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During a written test from the advanced course of evolutionary biology students will be asked to attribute the most suitable color to 22 terms, related to slow or fast life-history strategies: to consider, to schedule, to wait up, the future, don't take risks, cautiously, coolheaded, slowly, to postpone, save up, don't rush it, condom, immediately, promptly, the present, quickly, don't hesitate, to hurry up, to risk up, just now, in a flash, adventurer, risky game, unprotected sex – in Czech: rozvažovat, naplánovat, počkat si, budoucnost, neriskovat, opatrně, rozvážný, pomalu, odložit, spořit, neuspěchat, condom, ihned, okamžitě, přítomnost, rychle, nezaváhat, spěchat, risknout, právě nyní, bleskově, dobrodruh, riskantní hra, nechráněný sex. After that, they will sort the colors from the most to the least nice (in Czech: od té nejsympatičtější/nejkrásnější (nahoře) po tu nejméně sympatickou). The same test will run before and after the biology test and the approach to a particular term will be computed on the basis of niceness of color attributed to particular terms in two runs of the test by an individual student. Based on niceness attributed to slow or fast life history terms we will compute the affinity of particular students to the slow or fast strategy. In another part of the questionnaire, the students will respond to the questions about their physical and mental health (their responses will be used for computing indices of health as means of corresponding Z-scores from individual questions). We will ask the students also about their and their parents’ Rh factors and we will use their Rh phenotype and genotype (Rh negativity and heterozygosity with Rh-positive allele originating from the father) as predispositions to worse health. They will also respond to six questions on the tendency to delay gratification and six questions on the tendency to risk. They will also respond to the questions related to their sexual life which will be used for computing indices of sexual appetence and sexual activities. We will also ask them how much and when they want their children. We will test the following hypotheses: 1] Students expressing the signs of the fast life history strategy (e.g. lower investment to the prevention of medical problems, unhealthy lifestyle, lower reported life expectancy) will attribute nicer colors to the term related to the slower life strategy and less nice to the terms related to the slower life strategy. 2] Students reporting worse health will express signs of the faster life strategy – they will report higher sexual appetence and higher will to have their own children soon. 3] Students with genetic predispositions for worse health (Rh negativity and heterozygosity with Rh-positive allele originating from the father) will express signs of the faster life strategy – they will report higher sexual appetence and higher will to have their own children soon. 4] Students reporting worse health will express signs of the faster life strategy in the chromasociation test – they will attribute nicer colors to the terms related to the fast life history strategy. 5] Students with genetic predispositions for worse health (Rh negativity and heterozygosity with Rh-positive allele originating from the father) will express signs of the faster life strategy in the chromasociation test – they will attribute nicer colors to the terms related to the fast life history strategy. The principal method for testing the hypothesis will be partial Kendall correlation tests with sex and age controlled, a one-sided test will be used for testing one-sided hypotheses and the correction for multiple tests will be done with the Benjamini-Hochberg procedure with a false discovery rate preset to 0.2. The expected number of participants will be 130-160. The collection of data will be performed on May 9, 2022. When less than 40 male subjects will take part in the test, the study will be repeated in 2023. In the exploratory part of the study, we will test the effect of life-history strategy on various personality factors of students, including aggressiveness measured with Meili’s test and 9-items BDI-based questionnaire and political approaches measured with a 4-factors, 16-items inventory. We will also explore the effects of various factors (including life history strategy on the performance of students in the test, IQ, memory, and the information processing speed) on the performance of the students in the test from evolutionary biology (on the number of correct answers in the test). Also, we will test the performance of our new variant of the Maili’s selective memory test designed to measure the aggressiveness of students and their sexual sadism and masochism.

