Musical aptitude and ability to handle emotions are hypothesized to be important predictors of creative work. The associations between musical aptitude, alexithymia, and having a creative occupation were assessed with linear multiple regression for men and women separately. Participants in the Swedish Twin Registry participated in an online survey, including musical tests for rhythm, pitch and melody discrimination, an IQ test and a test for alexithymia (inability to handle emotions). They also provided a job description, which was coded according to the O*NET system. The level of creativity for each occupation was defined by the O*NET mean rating of “thinking creatively.” Musicians (n = 43) were excluded. For men (n = 1,327), pitch predicted having creative work. This independent contribution was significant when controlling for age, education, and intelligence although the magnitude of the association decreased when the intelligence score was included. For women (n = 1,908), alexithymia and rhythm predicted having creative work, controlling for age and education. With intelligence score, the independent contribution of rhythm score became nonsignificant while the contribution of alexithymia remained significant. For men, a high pitch score is associated with having creative work, regardless of education and general intelligence. For women ability to handle emotions is associated with creative work. Since subjects working professionally as musicians were excluded from the analyses the associations are not confined to musical creativity but seem to have a more general nature, suggesting that musical aptitude taps into domain-general factors of importance for real life creative engagement.

The field of gender studies has faced criticism for poor scholarship and methodology, both from within and outside academia. Here, we compare indicators of scientific quality across three samples of peer-reviewed journal articles with more, less and no gender perspective, on the assumption that gender studies tend to apply a gender perspective. The statements in the articles were content-analysed with respect to subject matter, their level of support in surrounding text, and other indicators of scientific quality. The higher the level of gender perspective, the lower was the scientific quality for seven out of nine indicators. Support was higher for the no gender perspective group, but did not differ across the two higher levels. We suggest that the impact of the field can be increased by implementing established research methods employed in other disciplines, especially in terms of bringing about desired social and societal change.

One of the techniques used to induce trance state in shamanic ceremonies is monotonous drumming. According to previous EEG research, certain patterns of drumming cause an increase in power of alpha and theta frequencies of the listener. Present study aimed to determine, if suggestion to experience trance state could increase the relative alpha and theta amplitude and the intensity of experienced state. A group of twenty-four subjects participated in the study. Suggestion to experience trance state decreased alpha frequency power during the drumming condition. No other significant effects of suggestion or drumming were found.

Frost and Harpending, Evolutionary Psychology, 13 (2015), have argued that the increasing use of capital punishment across the Middle Ages in Europe altered the genotype, helping to create a less violent and generally more law-abiding population. Developing this insight, we hypothesise that the same system of violent punishments would also have helped to genotypically create a more religious society by indirectly selecting for religiousness, through the execution of men who had not yet sired any offspring. We estimate the selection differential for religiousness based on genetic correlation data for conceivably related traits, and compare that to the actual increase in religiosity across the Middle Ages. We further explore other mechanisms by which religiousness was being selected for in Medieval England, and conclude that executions most likely contributed substantially to the increase in religiosity, but that other selection pressures also played a role.

Music is a human universal, which suggests a biological adaptation. Several evolutionary explanations have been proposed, covering the entire spectrum of natural, sexual, and group selection. Here we consider the hypothesis that musical behaviour constitutes a reliable or even costly signal of fitness, and thus may have evolved as a human trait through sexual selection. We experimentally tested how musical performance quality (MPQ), in improvisations on the drums, saxophone, and violin, affects mate values and mate preferences perceived by a prospective partner. Swedish student participants (27 of each sex) saw a face of a person of the opposite sex and heard a piece of improvised music being played. The music occurred in three levels of MPQ and the faces in three levels of facial attractiveness (FA). For each parametric combination of MPG and FA, the participants rated four mate value scales (intelligence, health, social status, and parenting skill) and four mate preference scales (date, intercourse, and short- and long term relationship). Consistent with sexual selection theory, mate value ratings were generally increased by MPQ for raters of both sexes. Consistent with more specific hypotheses that follow from combining sexual selection and parental investment theory, women’s but not men’s preference for a long-term, but not short-term, relationship was significantly increased by MPQ, MPQ generally affected women’s ratings more than men’s, FA generally affected men’s ratings more than women’s, and women’s ratings of intelligence were even more influenced by MPQ than by FA.

There are national differences in scientific activity that are not well accounted for by economic and intellectual factors alone. We examine the novel hypothesis that androgen levels may also play a role. Androgens are often referred to as male hormones, but are present in both men and women, and have been linked to performance in other domains, such as sports and entrepreneurship. National‐level empirical data on scientific productivity, in terms of numbers of publications, and science Nobel laureates were compared to seven national‐level androgen indicators; namely androgenic body hair, the length of the CAG repeat on the androgen receptor gene, prostate cancer incidence, male and female 2D:4D finger ratio, and sex frequency and number of partners. The majority of these indicators were associated in the expected direction with per capita number of scientific publications and Nobel prizes. Moreover, several indicators significantly interacted with national‐level estimates of intelligence, such that androgen levels are related to measures of the scientific achievement only when the level of intelligence is relatively high. These findings may partly explain the global distribution of scientific productivity, achievements, and Nobel prizes.

