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Does an agent’s touch always matter? Study on virtual Midas touch, masculinity, social status, and compliance in Polish men

ABSTRACT: Traditional gender roles that define what is feminine and masculine also imply that men have higher social status than women. These stereotypes still influence how people interact with each other and with computers. Touch behaviour, essential in social interactions, is an interesting example of such social behaviours. The Midas touch effect describes a situation when a brief touch is used to influence one’s behaviour. Our study aimed to analyse the influence of virtual touch on compliance in men in a decision-making game called Ultimatum. In a series of three studies, we investigated whether social cues such as gender, stereotypical masculine/feminine appearance, and high/low social status modify compliance to offers from embodied agents. We built an immersive version of a repeated Ultimatum game in which a proposer offers how to split ten coins, and a responder accepts or rejects the offer. In study 1, men and women played with a female and a male agent. In study 2 and 3, men played with four agents each, differing in gender and levels of stereotypically seen masculinity and social status. There was no significant touch effect. Compliance was secured mostly by the value of the offer: the more generous the offer, the higher the compliance rate. We also found evidence for the perceived masculinity and social status influence. We also describe relationships between agents’ characteristics and the perception of their touch. The results are discussed in the context of social characteristics that are important in agent design and the effectiveness of social influence techniques in virtual reality.

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The online version of this article (10.1007/s12193-020-00351-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

SUBMITTER: Swidrak J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7778848 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:PURPOSE:A traditional male role orientation is considered to increase the risk of depression and preventing men from disclosing symptoms of mental illness and seeking professional help. Less is known about the variance of masculinity orientations in men already treated for depression and their role in the treatment process. In this study, patterns of masculinity norms and work role orientations will be identified among men treated for depression. Associations of these patterns with depressive symptoms, stigma and delay in professional help-seeking will be investigated. METHODS:In a cross-sectional study, male role orientations (MRNS), work-related attitudes (AVEM), symptoms of mental disorders (PHQ), and attitudes related to stigma of mental illness (DSS) were assessed by standardized methods in a sample of 250 men treated for depression in general medical, psychiatric and psychotherapeutic services. Data were analyzed by means of latent profile analysis (LPA), by multinomial and linear regression models, and by path analysis. RESULTS:The results of LPA revealed three latent classes of men treated for depression. Men assigned to class one reported a less traditional male role orientation, low professional ambitions and low coping capacities; men assigned to class two reported a traditional masculinity orientation, high professional ambitions but low coping capacities; men assigned to class three reported less traditional masculinity tended orientations, medium professional ambitions and high coping capacities. Men assigned to classes one and two to have more stigmatizing attitudes, longer periods of untreated illness and more severe symptoms of mental disorders, in comparison to men assigned to class three. CONCLUSIONS:Overall, this study reveals that traditional masculinity norms and work-role orientations in men treated for depression are associated with a worse mental health status. Our study results also suggest that a slackening of traditional masculinity norms is associated with improved psychological well-being if it does not coincide with a complete distancing from professional ambitions and a lack of ability to cope with professional stress.

Project description:Men's poorer engagement with healthcare generally and HIV care specifically, compared to women, is well-described. Within the HIV public health domain, interest is growing in universal test and treat (UTT) strategies. UTT strategies refer to the expansion of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in order to reduce onward transmission and incidence of HIV in a population, through a "treatment as prevention" (TasP). This paper focuses on how masculinity influences engagement with HIV care in the context of an on-going TasP trial. Data were collected in January-November 2013 using 20 in-depth interviews, 10 of them repeated thrice, and 4 focus group discussions, each repeated four times. Analysis combined inductive and deductive approaches for coding and the review and consolidation of emerging themes. The accounts detailed men's unwillingness to engage with HIV testing and care, seemingly tied to their pursuit of valued masculinity constructs such as having strength and control, being sexually competent, and earning income. Articulated through fears regarding getting an HIV-positive diagnosis, observations that men preferred traditional medicine and that primary health centres were not welcoming to men, descriptions that men used lay measures to ascertain HIV status, and insinuations by men that they were removed from HIV risk, the indisposition to HIV care contrasted markedly with an apparent readiness to test among women. Gendered tensions thus emerged which were amplified in the context where valued masculinity representations were constantly threatened. Amid the tensions, men struggled with disclosing their HIV status, and used various strategies to avoid or postpone disclosing, or disclose indirectly, while women's ability to access care readily, use condoms, or communicate about HIV appeared similarly curtailed. UTT and TasP promotion should heed and incorporate into policy and health service delivery models the intrapersonal tensions, and the conflict, and poor and indirect communication at the micro-relational levels of couples and families.

Project description:BACKGROUND: In many animals, exaggerated sex-typical male traits are preferred by females, and may be a signal of both past and current disease resistance. The proposal that the same is true in humans--i.e., that masculine men are immunocompetent and attractive--underpins a large literature on facial masculinity preferences. Recently, theoretical models have suggested that current condition may be a better index of mate value than past immunocompetence. This is particularly likely in populations where pathogenic fluctuation is fast relative to host life history. As life history is slow in humans, there is reason to expect that, among humans, condition-dependent traits might contribute more to attractiveness than relatively stable traits such as masculinity. To date, however, there has been little rigorous assessment of whether, in the presence of variation in other cues, masculinity predicts attractiveness or not. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The relationship between masculinity and attractiveness was assessed in two samples of male faces. Most previous research has assessed masculinity either with subjective ratings or with simple anatomical measures. Here, we used geometric morphometric techniques to assess facial masculinity, generating a morphological masculinity measure based on a discriminant function that correctly classified >96% faces as male or female. When assessed using this measure, there was no relationship between morphological masculinity and rated attractiveness. In contrast, skin colour--a fluctuating, condition-dependent cue--was a significant predictor of attractiveness. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These findings suggest that facial morphological masculinity may contribute less to men's attractiveness than previously assumed. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that current condition is more relevant to male mate value than past disease resistance, and hence that temporally fluctuating traits (such as colour) contribute more to male attractiveness than stable cues of sexual dimorphism.

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Does an agent’s touch always matter? Study on virtual Midas touch, masculinity, social status, and compliance in Polish men

Electronic supplementary material

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