About 300 students of the Faculty of Science will fill a complex anonymous internet questionnaire containing about 200 questions and tasks, including several performance tests. In the second part of the questionnaire, they will be offered the following three versions of the ticking bomb scenario: 1) “You are part of the Counter-Terrorism Commission, legally immune from prosecution for acts within the scope of your profession. An atomic time bomb is planted in the center of Prague. If you could locate it, you would save over a million innocent people from certain death. You have captured a major terrorist who has the information you need to stop the time bomb. It's clear he won't give up the information willingly. Would you be willing to order a harsh interrogation method (= torture that can leave permanent damage or even lead to death) if you were absolutely 100% certain you would get the information?” 2) “The situation is the same as before, but you are only 10% sure of getting the information. Would you be willing to order an enhanced interrogation method (= torture that can leave permanent consequences or even lead to death)?" 3) “The situation is similar to the previous ones. Again, you are 100% sure to get the information. In this case, however, you have to torture the terrorist yourself. Will you torture?" The students should answer using the 6-items scale anchored with 0-definitively no and 6-definitively yes. After about 50 questions on health, infections, altruism, and fairness, the students will be asked to respond block of questions on their sexual life (containing e.g. SOI questionnaire). The block will contain also the following two questions: “Are you also sexually aroused by your own helplessness, humiliation, or pain?” “Are you also sexually aroused by someone else's helplessness, humiliation, or pain?” Again, the students should answer using a 6-items scale anchored with 0-definitively no and 6-definitively yes. We will test following hypotheses: 1) Subjects with BDSM preferences will score higher in the willingness to torture terrorist. 2) This correlation will be stronger in subjects who are more aroused by someone else's helplessness, humiliation or pain. 3) This correlation will be stronger for the third scenario In the exploratory part of the study, we will search for the factors that positively and negatively affect the responses of students in the ticking bomb scenario (IQ, memory, reaction times, health, altruism, fairness, etc.) We will analyze the data using a one-tailed partial Kendall test (age and sex controlled). In the post hoc tests, we will analyze data of men and women separately and will search for possible effects of potential confounding variables, such as current study performance, health, etc. The experiment will run on Jan. 3, 2022. The preregistered hypotheses are distinct and independent. Therefore, no correction for multiple tests will be done. Ethical note: The study will run during a written exam from evolutionary biology. This exam (4-choices test, 30 questions) will be a “zero term exam” – the students will be allowed to refuse the grade on the test and take part in three regular terms of the oral exam. In the informed consent, they will be informed that they can skip all questions of the questionnaire and just write the test from evolutionary biology.

Before a written exam (4-choices test, 30 questions) from Evolutionary biology, the subjects will be asked to complete an anonymous research questionnaire. The first part (32 questions or simple tasks) will be completed before the exam, the rest of the questionnaire (146 questions) immediately after the exam. Near the end of the first part of the questionnaire, one third of participants will be primed be recalling positive emotions, one third by recalling negative emotions and one third by neutral stimuli. Positive stimuli: 1) Think of 5 pleasant emotions (feelings) you have ever experienced. Try to rank them from (in your opinion) the most pleasant (1) to the relatively least pleasant (5). 2) Think of 5 pleasant emotions (feelings) you have ever experienced. Try to rank them in chronological order from the freshest (1) to the oldest (5) 3) Write the emotion you would most like to experience in the near future (this may be a different emotion than the previous ones). Negative stimuli: 1) Think of 5 unpleasant emotions (feelings) you have ever experienced. Try to rank them from (in your opinion) the most unpleasant (1) to the relatively least unpleasant (5). 2) Think of 5 unpleasant emotions (feelings) you have ever experienced. Try to rank them chronologically from the freshest (1) to the oldest (5). 3) Name the emotion you would least like to experience in the near future (it may be a different emotion than the previous ones). Neutral: 1) Write the five colors here, in the order, you can think of them. 2) Again, write the same five colors here. This time sort them by the number of letters and the same length words by alphabet. 3) Choose the color that you finished 3rd in order and list 5 objects of that color. Then, the probands should try to estimate 10 seconds and after that, they should rate their agreement with the following four statements by using 6-points Likert scale: 1) Now you feel physically great 2) Now you feel mentally great 3) Usually you feel physically great 4) Usually you feel mentally great. The last question of the first part of the questionnaire was “Estimate the number of mistakes you will make in the test (there will be 30 questions in total):” During this part of the test, probands will be asked to remember 12 words and after about 5 minutes to recall and write down these words. Also, their simple reaction tests will be measured 6 times (they will be requested to press one of 4 letters as quickly as possible. After finishing the test (exam), the subjects will be asked to complete the second part of the questionnaire, starting with the following questions: 1) Now you feel physically great 2) Now you feel mentally great 3) Usually you feel physically great 4) Usually you feel mentally great. They will be requested to tell us how many errors they have done in the test (they will be told this information immediately after the test) and how many errors they expected to have done immediately after the test (they will be asked to estimate this number before they will be told this). They will fill a panel of questions concerning their health, and self-rated their personality (TIPI) and abilities. They will also run three tests on memory, a simple reaction times test, Stroop’s test, and a 12-item IQ test. We will test the following hypotheses: 1) Priming by positive emotions will result in better performance in the exam. 2) Priming by positive emotions will result in the expectation of better performance in the exam. 3) Priming by positive emotions will result in more positive ratings of their usual mental health. 4) Priming by positive emotions will result in better performance in the performance tests. 5) Priming by positive emotions will result in overconfidence (primed subjects will rate their positive personality traits better). 6) Priming by negative emotions will result in underconfidence concerning their health (primed subjects will rate their health and life expectancy worse). In the exploratory part of the study, we will search for the factors that positively and negatively affect the performance of the students in the test (IQ, memory, reaction times, health, etc.) We will also search for the effect of health on the slow-fast life strategy of students. We will expect that subjects in worse health conditions will report an earlier start of sexual life, earlier menses, higher sexual desire, higher desire to have (more) children. We will also search for the effects of Covid-19, anti-Covid vaccines, toxoplasmosis, borreliosis, red hair, pale skin, Rh-negativity, and heigh-to-length of foot ratio to physical and mental health. About 300 subjects will participate in the test. We will analyze the data using a one-tailed partial Kendall test (age and sex controlled). In the post hoc tests, we will analyze data of men and women separately and will search for possible effects of potential confounding variables, such as current study performance, the intensity of liking pets, etc. The experiment will run on Jan. 3. 2022. The preregistered hypotheses are distinct and independent. Therefore, no correction for multiple tests will be done. Ethical note: The exam will be a “zero term exam” – the students will be allowed to refuse the grade on the test and take part in three regular terms of oral exam instead. In addition, subjects primed by positive, negative, and neutral stimuli will be graded separately. In the informed consent, they will be informed that they can skip all questions of the questionnaire and just write the test from evolutionary biology.

