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Summary: Activated macrophages must carefully calibrate their inflammatory responses to balance efficient pathogen control with inflammation-mediated tissue damage, but the molecular underpinnings of this “balancing act” remain unclear. Using genetically engineered mouse models and primary macrophage cultures, we show that Toll-like receptor (TLR) signaling induces the expression of the transcription factor Spic selectively in patrolling monocytes and tissue macrophages by a nuclear factor κB (NF-κB)-dependent mechanism. Functionally, Spic downregulates pro-inflammatory cytokines and promotes iron efflux by regulating ferroportin expression in activated macrophages. Notably, interferon-gamma blocks Spic expression in a STAT1-dependent manner. High levels of interferon-gamma are indicative of ongoing infection, and in its absence, activated macrophages appear to engage a “default” Spic-dependent anti-inflammatory pathway. We also provide evidence for the engagement of this pathway in sterile inflammation. Taken together, our findings uncover a pathway wherein counter-regulation of Spic by NF-κB and STATs attune inflammatory responses and iron metabolism in macrophages.

Pancreatic β-cell survival remains poorly understood despite decades of research. GATA transcription factors broadly regulate embryogenesis and influence survival of several cell types, but their role in adult β-cells remains undefined. To investigate the role of GATA factors in adult β-cells, we derived β-cell-inducible Gata4- and Gata6-knockout mice, along with whole-body inducible Gata4 knockouts. β-Cell Gata4 deletion modestly increased the proportion of dying β-cells in situ with ultrastructural abnormalities suggesting endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress. Notably, glucose homeostasis was not grossly altered in Gata4- and Gata6-knockout mice, suggesting that GATA factors do not have essential roles in β-cells. Several ER stress signals were up-regulated in Gata4 and Gata6 knockouts, most notably CHOP, a known regulator of ER stress-induced apoptosis. However, ER stress signals were not elevated to levels observed after acute thapsigargin administration, suggesting that GATA deficiency only caused mild ER stress. Simultaneous deletion of Gata4 and CHOP partially restored β-cell survival. In contrast, whole-body inducible Gata4 knockouts displayed no evidence of ER stress in other GATA4-enriched tissues, such as heart. Indeed, distinct GATA transcriptional targets were differentially expressed in islets compared with heart. Such β-cell-specific findings prompted study of a large meta-analysis dataset to investigate single nucleotide polymorphisms harbored within the human GATA4 locus, revealing several variants significantly associated with type 1 diabetes mellitus. We conclude that GATA factors have important but nonessential roles to promote ER integrity and β-cell survival in a tissue-specific manner and that GATA factors likely contribute to type 1 diabetes mellitus pathogenesis.

We investigated the moderating influence of individual differences in women’s sociosexuality on romantic preferences within three specific relationship contexts. Female participants were presented with four prospective mates, varying in their ambition and attractiveness, and were asked to rate interest in these targets as short-term sexual partners, as casual dating partners, and as long-term romantic partners. Short-term sexual appeal largely rested on targets’ attractiveness, particularly among women with an unrestricted sociosexual orientation. Dating appeal was dependent on attractiveness, particularly among unrestricted women, and on ambition. Ambition and attractiveness synergistically influenced targets’ long-term desirability, and these preferences were not moderated by women’s sociosexual orientation. These findings portray the textured manner in which sociosexual orientation shapes women’s mate preferences and underscore the need to delineate different types of short-term relationships. We advance an interactionist framework that considers how women’s dispositions and the traits of potential mates jointly operate to influence romantic preferences within distinct contexts.

When evaluating potential mates, men place greater importance on youth and beauty, whereas women place more importance on status and resources. Six studies tested the hypothesis that the self-concepts of men and women reflect the preferences of potential mates. Studies 1–3 showed that traits related to status were an important aspect of men's self-concepts, whereas traits related to physical attractiveness were an important aspect of women's self-concepts. Studies 4–6 found that men were more upset when derogated by rivals on traits related to status, whereas women were more upset when derogated on their physical attractiveness, suggesting that status and attractiveness are integral parts of men's and women's self-concepts respectively. The importance of the self-concept in human mating is discussed.

