Activation of the Behavioral Immune System: Putting the Brakes on Affiliation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Evolutionary psychologists propose that humans evolved a first line of defense against pathogens: the behavioral immune system (BIS). The BIS is thought to be functionally flexible such that the likelihood and magnitude of BIS activation depends on the individual's perceived vulnerability to disease (PVD). Because conspecifics are sources of infection, the BIS has implications for affiliation. By priming and measuring chronic levels of PVD, we examined PVD's relation to affiliation in zero-acquaintance situations in the laboratory, online, and during speed-dating events. Elevated BIS activation was associated with decreased attraction and affiliative behavior in situations that varied in the trade-off between social reward and potential risk of infection. These results were not due to attachment style, personality traits, or disgust sensitivity. This suggests that in social interactions, approach motivation associated with the need to belong may be weighed against avoidance motivation associated with the need to protect the self from disease.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".