The prospective longitudinal study performed on 5,164 internet users recently showed that subjects who had been tested positively for anti-Borrelia anamnestic antibodies had a lower risk of acquiring SARS-CoV-2 infection. We decide to confirm the existence of this association in a population of about 300 students of the Faculty of Science, Charles University. During a written exam from evolutionary biology, the students will be asked to complete a complex anonymous questionnaire containing about 200 questions and tasks. In the final part of the questionnaire, the students will be asked whether they were positively tested for toxoplasmosis, borreliosis, and Covid-19. On the basis of collected data we will test the following hypothesis: „Subjects who were tested positively for borreliosis have a lower risk to be diagnosed with Covid-19.“ In the exploratory part of the study, we will search for other factors that positively and negatively affect the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection or the risk of the more serious course of Covid-19. Primarily, we will analyze the data using a one-tailed partial Kendall test (age and sex controlled). To provide the more traditional output of the test, we will also compute OR by logistic regression. In the post hoc tests, we will analyze data of men and women separately and will search for possible effects of potential confounding variables, such as health. The experiment will run Jan. 3., 2022.

This project aims to experimentally test whether Toxoplasma gondii can be transmitted to laboratory mice orally through human-male ejaculate. The aim is also to find out how often can the parasite be transmitted in this way. The proposed project will consist of controlled oral administration of ejaculate samples to laboratory mice, and subsequent testing of mice for the presence of antibodies against Toxoplasma gondii.

The aim of the proposed project is to test the hypothesis that Rh negativity leads to adopting a faster life strategy manifested as a higher investment in early reproduction, corresponding to lower long-term investments. For this purpose, we will test blood samples for Rh genotype and investigate whether Rh negativity correlates with worse health and traits related to reproduction and sexual behavior.

