linkfest – 05/14/13

Emergence of Individuality in Genetically Identical Mice – “Our results show that factors unfolding or emerging during development contribute to individual differences in structural brain plasticity and behavior.” – the nuture side of nature-nuture. – see also Mice, Men, and Fate.

Mysterious Minoans Were European, DNA Finds – “[T]he research team analyzed DNA from ancient Minoan skeletons that were sealed in a cave in Crete’s Lassithi Plateau between 3,700 and 4,400 years ago…. The researchers found that the Minoan skeletons were genetically very similar to modern-day Europeans — and especially close to modern-day Cretans, particularly those from the Lassithi Plateau. They were also genetically similar to Neolithic Europeans, but distinct from Egyptian or Libyan populations.” see also dienekes.

Chinese project probes the genetics of genius – “Bid to unravel the secrets of brainpower faces scepticism.”

Dogs and Humans Evolved Together, Study Suggests – “[B]oth species underwent similar changes in genes responsible for digestion and metabolism, such as genes that code for cholesterol transport. Those changes could be due to a dramatic change in the proportion of animal versus plant-based foods that occurred in both at around the same time, the researchers said. The team also found co-evolution in several brain processes — for instance, in genes that affect the processing of the brain chemical serotonin. In humans, variations in these genes affect levels of aggression.”

How to spot a murderer’s brain – “Do your genes, rather than upbringing, determine whether you will become a criminal? Adrian Raine believed so – and breaking that taboo put him on collision course with the world of science.”

Clark/Frost Domestication – “Thinking about the response of the pacified and submission Roman population to barbarian invaders immediately brings to mind the response of contemporary North Americans and Atlantic Europeans to barbarian invaders. It reads just the same: ‘welcome new neighbor!’” – from henry harpending.

Ovulation and politics – “‘Ovulation led single women to become more liberal, less religious, and more likely to vote for Barack Obama. In contrast, ovulation led women in committed relationships to become more conservative, more religious, and more likely to vote for Mitt Romney.’” – from mr. mangan.

The Personality and Geography of the Entrepreneur – “German psychologists Martin Obschonka and colleagues…used Rentfrow’s [big five personality] data to create a measure of Entrepreneur-prone personality profile for the different states in America.” – another really cool post from staffan!

Linguists identify 15,000-year-old ‘ultraconserved words’ – “A team of researchers has come up with a list of two dozen ‘ultraconserved words’ that have survived 150 centuries. It includes some predictable entries: ‘mother,’ ‘not,’ ‘what,’ ‘to hear’ and ‘man.’ It also contains surprises: ‘to flow,’ ‘ashes’ and ‘worm.’ The existence of the long-lived words suggests there was a ‘proto-Eurasiatic’ language that was the common ancestor to about 700 contemporary languages that are the native tongues of more than half the world’s people.”

The Mating Advantage of Male Musicians: Women Find Guitars Sexy – “Studies from two countries suggest women are more attracted to a man if he’s holding a guitar.” – more science proving what everybody already knows! (~_^)

More men than women harassed in the military, often by other men – from the awesome epigone.

Redheads are at increased risk of skin cancer even if they DON’T spend time in the sun

Children with Autism Hypersensitive to Motion

Privacy protections: The genome hacker – “Yaniv Erlich shows how research participants can be identified from ‘anonymous’ DNA.”

Tajikistan to Ban Cousin Marriage – “Formal prohibition unlikely to stamp out widespread tradition.” – h/t anatoly!

Tutankhamun’s death and the birth of monotheism

bonus: USG Pushing Unconstitutional College Speech Codes – “The government which rules over Americans is trying to further reduce free speech on college campuses…. Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller, author of The Mating Mind, sees this new federal mandate as a threat to the ability to teach the truth about human nature.” – from parapundit.

bonus bonus: Could Lighning Come from Space? – that would be FRIGGIN’ AWESOME!!

bonus bonus bonus: from the u.k. – Former minister admits Labour deliberately engineered mass immigration and A fifth of murder and rape suspects born abroad, shock survey finds.

