts and modalities signal distinct and non-redundant information about mate quality. This preregistered study sought to replicate and extend findings on correlated perceptions of men's and women's facial, bodily, and vocal attractiveness, health, and physical dominance. Partial mediation by sex hormone levels (testosterone, estradiol) was analysed as purported mechanisms involved in the development of sexually dimorphic characteristics influencing perceptions. Facial photos, voice recordings, and 3D body scans of 165 men and 155 women were judged separately for attractiveness, health, and physical dominance by overall 400 raters. Results showed medium-sized positive correlations for faces and bodies for all three attributes, but only few significant associations of vocal with facial or bodily judgments. Correlated perceptions showed some variation by target sex. Thus, our results are more in line with the one ornament hypothesis for faces and bodies, and more with the multiple messages hypothesis for voices. No significant partial mediation by hormone levels aligning with hypotheses was found. Future studies should include further stimuli and examine additional hormonal variables to elucidate endocrine mechanisms.