There Must Be a Reason…
Aug 24 at 6:06pm by Aileen
Why do people believe lies after being told the truth?
Sociologists from four major research institutions have published a study in the journal Sociological Inquiry examining how we support our false beliefs. They examined the false belief of many voters during the 2004 general election, which held that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was responsible for the primarily Saudi-conducted attacks on September 11, 2001.
The researchers concluded that the false beliefs were not caused by lies told repeatedly by the Bush Administration and some cable news channels, but by the individuals’ own personal need to justify a war that was already being waged. They named their study “There Must Be a Reason: Osama, Saddam and Inferred Justification,” and claim that their findings offer serious challenge to democracy – in that the people cannot be trusted to discern truth from falsehood.
Now, while it is a trivial observation that people tend to believe what they want to believe, and that they will seek out information sources that support and/or confirm their already-held beliefs, this blogger is not convinced that these sociologists should have so pointedly ignored the fact that it was the Bush-Cheney administration that invented the lies, started the war, and was backed up in that false propaganda effort by the mainstream broadcast and cable news media establishments. Seems like giving political liars and media propagandists a free pass on misleading the public does serious damage to the conclusions of the supposedly scientific study itself.
Popularity: 46% [?]
Valentine Report: The Science of Kissing
Feb 16 at 6:06pm by Aileen
At the annual meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science [AAAS] in Chicago on Friday the 13th, research was presented by a psychology professor at the University of Albany on the subject of kissing.
CNN reports in its coverage that the science of kissing is called “philematology.” Rutgers professor Helen Fisher says kissing is “a major escalation or de-escalation point in a powerful process of mate choice.” Kissing, says the study’s leader Gordon Gallup, Jr., transmits sensory information – smells, tastes, sound and tactile signals – that affect the couple’s perceptions of each other and whether they want to continue the relationship. In a survey of more than a thousand college students, Gallup and his colleagues found that 59% of men and 66% of women reported that after the first kiss their attraction ended.
The subconscious processing of the sensory information received in a kiss reveals some very interesting details about mate choices, too. The researchers found that women tend to be attracted to partners with a different immune system makeup than their own – information that is transmitted by the sense of smell. They also looked at increases and decreases in hormone levels before and after kissing, particularly oxytocin (the “love hormone”) and cortisol.
Kissing can quickly determine the success or failure of a potential mate choice, and that first kiss seems to be the most important in that respect. So all us fans of the Adam Sandler-Drew Barrymore romantic comedy 50 First Dates get some scientific explanation for why we feel it’s so sweet that Barrymore’s brain-damaged character who forgets Sandler every night falls in love with him all over again every day at the first kiss.
Pucker up: Scientists study kissing
Popularity: 26% [?]
I Was Bigfoot’s Love Slave!
Jul 30 at 10:10pm by Aileen
Or, how about “Angelina’s Alien Clone Babies!” (subtitle, “Brad stands by his woman even after UFO abduction…”. Or some such rot. We’ve all seen ‘em at the grocery store checkout line, and we’ve all been terribly tempted to read the funnies even if we absolutely don’t want to be seen buying one. I once saw a stand-up comedy act in which the comedian did nothing more than hold up a copy of the National Enquirer and read off the headlines and sidebar – with feeling. Then he’d say…
“But that’s NOT the real story! The REAL story is on page [whatever]…” whereupon he’d flip to some inside page with an even more bizarre headline and story. All with a perfectly deadpan face, fully animated only while reading the lurid details with Shakespearian delivery. He was so funny I saw the show three times.
Now, most of us actually do know better than to believe the sensationalized storytelling and photoshop creativity in tabloid rags like that. That’s what makes them such good comedy fodder. Nor do most of us purchase the magical anti-hex pendants or crystal healing rings or genuine eye of newt sure-love powder advertised in the pages of such rags. But somebody must be buying all that junk – as well as the tabloids they finance – and even if we do occasionally get a guilty pleasure out of light reading in the checkout line, most regular people would claim they don’t know anybody who’s really that dumb. Save perhaps an odd relative or friend of a friend.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Land of the Sick, Home of the Obese
Jul 29 at 6:06pm by Aileen
In the year 2030, what’s left of us ‘Baby-Boomers’ will be in our late 70s and early 80s. We will not likely be the largest demographic bump in the general population at that time, as more than half of us will have died off by then. 2030 is also the year that researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, along with researchers at other institutions, project that 86% of Americans could be obese if current trends continue.
Worse, projections show that 96% of non-Hispanic black women and 91% of Mexican-American men will be in those numbers. The costs of this situation amount to nearly a trillion dollars’ worth of obesity-related health care spending, or 1 in every 6 health care dollars.
The projection is based on three decades’ worth of collected data from national surveys. As the obese population ages the health care costs related to being fat will more than double every decade. In addition to hypertension, heart disease and stroke, there is also the link between being overweight and type-2 diabetes. Not to mention the fact that obese children – an increasing problem – have a shorter life expectancy than healthy children.
Popularity: 16% [?]
The Non-Evolution of Ethnic Cuisine
Jul 14 at 9:09pm by Aileen
It was bound to happen. Science Daily reports that research from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil entitled The non-equilibrium nature of culinary evolution has established that regional cuisines don’t evolve much. Even in a small world.
The researchers examined historical food preferences for ‘national’ diets in Britain, France and Brazil, and found that certain staples as well as unique ingredients remain in the cuisines despite modern access to restaurants specializing in regional or ‘national’ foods. And despite the modern availability of regional foods in grocery stores.