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Immigrant workers undermine wage growth – “Immigrant workers, mainly from other Nordic countries, have a negative effect on the pay checks of Norwegian employees. Workers with minimal skills and little experience are the most vulnerable.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: First land animals kept their fish faces

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Genome shows macaw is one smart bird

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Study: Plants communicate with each other via underground fungi

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…personality goes a long way.

staffan at the eponymous staffan’s personality blog has had a couple of very interesting posts lately (and has a very interesting blog in general, btw!):

“The Personality of Tribalism”

“… Given this, I think it’s reasonable to view tribalism as new personality trait. It doesn’t correlate strongly to any of the Big Five and there is no obvious reason to believe that it would be interchangeable with any traits outside this model, such as Honesty/humility, Sensation Seeking or ‘dark’ traits like Narcissism or Psychopathy either. Like other personality traits, it’s highly inheritable and is not influenced much by upbringing, culture or other shared environmental factors. And although it’s most definitely seems more common among conservatives, it can easily be found among liberals too, so it’s not just a political attitude. So by all accounts this is a new trait that needs to be conceptualized, measured and researched. …”

- and -

“The Corrupt Person – Just Like You and Me?”

“… So, based on these figures, who is he, the corrupt person? An Average Joe? The data from Lynn suggests that it might be a completely average person, or maybe someone who is a little more extraverted, emotionally unstable and…well psychopathic (it may not sound like it but it is a dimensional trait like the others). But hardly anything that would strike anyone as out of the ordinary. His most conspicuous trait would be his low intelligence, and living in a country with a low average IQ even that would not be conspicuous to his fellow countrymen. ….”

read the entire posts there! (^_^)

(btw – regularly scheduled blogging will resume later this week….)

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personality goes a long way…

in this past sunday’s linkfest, i posted a link to an article about how some researchers found that the ‘big five’ personality traits don’t really seem to apply to some south american hunter-gatherers — the tsimané. i have to admit that i didn’t really pay close attention to the report until jayman commented on it (thnx, jayman!). what the researchers apparently found is that tsimané personality traits don’t fall into a big set of five categories, but rather a ‘big two.’

from the original research article [pdf - pg. 10+]:

“Evidence for the five-factor structure of personality among the Tsimane of Bolivia is weak. Internal reliability is generally below levels found in developed countries. The five-factor model did not cleanly emerge in any of the exploratory or confirmatory factor analyses, and Procrustean rotations did not produce strong congruence with a U.S. sample. Procrustes analysis, which is arguably the most forgiving test for replication of the FFM (McCrae et al., 1996), yielded an average congruence coefficient of 0.62. This is well below the benchmark of 0.90 and considerably less than most congruence scores found in other cross-cultural applications of the Big Five (McCrae et al., 2005; Schmitt et al., 2007)….

“Exploratory factor analysis yields a personality structure that is largely distinct from the Big Five….

“The internal reliability of the first two derived factors in Table 5 (five-factor solution) and Table S1 (unrestricted factor solution) is high, supporting the possibility of a ‘Tsimane Big Two’ organized according to prosociality and industriousness, as described above. These two factors show significant response stability; response stability for the first derived factor is stronger than for any of the Big Five…. However, these Big Two are not the two higher order factors of Digman (1997), characterized as stability and plasticity by DeYoung (2006), which neatly subsume the Big Five by merging Extraversion with Openness and Agreeableness with Conscientiousness and Neuroticism. Our factors instead cut across the Big Five domains. These results are consistent with the findings of Ashton, Lee, Goldberg, and de Vries (2009), where higher order factors emerge because lower order facets load onto multiple factors. Not only do we find that items load onto multiple factors, but the loading coefficients in our exploratory factor analyses are generally lower than those found in previous studies of the Big Five.

