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From an evolutionary perspective, “dark” personality traits are argued to comprise a coordinated system of co-adapted traits that facilitate exploitive, manipulative, and aggressive strategies to vie for valued social and reproductive resources. Three quantitative studies were conducted to examine the cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between dark personality characteristics with bullying (Study 1), delinquency and dating (Study 2), and status-striving (Study 3) in adolescents aged 15–18 (Studies 1–2) and adults aged 18–61 (Study 3). In Study 1, using random-intercept cross-lagged panel modeling in a sample of N = 514 adolescents from ages 15–18 (Grades 10–12), Machiavellianism and psychopathy (but not narcissism) shared significant between-person associations with bullying. Within-person cross-lagged relations supported both disposition- (e.g., Machiavellianism at Grade 10  bullying at Grade 11) and perpetration-driven pathways (e.g., bullying at Grade 11  narcissism at Grade 12). In Study 2, cross-lagged panel modeling with the same sample as Study 1 revealed that secondary (i.e., impulsivity), but not primary (i.e., callous-unemotionality), psychopathy as well as delinquency were positively correlated with being in a current dating relationship at Grade 10. An indirect effect was found, whereby secondary psychopathy at Grade 10 positively predicted delinquency at Grade 11, which then predicted being a dating relationship one year later. In Study 3, path analysis with a sample of N = 516 adults aged 18–61 demonstrated that narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy positively predicted dominance status-striving, whereas only narcissism positively predicted prestige. Indirect aggression mediated the positive associations between psychopathy and sadism with dominance status-striving. Findings from the current dissertation indicate that dark personality traits are dynamically related to bullying and delinquency in youth, as well as aggression in adults, which is of relevance to educators, clinicians, and researchers looking to curb problematic behaviour that can carry significant personal and interpersonal harm.

This master's thesis deals with the topic of decision making when choosing a partner in romantic relationships. It reacts to the phenomenon of looking for a partner via internet dating sites and tries to determine whether the requirements we have for an ideal partner correspond to the real-life selection of a romantic partner. In the theoretical part studies and theoretical concepts concerning romantic partnership are presented - selection of a partner as well as relationship maintenance. The thesis is based on evolutionary-psychological theories (Buss, 1989), experience of partner counselors and theoretical concepts of social psychologists, such as triangular theory of love (Sternberg, 1986) or five love languages (Chapman, 2002). In the decision making area, the thesis relies primarily on Kahneman's (2013) two systems within the dual process theory. The empirical part poses the question whether we spot differences between the preferred characteristics of ideal partner and the subjectively evaluated characteristics of the person who we are attracted to at a real-life meeting, motivated to potentially establish a romantic relationship. In my research, most of the observed aspects showed significant references. The target group were Czech university students who participated in speed dating event...

Prior research suggests that rejection sensitive individuals may find it easier to express their true selves in an online environment. The purpose of the present study was to further examine the influence of true self, which is who a person believes he or she truly is, on the relationship between rejection sensitivity and online dating site usage. Additionally, the present study investigated the role of self-disclosure in online dating site usage. Five-hundred sixty one participants completed an online survey. Consistent with prior research, results indicated that rejection sensitivity and true self predicted online dating site usage. Further, true self partially mediated the relationship between rejection sensitivity and online dating site usage. Self-disclosure in online environments, however, did not influence the relationship between rejection sensitivity and online dating site use. In addition, for those who engaged in online dating, rejection sensitivity was not related to self-disclosure in online dating profiles or in communicating with individuals met through online dating sites. True self, though, was related to both self-disclosure in online dating profiles and in communication with those met through online dating sites. These findings suggest that rejection sensitive individuals are more likely to engage in online dating because it may facilitate representation of their “true” selves. Furthermore, rejection sensitivity may not facilitate individuals’ self-disclosure in online environments, whereas the desire to share one’s “true” self may facilitate self-disclosure in online environments.