In other words, the Irish still love potatoes, the French still eat snails and frogs’ legs, the Germans still love sausages and sauerkraut, the Japanese still rely on fish stock and Central and South Americans still choose tortillas over Wonder Bread. Mediterranean peoples still consume lots of olive oil, and still have longer lives, less heart disease and lower cholesterol than the average American.
Popularity: 15% [?]
Send In The Clowns! …Humor as Coping Mechanism
Jun 19 at 4:04pm by Aileen
Way back in 2005 researchers at Texas A&M determined that humor – an appreciation of the absurd hilarity of life – can significantly increase Hope, and that hopefulness helps people cope with stresses in daily life and during illnesses as well.
In January of this year a communications professor at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, demonstrated that in a medical setting, laughter is the best medicine. Humor helps both the doctors and the patients cope. The finding was extended to the workplace and to educational situations as well, eventually reaching the conclusion that regardless of the content, humor seems to be beneficial and productive. It helps to get the point across in almost any situation.
Then on June 12, 2008 Alastaire Clarke published his Pattern Recognition Theory of Humor, which purportedly explains the reason that humor is common to all human societies. In Humor Shown to be Fundamental to Our Success as a Species, Clarke claims that humor is fundamantal to the evolution of human beings, and continues to be important in the cognitive development of infants and children.
Alas, Clarke’s Pattern Recognition Theory can’t tell us what’s funny or why, so it probably won’t be used by comedy writers or clowns to formulate their skits any time soon. And while humor can progress from basic slapstick to childish jokes to ridicule to satire, he does not attempt to explain why slapstick still makes us laugh even if we’ve progressed all the way to dry British satire. A clown would have a handy explanation for that, but I don’t think Clarke asked one. Oh, well.
The articles do make a strong case for the survival value of humor to human beings, and that may be all we really need to know about it.
Links:
Humor Can Increase Hope, Research Shows
Laughter is the Best Medicine
Popularity: 23% [?]
Uneven Ecological and Economic Impacts of Rich vs. Poor
Jan 25 at 4:04pm by Aileen
Where ecological footprints fall. The environmental impacts of high- (red), middle- (blue) and low- (yellow) income nations fall on other income tiers, as indicated by the footprints. The numbers are in trillions of 2005 international dollars. (Credit: Thara Srinivasan/UC Berkeley)
Rich Nations’ Environmental Footprints Tread Heavily on Poor Countries offers a study led by former UC-Berkeley Thara Srinivasan that examined the impacts of intensive agricultural expansion, deforestation, overfishing. loss of mangrove swamps and forests, ozone depletion and climate change between 1961 and 2000.
For the 3-year project Srinivasan teamed up with Richard B. Norgaard, an ecological economist and professor of energy and resources at UC-Berkeley. This allowed the team to evaluate economic impacts as well as ecological footprints.
Not surprisingly, the team noticed that poor nations are much more adversely impacted than rich nations. The calculation of “ecological footprints” of low, middle and high income nations demonstrated graphically that the large ecological footprints of rich nations unfairly impact poor nations whose footprints are small.
Economically speaking, the impact on poor nations is greater than the entire debt of those nations, about which Srinivasan said, “The ecological debt could more than offset the financial debt of low-income nations.” And middle-income nations had impacts on poor nations equivalent to the rich nations.
Popularity: 23% [?]
Professor Traces the Biological Source of Humor
Dec 25 at 8:08pm by Aileen
Humor Develops From Aggression Caused By Male Hormones
Sam Shuster, Described as a “Professor” (but with no indication of what he’s a ‘professor’ of) got a paper published in the British Medical Journal this week claiming that he’s figured out that the human capacity for humor develops from aggression caused by male hormones.
Professor Shuster figured this out by riding a unicycle around the streets of Newcastle upon Tyne and noticing the reactions he got from people of various ages. Those responses were predictable droll jokes, which indicated to Shuster that such jokes must have a biological cause. And because the most aggressive reactions came from young men, he’s convinced it has something to do with androgens in teenage boys. Most adult women responded with praise or encouragement instead of jokes, so apparently women – at least in one town in England – don’t have a sense of humor.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Worried About Global Warming? Don’t Get Divorced!
Dec 6 at 8:08pm by Aileen
Researchers Jianguo “Jack” Liu and Eunice Yu at Michigan State University have published data in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science demonstrating that getting divorced isn’t a ‘Green’ thing to do.
Soaring global divorce rates – even in places with strict religious policies against it – are driving urban sprawl and increasing consumption of resources like water and fuel for electricity.
Liu and Yu started with the obvious – when a couple divorces they require two housing units instead of one, even if the children share time at each. These require resources to construct and they take up space. They require fuel to heat and cool. The story in Science Daily, A Really Inconvenient Truth, notes that a refrigerator uses roughly the same amount of energy whether it belongs to one person or to a family. Among the findings when they started digging deeper:
Popularity: 18% [?]
Resistance Is Futile…
Nov 1 at 5:05pm by Aileen
And Things Nature Does to Rattle Our Perceptions
Lots of interesting science reports lately about all things neurological, in brains and in our remote sensor neurons. First up is a surprising (or maybe not so surprising) finding by a researcher at the University of Hertfordshire – the harder we try to mentally suppress our thoughts and desires, the more we will indulge in the activity we’re trying to suppress.
Resistance to Thoughts of Chocolate is Futile
This research project dealt with something quite simple, chocolate. Which some say is addictive, but that’s a whole different area of research. Dr. Erskine of Hertfordshire divided 134 young (avg. age 22) people into two groups to investigate how our thinking affects our behaviors.
The participants were asked to try two brands of chocolate and answer questions about which they preferred and why. Then they were given two periods of thought verbalization where they were to talk about their thoughts while alone. On top of this they were told they must think about – or not think about – certain things. Including chocolate.
Popularity: 13% [?]
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