Before the written exam (4-choices test) from Methodology of science, the subjects will be asked to complete the anonymous research questionnaire. The first part (about 20 questions) will be completed before the exam, rest of the questionnaire (130 questions) immediately after the exam. The last 5 questions of the first part will be either 1) Try to list your 5 favorite (real and living) cats or dogs you know. Try to sort them from the most to the least favored. 2) Choose one of them and try to characterize it using the 6 most suitable terms. 3) Right now, I feel very comfortable (6-points Likert scale) 4) Usually, I feel very comfortable (6-points Likert scale) 5) Estimated number of errors in the test (the test will have 30 questions) or 1) Try to list 5 different items of furniture. Try to sort them from the most to the least useful. 2) Choose one of them and try to characterize it using the 6 most suitable terms. 3) Right now, I feel very comfortable (6-points Likert scale) 4) Usually, I feel very comfortable (6-points Likert scale) 5) Estimated number of errors in the test (the test will have 30 questions) After finishing the test, the subjects will be asked to complete the second part of the questionnaire, starting with the following questions 1) After finishing the test, I feel comfortable (6-points Likert scale) 2) Estimated number of errors in the test. About 200 subjects will participate in the test. Randomly chosen half of them will be asked to remember and to characterize the animals, half the furniture. We expect: a) people who will have thought about their favorite pets will be in a better mood before the test than the controls who will have thought about furniture – they will rate their physical and mental condition better before the test and will expect a better performance in the test (less errors). b) people who will have thought about their favorite pets will be in a better mood after the test than the controls who will have thought about furniture They will rate themselves as more easygoing and will rate their health status and sexual performance better. c) people who will have thought about their favorite pets will be more self-confident/optimistic (they will rate their properties and abilities better and will expect to have higher life expectancy) after the test than the controls who will have thought about furniture d) people who will have thought about their favorite pets will perform better in the exam (will have a lower number of errors). Independently, in the explorative part of the study, we will explore also the effects of the body pigmentation, Rh, BMI, food-to-body high ratio and infection with SARS-CoV-2, Toxoplasma gondii, Borrelia sp., and anti-covid vaccination on the health status, performance in the test, sexual performance (number of sexual partners etc.). We will also expect to find a positive correlation between declared SM sexual preferences and bullying (both passive and active) and willingness torturing terrorist in the moral dilemma test. Moreover, we will also test the life-history theory, we will search for the evidence that subjects with worse health will express the indices of the faster life history (will have the tendency for earlier reproduction and will have thee higher sexual desire). We will analyze the data using one-tailed partial Kendall test (age and sex controlled). In the post hoc tests, we will analyze data of men and women separately and will search for possible effects of potential confounding variables, such as current study performance, the intensity of liking pets, mood and optimism before the test, etc. The experiment will run in 3.12. 2021 The preregistered hypotheses are distinct and independent. Therefore, no correction for multiple tests will be done.

Our laboratory's Implementation of the Rand RRR protocol

Immediately before and also after a written test from the advanced course from evolutionary biology students will be asked to attribute the most suitable color to 18 terms and 5 B/W photos of flowers. Among the terms, 4 will have the association to the fast life strategy (immediately, in no time, now, quickly – in Czech: ihned, okamžitě, přítomnost, rychle) and 4 with slow life strategy (future, lay aside, postpone, slowly – in Czech: budoucnost, spořit, odložit, pomalu). After the second run of the attribution, they will sort the colors from the most to the least nice (in Czech: od té nejsympatičtější/nejkrásnější (nahoře) po tu nejméně sympatickou). In another part of the questionnaire, the students will respond to the questions about their physical and mental health (their responses will be used for computing indices of health as means of corresponding Z-scores from individual questions). We will ask the students also about their and their parents’ Rh factors and we will use their Rh phenotype and genotype (Rh negativity and heterozygosity with Rh-positive allele originating from the father) as predispositions to worse health. They will also respond to four questions on the tendency to delay gratification and two questions on the tendency to risk. They will also respond to the questions related to their sexual life which will be used for computing indices of sexual appetence and sexual activities. We will also ask them how much and when they want their children. We will test the following hypotheses: 1] Students reporting worse health will express signs of the faster life strategy – they will report higher sexual appetence and higher will to have their own children soon. 2] Students with genetic predispositions for worse health (Rh negativity and heterozygosity with Rh-positive allele originating from the father) will express signs of the faster life strategy – they will report higher sexual appetence and higher will to have their own children soon. 3] Students expressing signs of the faster life strategy will score lower tendency to delay gratification. 4] Male students expressing signs of the faster life strategy will score higher in the tendency to risk. (Men will try to be among approximately 10% of most successful individuals.) 5] Female students expressing signs of the faster life strategy will score higher in the tendency to risk. (Women will try to avoid fell between approximately 10% of least successful individuals.) 6] Subjects expressing signs of fast life strategy will attribute nicer colors to the term related to the slower life strategy and less nice to the terms related to the slower life strategy. 7] Subjects with worse health will attribute nicer colors to the term related to the faster life strategy and less nice to the terms related to the slower life strategy. 8] Subjects with genetic predispositions to worse health will attribute nicer colors to the term related to the faster life strategy and less nice to the terms related to the slower life strategy. The principal method for testing the hypothesis will be partial Kendall correlation tests with sex and age controlled, a one-sided test will be used for testing one-sided hypotheses and the correction for multiple tests will be done with Benjamini-Hochberg procedure with a false discovery rate preset to 0.2. The expected number of participants will be 130-160.