Parents’ new dating relationships after divorce are stressful to both parents and children, particularly when this relationship transition is quickly followed by divorce before family members adjust to new changes. Although parents’ new relationships and dating information are considered to occur at some point, relatively little is known about how divorced parents decide when, how much, and what to share with children. Guided by communication privacy management theory (CPM; Petronio, 2010), we explored if divorced parents’ perceived benefits and risks are associated with the timing of dating disclosures and introduction of new dating partners. Findings suggest that the timing of disclosures and introduction of parents’ dating partners are likely to be affected by parents’ evaluation of possible outcomes. Implications will be discussed. Objectives - To examine the association of divorced parents’ perceived benefits and risks of dating with the timing of dating disclosures. - To examine the association of divorced parents/ perceived benefits and risks of dating and the timing of when new dating partners are introduced to children. - To explore divorced parents’ perceived benefits and risks of dating.

The Inter-Battery Topic Model (IBTM) is an extension of the well known Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic model. It gives a factorized representation of multimodal (in this case two views) data, which better separates variation in observed data that is present in both views from variation that is present only in one of the separate views. This thesis is an evaluation and application study of this model with the aim of showing how it can be used in the very difficult classification task of dating grayscale face portraits from a dataset collected from highschool yearbooks. This task has very high intra-class variation and low inter-class variation which calls for techniques to extract the necessary information. An online-trained model is also implemented and evaluated as well as a simplification of the model more suited for this data specifically. The results show improved performance over LDA showing that the factorizing property of IBTM has a positive effect on performance for this type of classification task. / Inter-Battery Topic Model (IBTM) är en vidareutveckling av den välkända Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic-modellen. Den ger en faktoriserad representation av multimodal data som bättre separerar variation i datat som finns i båda datavyer från den som finns i de enskilda datavyerna. Det här examensarbetet är en evaluering och applikationsstudie av modellen, med mål att visa hur den kan användas i den mycket svåra klassificeringsuppgiften att datera svartvita bilder från ett dataset skapat från amerikanska highschool-årsboksfoton. Denna klassificeringsuppgift har väldigt hög inom-klass variation samt väldigt låg mellan-klass variation vilket kräver bättre sätt att extrahera den nödvändiga information för bra klassificering. En online-tränad variant av modellen implementeras och evalueras också, samt en modellvariant som är mer anpassad för just denna typ av data. Resultaten visar bättre prestanda än LDA vilket visar att den faktoriserade representationen från IBTM har en positiv effekt på prestanda in en klassificeringsuppgift av den här typen.

Modern, technologically-enabled markets are disrupting many industry sectors, including transportation, labor, lodging, dating services and others. While the system operator is able to collect data and deploy various control levers, these systems are highly complex, marked by a large number of interacting self-interested agents, uncertainty about the future and imperfect demand predictions. There remain major challenges in optimizing these marketplaces. In this dissertation, I describe work designing novel algorithms and performing theoretical analysis of networked systems, including those that arise in marketplaces. I demonstrate how to use tools from applied probability, modern optimization, and economics to develop methodologies for online decision making in contexts such as queueing control, revenue management, and running a matching platform. The first part of the dissertation designs novel algorithms for dynamic assignment and revenue management. The work considers networked systems where agents or tasks arrive over time, which is broadly relevant to service platforms with heterogeneous services, for instance shared transportation systems. Firstly, we propose a near optimal ``mirror backpressure'' control methodology for joint entry/assignment/pricing control in a network where there are a fixed number of supply units (vehicles), and demands with different origin and destination nodes arrive over time. The MBP policy does not need demand arrival rate predictions at all, and we prove guarantees of near optimal performance over a finite horizon. Secondly, we study a special case of the network control problem where the geographical imbalances in demand are small enough such that, ignoring stochasticity, they can be corrected using assignment control alone. The objective is to minimize the fraction of customers who are ``lost'' (not served) because there is no vehicle at a nearby location when the customer arrives. We show that for this setting we can achieve a refined notion of optimality, i.e., the large deviations optimality. The second part of the dissertation analyzes equilibria in matching markets under different mechanisms. Firstly, we study the Gale-Shalpley ``deferred acceptance'' algorithm, which has been successfully adopted in contexts such as school choice and resident matching programs. Our research question is, ``Which Gale-Shapley matching markets exhibit a short-side advantage?'' I.e., in which markets does being on the short side of the market allow agents to obtain better match partners relative to a similar ``balanced'' market with equal numbers of agents on the two sides? We address this problem by looking at the ``random matching market'' model where each agent considers only a subset of potential partners on the other side, and sharply characterize the resulting (nearly unique) stable matching, overcoming significant technical challenges. Secondly, we study the waiting-list mechanism, which is commonly used in kidney assignment, public housing allocation, and beyond. We show that the waiting-list mechanism is near-optimal in terms of allocative efficiency for general systems with an arbitrary number of agent types and item types, and obtain tight bound on the efficiency loss. Comparing to existing works which could only analyze very simple systems, we tackle the general case by taking a completely different approach and establishing a novel connection with stochastic gradient descent.

