Eye-tracking does not reveal early attention processing of sexual copulatory movement in heterosexual men and women.

Men and women respond differently when presented with sexual stimuli. Men's reaction is gender-specific, and women's reaction is gender-nonspecific. This might be a result of differential cognitive processing of sexual cues, namely copulatory movement (CM), which is present in almost every dynamic erotic stimulus. A novelty eye-tracking procedure was developed to assess the saliency of short film clips containing CM or non-CM sexual activities. Results from 29 gynephilic men and 31 androphilic women showed only small and insignificant effects in attention bias and no effects in attentional capture. Our results suggest that CM is not processed differently in men and women and, therefore, is not the reason behind gender-nonspecific sexual responses in women.

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Intimate Partner Violence against Women in the Czech Republic: Incidence and Associated Factors.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a burning social issue worldwide. According to global statistics, the incidence of IPV has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic due to restrictive measures (e.g., reduced social contacts, the need to stay at home often with a perpetrator in the same household). This study aims to provide data about the incidence of IPV and its associated factors during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Czech Republic. A representative online sample of 429 Czech women living with a partner at least 3 months before COVID-19 participated in the study. In an online interview, women reported IPV incidents 3 months before and during the first and second waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using non-parametric repeated measures ANOVA, a significant difference between the total IPV score and the given time periods was found. In addition, the results of the research showed a significant effect of the tension in the relationship with the partner, depression rate, and partner support on the total IPV score in the first and second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. These results bring important insights into IPV incidence during the COVID-19 pandemic and suggest factors that might lead to an increased risk of IPV.

Habitat selection and human aesthetic responses to flowers.

Although the aesthetic appreciation of flowers is a well-known aspect of human behaviour, theories explaining its origin are missing. The only exception is the evolutionary theory of Heerwagen and Orians. Surprisingly, it has not yet been empirically tested. The authors suggest that humans aesthetically respond to flowers because they signal food availability. The logic of the theory implies that fruits are more reliable and direct food availability signals than flowers. Therefore, fruits should elicit stronger aesthetic responses than flowers. To test this assumption, we performed two online studies in the Czech Republic. The participants (n = 2792 and 744, respectively) indicated on a six-point scale their aesthetic response to photographs of 14 edible Czech plant species (study A) and 20 edible plant species from the African savannas (study B), varying in growth stage (flowering, fruiting). We found no difference between the Czech fruiting and flowering plants and a stronger aesthetic response to African flowering plants. A third study (n = 817) confirmed that flowers were preferred to fruits, using a forced-choice paradigm. Our results suggest that the theory cannot fully explain human aesthetic responses to flowers. We discuss alternative explanations. This topic deserves renewed attention from researchers working in related fields.

The role of balancing selection in maintaining human RhD blood group polymorphism: A preregistered cross-sectional study.

Maintenance of genetic polymorphism remains one of the big questions of evolutionary biology, which for a long time tended to be explained by balancing selection. This explanation was later criticized, but now is again accepted as an important mechanism in evolution. Human blood group systems seem affected by balancing selection especially strongly. In this preregistered study, we focused on stable coexistence of RhD-positive and RhD-negative subjects in a population. This is an evolutionary conundrum, because carriers of the less frequent negative allele suffer from lower fecundity due to haemolytic disease of the newborn affecting RhD-positive infants born to RhD-negative women. One explanation of persisting stability of RhD polymorphism points to heterozygote advantage. Over the past decade, numerous studies demonstrated that RhD-positive subjects score better than RhD-negative homozygotes in psychomotor tests and physical health-related variables. Still, evidence of better health and performance of heterozygotes is scarce and merely indirect. We compared the physical and mental health of 2,539 subjects whose RhD genotype was estimated based on their and their parents' RhD phenotype. We confirmed that RhD-negative homozygotes fare worse in terms of physical and mental health than subjects with RhD-positive phenotype and that RhD-positive heterozygotes enjoy better health than both homozygotes. For the first time, we demonstrated that RhD-positive homozygotes might suffer from worse health than RhD-negative homozygotes. Our results strongly support the hypothesis that RhD polymorphism is maintained by heterozygote advantage and that balancing selection may have played an important role in human evolution in this context and in general.

Latent toxoplasmosis and olfactory functions of Rh positive and Rh negative subjects.

BACKGROUNDS: The prevalence of toxoplasmosis is higher in schizophrenics than in the general population. It has been suggested that certain symptoms of schizophrenia, including changes in olfactory functions, are in fact symptoms of toxoplasmosis that can be easily detected in schizophrenics only due to the increased prevalence of toxoplasmosis in this population. Schizophrenics have impaired identification of odors and lower sensitivity of odor detection, however, no information about these parameters of non-schizophrenic Toxoplasma-infected subjects is available. METHODS: Here we searched for differences in olfactory functions between 62 infected and 61 noninfected non-schizophrenic subjects using the case-controls experimental design. RESULTS: The infected men scored better than the non-infected controls in the standard odor-identification test. The infected women rated all smells as more intensive while the infected men rated nearly all smells as less intensive. Infected women rated the pleasantness of the smell of the cat urine as higher than the non-infected women and the opposite was true for the men-in contrast, higher pleasantness of odor in infected men and lower in infected women were observed and described in the 2011 study. Toxoplasmosis, Rh, and toxoplasmosis-Rh interaction were not associated with the rated pleasantness of the smell of other stimuli. However, our sample contained only 17 Rh negative men and 30 Rh negative women. Therefore, all results concerning the main effects of Rh factor and the interaction with Rh factor must be considered only preliminary. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that latent toxoplasmosis is associated with changes in the olfactory functions in humans; however, the observed changes differ from those observed in schizophrenics.

What flowers do we like? The influence of shape and color on the rating of flower beauty.

There is no doubt that people find flowers beautiful. Surprisingly, we know very little about the actual properties which make flowers so appealing to humans. Although the evolutionary aesthetics provides some theories concerning generally preferred flower traits, empirical evidence is largely missing. In this study, we used an online survey in which residents of the Czech Republic (n = 2006) rated the perceived beauty of 52 flower stimuli of diverse shapes and colors. Colored flowers were preferred over their uncolored versions. When controlling for flower shape, we found an unequal preference for different flower colors, blue being the most and yellow the least preferred. In the overall assessment of beauty, shape was more important than color. Prototypical flowers, i.e., radially symmetrical flowers with low complexity, were rated as the most beautiful. We also found a positive effect of sharp flower contours and blue color on the overall rating of flower beauty. The results may serve as a basis for further studies in some areas of the people-plant interaction research.