There is certain evidence showing that female maternal relatives (e. g. mothers, maternal aunts and grandmothers) of homosexual men are more fertile than female maternal relatives of heterosexual men. However, some of the research has failed to demonstrate this pattern, or at least not showed it to be universally valid. Hence, we decided to try to replicate the results of former research on a large sample of Czech homosexual and heterosexual men and women. The data have already been collected via on-line distributed questionnaires.

About a 13-minutes internet questionnaire (in Czech) will run on the Qualtrics platform. Participants (10-50 thousand subjects) will be recruited by social networks (Facebook and Twitter). The anonymous participants will respond to demographic questions, questions about their anti-epidemic behavior and approaches, and various risk and protecting factors namely Rh factor, Rh factor of mother and father, AB0 blood group, toxoplasmosis, borreliosis, keeping various domestic animals and pets, wearing masks, wearing glasses, singing, snoring, doing sport, hardening, taking a sauna, smoking tobacco or marihuana, consuming alcohol, vitamins, suffer depression, suffer anxiety, being involved in charitable activities, fresh air activities. They will be also asked whether they suffer from immunodeficiency, autoimmunity, heart disease, asthma, COPD, allergy, diabetes, and obesity. The participants will also respond to how many people in their vicinity already had Covid-19, how many died with Covid-19, whether they already had Covid-19, how serious it was (ordinal scale), and what symptoms they suffered with. They will be asked to provide information about their income, their physical a mental health. Before answering the questions about their anti-epidemic approaches, one half of them will be primed by solving 3 tasks - interpretation graphs showing the number of hospitalized and dying people with Covid-19. The associations will be measured/tested primarily with partial Kendall correlation (controlled for age, size of place of living, and sex). The Benjamini Hochberg method (with FDR set to 0.2) will be used to control for multiple tests. One-sided tests will be used for testing one-sided hypotheses (negative effects of disorders and Rh-negative phenotype on the course of Covid-19), the positive effect of priming to follow the anti-epidemy measures, the negative effects of following anti-epidemy measures on the probability of the infection. All other (two-sided) hypotheses will be tested with two-sided tests.

Fraternal birth order effect (FBOE) is a well-established phenomenon - homosexual men tend to have more older brothers than heterosexual men. Here, we decided to replicate these findings again on a large dataset that has already been collected. On top of that, we have information regarding our probands' full- and half-siblings which enables us to test whether there are any differences in the excess of older brothers from mother's and father's side. We will also investigate whether there is any difference in FBOE presence or frequency in homosexuals preferring passive and active sex role.

About 12500 subjects who filled the first part of the questionnaire "Covid anketa" in the past and consented to be addressed by mail in the future six months, will receive an e-mail with a link to the second part of the questionnaire, The first part of the questionnaire asked about various risk protective factors (and also about the responders' opinions concerning pandemic). The second part will ask the responders whether they were infected and how severe was the course of the disease and how healthy they are currently. Using the within/subject design we will analyze which factors protected subjects against infection and against its severe course and which factors had opposite effects. The main analyses will be based on the analysis of the subset of subjects who were not infected when completed the first questionnaire. For this subset, we will compare the risk and protective factors of those who acquired infection and those who did not before completing the second questionnaire. Also, we will compare current health and experience with the disease of subjects who contracted particular risk and protective factors. We will use GLM techniques and partial Kendall correlation with sex and age controlled. The effect of multiple tests will be controlled with Benjamini Hochberg method with false discovery rate 0.20.

The aim of the present study is to identify the factors that are associated with increased or decreased risk of Covid-9, course of the disease, and increased or decreased willingness to accept and follow particular anti-epidemic measures. The file with the questionnaire to be used in the study will be a part of this registration.