The present research examined processes of impression formation within an online dating context. Across two studies, female participants formed impressions of a potential partner based on an online dating profile containing information about the target's facial attractiveness and self-described ambition. Afterwards, deliberate evaluations of the target were assessed with a self-report measure and spontaneous evaluations were measured with an affective priming task. The results showed that deliberate evaluations varied as a function of both self-described ambition and facial attractiveness. In contrast, spontaneous evaluations varied only as a function of facial attractiveness. Experiment 2 further showed that these effects were independent of the order in which the two types of information had been encoded. The results are discussed in terms of associative and propositional processes, and the conditions under which these processes can lead to conflicting evaluations of the same potential romantic partner. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In the current research, we examined whether promoting an inclusive national ingroup that includes both immigrants and nonimmigrants would improve attitudes toward immigrants and immigration among members of receiving societies. We also determined whether one's nation of citizenship and individual differences in social dominance orientation would moderate the effects. Participants were 126 Canadian students and 282 German students, who completed a measure of social dominance orientation and were then asked to respond to a series of questions designed to heighten the salience of national identity (national identity), promote a national ingroup that includes immigrants (common national ingroup), or irrelevant questions (control). The dependent measures included attitudes toward immigrants and immigration, and subtle prejudice toward immigrants. Results revealed that the manipulation of a common national ingroup successfully promoted more positive attitudes toward immigrants and immigration among higher social dominance oriented Canadian participants, but tended to have detrimental effects on the attitudes of higher social dominance oriented German participants. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of considering the context in which groups are situated, as well as implications for developing strategies to promote harmony between immigrants and members of receiving societies.

Finger-length ratio (second to fourth finger; 2D:4D) has been associated with various measures thought to be related to prenatal androgens. In addition, hormone-transfer theory posits that hormones can transfer between twins. We examined 2D:4D in same-sex (SS) and opposite-sex (OS) dizygotic twins to test both propositions. Results show that 2D:4D is masculinized in OS females compared to SS females. This provides strong evidence that 2D:4D is laid down prenatally, and that hormones (likely androgens) can transfer from male to female fetuses. Implications for developmental timeframes for both hormone-transfer and 2D:4D are discussed.

Across 5 experimental studies, the authors explore selective processing biases for physically attractive others. The findings suggest that (a) both male and female observers selectively attend to physically attractive female targets, (b) limiting the attentional capacity of either gender results in biased frequency estimates of attractive females, (c) although females selectively attend to attractive males, limiting females’ attentional capacity does not lead to biased estimates of attractive males, (d) observers of both genders exhibit enhanced recognition memory for attractive females but attenuated recognition for attractive males. Results suggest that different mating-related motives may guide the selective processing of attractive men and women. Think back to the last time you walked across a college campus or down a crowded city street. Did you find yourself looking at some people more than others, and are there some people in particular you could now pick out of a line up? Are the answers to these questions determined merely by random characteristics of the people you passed or are the ways we selectively process others linked to theoretically important constraints on how the mind works? In this article, we report some initial investigations into how biases in social information processing might be linked to fundamental adaptive motivations. Because social environments can be quite complex, selective cognitive attunements can lead to biases in the way people process social information (cf. Haselton & Buss, 2000). For example, a newcomer walking across a large university campus for the first time may be exposed to thousands of unfamiliar strangers. One can imagine that such a person might selectively attend to the most attractive of his or her new schoolmates. Because one’s ability to encode and remember people is influenced by the degree to which one attends to them, this new student might consequently overestimate the proportion of attractive students at that university. This, in turn, might influence the student’s relationship decisions and behavior (Guttentag & Secord, 1983). Functionalist evolutionary theories often posit the existence of adaptively tuned cognitive mechanisms (Klein, Cosmides, Tooby, & Chance, 2002). However, research inspired by such theories has at times fallen short of directly investigating these mechanisms and determining at what stage of information processing they occur (e.g., Kenrick, Neuberg, Zierk, & Krones, 1994). Such research often focuses more directly on overt preferences, judgments, and evaluative outcomes, leaving unexplored the more basic-level cognitive mechanisms assumed to underlie them. In contrast, social cognitive researchers have used rigorous methods to examine these more proximate mechanisms, but have focused less on the role of specific types of stimulus content and on the ultimate motives leading people to selectively process some kinds of social information more than others. The present research merges functionalist and social cognitive perspectives by investigating selective processing biases within the domain of mating. Across five experimental studies, we explore selective cognitive attunements to physically attractive others at different levels of processing. First, we examine whether limiting participants’ attentional capacity might result in biased frequency estimates of attractive targets. Second, we use an eyetracking method to investigate the extent to which observers selectively attend to physically attractive male and female targets. Third, we examine whether observers exhibit recognition memory biases for attractive faces.