The Tremarctinae are a subfamily of bears endemic to the New World, including two of the largest terrestrial mammalian carnivores that have ever lived: the giant, short-faced bears Arctodus simus from North America and Arctotherium angustidens from South America (greater than or equal to 1000 kg). Arctotherium angustidens became extinct during the Early Pleistocene, whereas Arctodus simus went extinct at the very end of the Pleistocene. The only living tremarctine is the spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus), a largely herbivorous bear that is today only found in South America. The relationships among the spectacled bears (Tremarctos), South American short-faced bears (Arctotherium) and North American shortfaced bears (Arctodus) remain uncertain. In this study, we sequenced a mitochondrial genome from an Arctotherium femur preserved in a Chilean cave. Our molecular phylogenetic analyses revealed that the South American short-faced bears were more closely related to the extant South American spectacled bear than to the North American short-faced bears. This result suggests striking convergent evolution of giant forms in the two groups of short-faced bears (Arctodus and Arctotherium), potentially as an adaptation to dominate competition for megafaunal carcasses.

Although prior research has examined how individual difference factors are related to relationship initiation and formation over the Internet (e.g., online dating sites, social networking sites), little research has examined how dispositional factors are related to other aspects of online dating. The present research therefore sought to examine the relationship between several dispositional factors, such as Big-Five personality traits, self-esteem, rejection sensitivity, and attachment styles, and the use of online dating sites and online dating behaviors. Rejection sensitivity was the only dispositional variable predictive of use of online dating sites whereby those higher in rejection sensitivity are more likely to use online dating sites than those lower in rejection sensitivity. We also found that those higher in rejection sensitivity, those lower in conscientiousness, and men indicated being more likely to engage in potentially risky behaviors related to meeting an online dating partner face-to-face. Further research is needed to further explore the relationships between these dispositional factors and online dating behaviors.

Prior research suggests that rejection sensitive individuals may find it easier to express their true selves in an online environment. The purpose of the present study was to examine the extent to which rejection sensitivity (RS) and true self influence self-disclosure within the context of online dating. We collected data from a total of 1,295 individuals who completed an online survey. For those who engaged in online dating, RS was not directly related to self-disclosure in online dating profiles or in communicating with individuals met through online dating sites/apps, but true self was. In addition, there was an indirect relationship between RS and self-disclosure in the context of online dating through true self. These findings suggest that rejection sensitive individuals who feel more comfortable revealing aspects of their "true"selves online may be more likely to engage in self-disclosure within the context of online dating, which could potentially offer some clue as to why rejection sensitive individuals may be somewhat more likely to engage in online dating than less rejection sensitive individuals. That is, rejection sensitive individuals are perhaps more likely to engage in online dating because it may facilitate representation of their "true"selves and may thus increase dating success.