Before a written exam (4-choices test) from Evolutionary biology, the subjects will be asked to complete anonymous research questionnaire. About 300 subjects will participate in the test. Randomly chosen half of them will be asked to remember and to characterize the animals, half the furniture. The first part (19 questions) will be completed before the exam, rest of the questionnaire (132 questions) immediately after the exam. Last set of the “before test” questions will consist either 1) Try to list your 5 favorite (real) cats or dogs you personally know or have known. Try to sort them from the most to the least favored. 2) Choose one of them and try to characterize it using the 6 most suitable terms or 1) Try to list 5 different items of furniture. Try to sort them from the most to the least useful. 2) Choose one of them and try to characterize it using the 6 most suitable terms. Immediately after that, both groups of students will complete also the questions: 3) Right now, I feel very comfortable (6-points Likert scale) 4) Usually, I feel very comfortable (6-points Likert scale) 5) Estimated number of errors in the test (the test will have 30 questions). After finishing the test, the subjects will be asked to complete the second part of the questionnaire, starting with following questions: 1) After finishing the test, I feel comfortable (6-points Likert scale) 2) Estimated number of errors in the test. We expect (the hypotheses to be tested): a) people who will have thought about their favorite pets will be in a better mood before the test than the controls who will have thought about furniture b) people who will have thought about their favorite pets will be more self-confident/optimistic before the test than the controls who will have thought about furniture c) people who will have thought about their favorite pets will be in a better mood after the test than the controls who will have thought about furniture d) people who will have thought about their favorite pets will be more self-confident/optimistic after the test than the controls who will have thought about furniture e) people who will have thought about their favorite pets will perform better in the exam (will have less errors). We will analyze the data using one-tailed partial Kendall test (age and sex controlled). In the post hoc tests we will analyze data of men and women separately and will search for possible effects of potential confounding variables, such as current study performance, intensity of liking pets, mood and optimism before test, etc. The experiment will run in two terms 7.1. 2019 and 21.1. 2019. If the results of the tests (average number of errors) differ between the terms, the confounding variable term will be included into the statistical models. The preregistered hypotheses are distinct and independent. Therefore, no correction for multiple tests will be done.

Recently we showed that people who have been scratched with a cat express symptoms of depression and have significantly higher risk to be diagnosed with unipolar depression. We speculated that bartonellosis (cat scratch disease) could be responsible for this association Flegr, Hodný, Z. 2016: Cat scratches, not bites, are associated with unipolar depression - cross-sectional study. Parasites & Vectors 2016:8 doi:10.1186/s13071-015-1290-7. In the present project we hope to find direct evidence for this hypothesis, namely for higher symptoms of depression in subjects with anamnestic titres of anti-Bartonella antibodies.

Additional file 2. Excel data file - raw and transformed Spider Questionnaire scores with norms.

Additional file 1. Word document - detailed results of Phase 1.

An anonymous electronic questionnaire will be used to collect data for testing the following hypotheses: 1) subjects who report being sexually aroused by sexual sadism sensu lato (by somebody else helplessness, humiliation, or pain) report also a higher tendency for utilitarian solving of ticking-bomb dilemma. 2) This correlation is higher when he or she should personally torture the terrorist or his inoncent partner than when he/she only is expected to order torture. 3) The willingness to torture another person will depend on the sex of the other person and the sexual orientation of the responder (the sex-orientation interaction will be significant.) 4) Being sexually aroused by sexual sadism sensu lato will positively correlate with the Instrumental Harm subscale of the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale questionnaire. The questionnaire will contain several separate questionnaires and cognitive performance tests. In the middle of the questionnaire the responders will be offered the following four versions of the ticking bomb scenario: 1) “You are part of the Counter-Terrorism Unit, legally immune from prosecution for acts within the scope of your profession. An atomic time bomb is planted in the center of Prague. If you could locate it, you would save over a million innocent people from certain death. You have captured a young but important terrorist who knows the information needed to stop the time bomb. It's clear he won't give up the information willingly. Would you be willing to order an enhanced interrogation method (= torture that can leave permanent consequences or even lead to death) if you were absolutely 100% certain that you would get the information that way?” 2) “The situation is similar to the previous one. Again, you are 100% sure to get the information. In this case, however, you have to torture the terrorist yourself. Will you torture?" 3) „The situation is similar to the previous ones. Torture didn't work on the terrorist. But you've also captured a girl with whom the terrorist is madly in love. She doesn't know about his "profession". Would you be willing to give the order to torture this girl so that the terrorist will give up the information needed to save a million innocent Prague residents? Again, you are 100% certain to get the information.“ 4) „The situation is similar to the previous one. Again, you are 100% sure to get the information. In this case, however, you have to torture the girl yourself. Will you torture?" The responders should answer the questions using a 6-items scale anchored with 0-definitively no and 6-definitively yes. After about 150 questions on health, infections, altruism, fairness, disgust, political attitudes, etc, the responders will be asked to respond block of six questions on their sexual life. The block will contain also the following four statements: 1. I am sexually attracted to individuals of the same sex as me. 2. I am sexually attracted to individuals of the opposite sex from me. 3. I am also sexually aroused by my own helplessness, humiliation, or pain. 4. I am also sexually aroused by someone else's helplessness, humiliation, or pain. The responders should express their agreement with the statements using a 6-items scale anchored with 0-definitively no and 6-definitively yes. Stopping rule: The study will run until the end of May 2022 or until we collect data from at least 3000 subjects. If less than 75 homosexual men will be present in the data set, we will continue the data collection to achieve this aim or to the end of September 2022. Primarily, we will analyze the data using a one-tailed partial Kendall test (age and sex controlled). In the post hoc tests, we will analyze data of men and women separately and will search for possible effects of potential confounding variables, such as age, sex, health, etc. The preregistered hypotheses are distinct and independent. Therefore, no correction for multiple tests will be done. In the explorative part of the study we will search for the association of the preference for the utilitarian solution of the Ticking bomb dilemmas and various potentially confounding variables, e.g. political attitudes measured with Political beliefs and values inventory PI34, various kinds of disgust, including Injury disgust, altruism, honesty, intelligence, memory, Machiavellism, Narcism, Psychopathy measured with Short Dark Triad, (SD3), Big 5 personality traits measured with TIPI, etc. We will also search for the effects of priming with positive, negative, and neutral stimuli (remembering positive or negative emotion or words starting with particular characters) on all variables monitored with the questionnaire.