Background: Psychotherapeutic treatment for the subgroup of patients with MI that also suffer from comorbid symptoms of anxiety and/or depression (MI-ANXDEP) is part of cardiac rehabilitation (CR). Adherence to a range of treatments and lifestyle advice is crucial for risk reduction in these patients. Understanding the relative importance of predictors of adherence to internet-delivered cognitive behaviour therapy (ICBT) for MI-ANXDEP could improve their targeted care.

Purpose: We estimated the relative importance of a range of established and novel predictors of adherence to ICBT for MI-ANXDEP patients.

Method: The study sample consisted of 90 MI-ANXDEP patients (58.4 years, 62% men) recruited from 25 hospitals in Sweden who were randomised to active treatment in the ICBT trial U-CARE Heart. Time-point of prediction was at completion of the first homework assignment (HWA), and adherence was gauged at the end of treatment (48% adherers). Adherence was defined as completing at least the first two HWAs within the 14-week treatment period. A supervised machine learning (ML) procedure, applying 3x10 cross-validated recursive feature elimination with a random forest model as internal classifier, estimated the relative importance of predictors for adherence from a range of patient demographic, clinical, and linguistic variables that were available at completion of the first HWA.

Result: Out of 34 potential predictors, ML selected an optimal set of 19 predictors (Accuracy 0.64, 95% CI 0.61–0.68). The strongest predictors for being classified as adherent were in order of relative importance (1) higher self-rated cardiac fear (CAQ fear), (2) female sex, (3) more words used by the patient to answer the first homework assignment (Number of words), (4) higher self-rated general cardiac anxiety (CAQ total), and (5) a higher rate of words used by the patient that were identical with words prompted by the first homework assignment (Number of mutual words), as depicted in the figure.

Conclusion(s): It is of clinical importance to understand poor adherence to ICBT treatment in the high risk MI-ANXDEP subpopulation. Higher cardiac anxiety and female sex were the strongest predictors for adherence. A novel finding was that linguistic variables were important for predicting adherence, particularly the number of words used may signify the degree of personal investment and motivation for treatment, and the number of mutual words used may be a proxy for therapeutic alliance within the treatment. Education had no predictive value. Future research should investigate potential causal mechanisms, and whether these findings replicate outside of Sweden, in larger samples, and for similar eHealth treatments.

Background: Low adherence to recommended treatments is a multifactorial problem for patients in rehabilitation after myocardial infarction (MI). In a nationwide trial of internet-delivered cognitive behavior therapy (iCBT) for the high-risk subgroup of patients with MI also reporting symptoms of anxiety, depression, or both (MI-ANXDEP), adherence was low. Since low adherence to psychotherapy leads to a waste of therapeutic resources and risky treatment abortion in MI-ANXDEP patients, identifying early predictors for adherence is potentially valuable for effective targeted care. Objectives: The goal of the research was to use supervised machine learning to investigate both established and novel predictors for iCBT adherence in MI-ANXDEP patients. Methods: Data were from 90 MI-ANXDEP patients recruited from 25 hospitals in Sweden and randomized to treatment in the iCBT trial Uppsala University Psychosocial Care Programme (U-CARE) Heart study. Time point of prediction was at completion of the first homework assignment. Adherence was defined as having completed more than 2 homework assignments within the 14-week treatment period. A supervised machine learning procedure was applied to identify the most potent predictors for adherence available at the first treatment session from a range of demographic, clinical, psychometric, and linguistic predictors. The internal binary classifier was a random forest model within a 3x10-fold cross-validated recursive feature elimination (RFE) resampling which selected the final predictor subset that best differentiated adherers versus nonadherers. Results: Patient mean age was 58.4 years (SD 9.4), 62% (56/90) were men, and 48% (43/90) were adherent. Out of the 34 potential predictors for adherence, RFE selected an optimal subset of 56% (19/34; Accuracy 0.64, 95% CI 0.61-0.68, P<.001). The strongest predictors for adherence were, in order of importance, (1) self-assessed cardiac-related fear, (2) sex, and (3) the number of words the patient used to answer the first homework assignment. Conclusions: For developing and testing effective iCBT interventions, investigating factors that predict adherence is important. Adherence to iCBT for MI-ANXDEP patients in the U-CARE Heart trial was best predicted by cardiac-related fear and sex, consistent with previous research, but also by novel linguistic predictors from written patient behavior which conceivably indicate verbal ability or therapeutic alliance. Future research should investigate potential causal mechanisms and seek to determine what underlying constructs the linguistic predictors tap into. Whether these findings replicate for other interventions outside of Sweden, in larger samples, and for patients with other conditions who are offered iCBT should also be investigated.