Slepian, Masicampo, Toosi, and Ambady (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141, 619–624, 2012, Study 1) found that individuals recalling and writing about a big, meaningful secret judged a pictured hill as steeper than did those who recalled and wrote about a small, inconsequential secret (with estimates unrelated to physical effort unaffected). From an embodied cognition perspective, this result was interpreted as suggesting that important secrets weigh people down. Answering to mounting calls for the crucial need of independent direct replications of published findings to ensure the self-correcting nature of our science, we sought to corroborate Slepian et al.’s finding in two extremely high-powered, preregistered studies that were very faithful to all procedural and methodological details of the original study (i.e., same cover story, study title, manipulation, measures, item order, scale anchors, task instructions, sampling frame, population, and statistical analyses). In both samples, we were unsuccessful in replicating the target finding. Although Slepian et al. reported three other studies supporting the secret burdensomeness phenomenon, we advise that these three other findings need to be independently corroborated before the general phenomenon informs theory or health interventions.

The existence of adult β-cell progenitors remains the most controversial developmental biology topic in diabetes research. It has been reported that β-cell progenitors can be activated by ductal ligation–induced injury of adult mouse pancreas and apparently act in a cell-autonomous manner to double the functional β-cell mass within a week by differentiation and proliferation. Here, we demonstrate that pancreatic duct ligation (PDL) does not activate progenitors to contribute to β-cell mass expansion. Rather, PDL stimulates massive pancreatic injury, which alters pancreatic composition and thus complicates accurate measurement of β-cell content via traditional morphometry methodologies that superficially sample the pancreas. To overcome this potential bias, we quantified β-cells from the entire pancreas and observed that β-cell mass and insulin content are totally unchanged by PDL-induced injury. Lineage-tracing studies using sequential administration of thymidine analogs, rat insulin 2 promoter–driven cre-lox, and low-frequency ubiquitous cre-lox reveal that PDL does not convert progenitors to the β-cell lineage. Thus, we conclude that β-cells are not generated in injured adult mouse pancreas.

Several lines of research illustrate that humor plays a pivotal role in relationship initiation. The current article applies sexual selection theory to argue that humor production is a fitness indicator, allowing men to transmit information tacitly about their underlying qualities. And whereas prior research has emphasized women’s appreciation of humor as a signal of interest, the focus here is on how women evaluate prospective suitors’ humorous offerings. Two studies, including an ecologically valid study of online dating advertisements, provided evidence for men’s production and women’s evaluation of humor in romantic contexts. A third study revealed that women’s evaluations of potential mates’ humor are predictive of their romantic interest. Moreover, this article shows that preferences for and perceptions of humor are associated with preferences for and perceptions of intelligence and warmth, consistent with the argument that one function of humor is as a fitness indicator that provides information about underlying mate quality.

The majority of Wiskott–Aldrich syndrome protein (WASP) in T cells is in a complex with WASP interacting protein (WIP), a 503 a.a. long proline rich protein. Here we demonstrate that a novel anti-WIP mAb, 3D10, recognizes an epitope in the N-terminal domain of the WIP protein, within the sequence 13 PTFALA 18 . mAb 3D10 competes with actin, but not with WASP or Nck, for WIP binding. Analysis of 3D10 immunoprecipitates failed to demonstrate dissociation of the WASP–WIP complex after TCR ligation that we previously reported using a polyclonal anti-WIP anti-serum raised against a C-terminal peptide (a.a. 459–503) that spanned the WASP binding site. 3D10 mAb allowed the detection of a novel isoform of WIP consisting of a truncated 403 a.a. long protein that includes the 377 a.a. encoded by the first 4 exons of WIP followed by a 26 a.a. sequence encoded by intron 4.

A widespread assumption in recent research on attitudes is that self-reported (explicit) evaluations reflect conscious attitudes, whereas indirectly assessed (implicit) evaluations reflect unconscious attitudes. The present article reviews the available evidence regarding unconscious features of indirectly assessed "implicit" attitudes. Distinguishing between three different aspects of attitudes, we conclude that (a) people sometimes lack conscious awareness of the origin of their attitudes, but that lack of source awareness is not a distinguishing feature of indirectly assessed versus self-reported attitudes, (b) there is no evidence that people lack conscious awareness of indirectly assessed attitudes per se, and (c) there is evidence showing that, under some conditions, indirectly assessed (but not self-reported) attitudes influence other psychological processes outside of conscious awareness. Implications for the concept of "implicit attitudes" are discussed.