When the data set is large and contains many variables, exploratory part of analysis (search for patterns in data) can be rather laborious. The new package Explorer makes it much easier. The core of the package is a function kendall.many, which automatically runs partial Kendall correlation tests, computing significance and effect sizes for two lists of variables (x × y) controlling for another set of confounding variables.

THE FINAL VERSION OF THE PAPER WAS PUBLISHED IN EVOLUTIONARY HUMAN SCIENCES AND IS FREELY AVAILABLE HERE: https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2020.66 #### Although the aesthetic appreciation of flowers is a well-known aspect of human behavior, theories explaining its origin are missing. An exception is the evolutionary theory of Heerwagen and Orians, who suggest that humans emotionally respond to flowers because they signal food availability. However, fruits are stronger and more direct signals of food availability than flowers, therefore fruits should elicit stronger emotional responses than flowers. To test the theory, we performed two online studies in Czechia. The participants (n = 3354 and 744 respectively) indicated on a six-point scale their preferences for the photographs of 14 edible Czech plant species (study A) and 20 edible plant species from African savannas (study B), varying in their growth stage (flowering, fruiting). Paired t-tests found no preference for Czech fruiting plants and a strong preference for African flowering plants (p

The increasing maximal hierarchical complexity of organisms is one of the best-supported macroevolutionary trends. The nature and causes of this trend, as well as several accompanying macroevolutionary phenomena, are, however, still unclear. In this theoretical article, we propose that the cause of this trend might be the increasing pressure of species selection, which results from the gradual decrease of (macro)evolutionary potential (i.e. the probability of producing major evolutionary innovations). As follows from the Theory of Frozen Evolution, this process is an inevitable consequence of the sorting of genes, traits, and their integrated groups (modules) based on their contextually dependent stability, which causes effectively unchangeable elements of genetic architecture to accumulate during the existence of evolutionary lineages. Although (macro)evolutionary potential can be partially restored by several processes, a profound restoration of (macro)evolutionary potential is probably possible only by means of a transition to a higher level of hierarchical complexity. However, the accumulation of contextually more stable elements continues even on this higher level. This leads to the diminution of the modular character of composite organisms and a repeated pressure to increase the level of hierarchical complexity. Our model explains all components of McShea’s “Evolutionary Syndrome,” i.e. the trend of increasing the hierarchical complexity of organisms, the growth of variability among elements on the immediately lower level, and their gradual machinification. This pattern should be characteristic of sexual eukaryotes and especially their complex representatives. Our model also sheds new light on several related macroevolutionary phenomena, such as the gradual acceleration of the trend or the striking difference between pre-Neoproterozoic and Phanerozoic evolution.

Neuroendocrinol Lett 2008; 29(4):475–481 PMID: 18766148Abstract BACKGROUND: The biological function of RhD protein, a major component of the Rh blood group system, is largely unknown. No phenotypic effect of RhD protein, except its role in hemolytic disease of newborns and protective role against Toxoplasma-induced impairment of reaction times in men, has been described. METHODS: Here we searched for a protective effect of RhD positivity against Toxoplasma-induced prolongation of reaction times in a set of 110 male and 226 female students of the Faculty of Science tested for latent toxoplasmosis and concentration of testosterone in saliva. RESULTS: RhD-positive subjects have been confirmed to be less sensitive to the influence of latent toxoplasmosis on reaction times than Rh-negative subjects. While a protective role of RhD positivity has been demonstrated previously in four populations of men, the present study has shown a similar effect in 226 female students. Our results have also shown that the concentration of testosterone in saliva strongly influences (reduces) reaction times (especially in men) and therefore, this factor should be controlled in future reaction times studies. CONCLUSIONS: The observed effects of RhD phenotype could provide not only a clue to the long-standing evolutionary enigma of the origin of RhD polymorphism in humans (the effect of balancing selection), differences in the RhD+ allele frequencies in geographically distinct populations (resulting from geographic variation in the prevalence of Toxoplasma gondii), but might also be the missing piece in the puzzle of the physiological function of the RhD molecule.

Psychiatrie, 2011, 15: 37-42.Rh-positive factor subjects are better protected against pathogenic environmental factors including impairment associated with latent infection of Toxoplasma gondii, aging and possibly also tiredness. Our study was focused on contribution of Rh factor to schizophrenia clinical picture modification. In the population of 186 schizophrenia patients who attended day-treatment structured programme we investigated whether RhD phenotype has any clinical impact on clinical manifestation of schizophrenia patients who were tested for seropositivity to Toxoplasma infection. We found out that RhD phenotype was linked with significant impact on clinical presentation in schizophrenia patients especially in women. RhD-negative women showed more severe positive symptoms of schizophrenia and more pronounced reality distorsion dimension in PANSS scale in comparison to RhD-positive women. The course of the illness was substantially less influenced by RhD phenotype in men. Length of hospital stay measured by number of days was significantly increased in RhD-negative women and they were prescribed also higher doses of anti-psychotics. The effect of RhD phenotype was independent on similar, already described, effect of toxoplasma infection, as it was observed both in Toxoplasma-infected and Toxoplasma-free patients. RhD-positive phenotype can be considered as a promising protective factor moderating clinical picture of schizophrenia

Neuroendocrinol Lett 2012; 33(2):224–235 PMID: 22592206 BACKGROUND: Cortisol, along with other hormones of hypothalamo-pituitaryadrenal axis, belongs to one of the main factors influencing psychological and pathognomic factors, intelligence, and memory. METHODS: The aim of our study was to review a large battery of psychological, performance, IQ and memory tests as to their relation with cortisol, testosterone and estrogen levels in groups of 100 men and 93 women who attended the Central Military Hospital in Prague for regular entrance psychological examinations for military personnel. RESULTS: In men, we detected positive correlations between cortisol and emotional lability, and negative correlations with impulsivity, while in women hypochondria and psychopathology were negatively correlated, and aggression measured with the Meili selective memory test had a positive relation to cortisol level. Testosterone correlated positively with emotional liability and negatively with impulsivity in men, and negatively with hypochondria and psychasteny, indirect aggression, irritability and paranoia in women. Estradiol correlated positively with psychopathology in men, and negatively with phobia. It was positively correlated with negativism in women. No clear correlation was observed between the concentration of steroid hormones and psychomotor performance or intelligence. CONCLUSIONS: Concentrations of steroid hormones correlate with results of several psychological tests, the sign and magnitude of these correlations, however, very often differ in military men and women.

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Supplemental Material, Supplement_2-Sex-related_factor_loadings for The Relation of Toxoplasma Infection and Sexual Attraction to Fear, Danger, Pain, and Submissiveness by Jaroslav Flegr and Radim Kuba in Evolutionary Psychology

Supplemental Material, Supplement_1-Sexual_Preferences_and_Behaviors_Inventory_(SPBI-2015) for The Relation of Toxoplasma Infection and Sexual Attraction to Fear, Danger, Pain, and Submissiveness by Jaroslav Flegr and Radim Kuba in Evolutionary Psychology

Short paper showing that stochastic noise could cause false negative but not false positive results of statistical tests. The R script for the model, as well as the results of analyses are published.Appendix of Flegr & Horáček, Toxoplasma-infected subjects report an Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder diagnosis more often and score higher in Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory. European Psychiatry, 2016 40: 83-87.

Flegr, Jaroslav (2013): Why Drosophila is not Drosophila any more, why it will be worse and what can be done about it? Zootaxa 3741 (2): 295-300, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3741.2.8