“Our findings provide evidence that the Big Five model does not apply to the Tsimane. Our findings also bring into sharper focus past reports from developing societies where the FFM was not clearly replicated. Of the 50 countries reported in McCrae et al. (2005), only India, Morocco, Botswana, and Nigeria produced average congruence scores less than 0.90. The lowest congruence scores reported by McCrae et al. are 0.53 and 0.56 for Openness in Botswana and Nigeria, respectively. In the African and South Asian countries from Schmitt et al. (2007), internal reliability for Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness is similar to what we report for the Tsimane. Because the samples from the developing countries in Schmitt et al. and McCrae et al. are
primarily college students, more representative samples from these countries may have produced even lower congruence scores and internal reliability.”

so, the big five maybe don’t fit some other populations, either! hmmmm. curiouser and curioser.

again, i have to admit that i haven’t thought very much about this, but i feel kinda dumb right now in that i think i’ve been forgetting first principles when it comes to these personality things, namely, human biodiversity! why should we suppose that all human societies everywhere will fit into the big five categorizations? we shouldn’t be assuming that at all!

but jayman’s already neatly summed up the problems with personality research and hbd, so there’s no need for me to repeat what he’s said:

“While the HEXACO model is interesting, and certainly feels more ‘complete’ than the Big Five, I will say that personality research in general still has a *long* way to go, hence I don’t put too much faith in such models (or most ‘models’ in social science, for that matter). A big part of the problem is that too much of psychological research has been done on WEIRD people, and even then on the segment of those who are college students, and this has been a major stumbling block in trying to gauge the gamut of human behaviors….”

just to note, in the tsimané article, the researchers point out that “most studies of the FFM have been restricted to literate, urban populations, which are uncharacteristic of the majority of human evolutionary history.” they also say that their study of tsimané personality types using the five-factor model is the FIRST done on an illiterate, indigenous society. oh, dear.

more from jayman…

“HBD Chick, more than most, has demonstrated the importance of sometimes very specific behavioral traits, which are quite heritable. Muslim honor killing is one such example (where does that fit in HEXACO?). It’s very clear that standard personality tests do not capture heritable behavioral traits that are of great significance.

“Indeed, it may turn out that it may not be possible to boil down human behavioral traits into simple dimensional systems because the range of behavioral traits is so great, and encompasses behavioral responses designed for fairly specific situations (which sounds almost like a sacrilege coming out of a reductionist like me); for example, how does one account for the ideological divide between libertarian liberalism of Anglo societies and collectivism/communism of Eastern Europe and China on the other (a divide, which, itself, is really only relevant for highly organized societies with a long history of civilization and agriculture)?

“Perhaps one day they’ll cook up a system that can broadly encompass the range of behavior, but that day is not today.”

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linkfest – 01/06/13

All Human Behavioral Traits are Heritable – from jayman. (<< read this!)

John Derbyshire’s Vade Mecum For Diversity Conversations (<< read this, too!)

Male Superiority in Spatial Navigation: Adaptation or Side Effect?

Why Girls Do Better in School – “Why do girls get better grades in elementary school than boys, even when they perform worse on standardized tests?” – basically ’cause they behave better in the classroom (but you knew that already, didn’t you?).

White murder rates by state – from the awesome epigone.

‘Universal’ personality traits don’t necessarily apply to isolated indigenous people – “Researchers who spent two years looking at 1,062 members of the Tsimane culture found that they didn’t necessarily exhibit the five broad dimensions of personality – openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism – also known as the ‘Big Five.’”

Dopamine-receptor gene variant linked to human longevity – “[S]tudy finds genetic tie to personality traits influencing healthy aging.”

War Before Civilization – from greg cochran.

bonus: The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist

bonus bonus: Cloud of atoms goes beyond absolute zero – whoa!

bonus bonus bonus: The Offenses Clause & Universal Jurisdiction Over Terrorists – bad stuff. =/

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Banter about Dildoes – review of Shopping in Ancient Rome.

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: How to Really Read in 2013 – from foseti – i like this!

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on being trusting

ihtg said about trust: “Unlike IQ/g, trust isn’t (IMO) an innate personal attribute encoded within one person’s brain. It’s a variable in a man’s interaction with his peers. Its existence depends on that interaction.”

well, yes … and no.

clearly trusting someone else happens during an interaction, yes. and the level of trust will be higher or lower depending on the circumstances in which that interaction happens — it’s prolly much easier to be trusting nowadays in peaceful, middle class minnesota than in war-torn congo.

but being trusting is also a personality trait — being more or less trusting is something innate — at least partly. and, like all the other personality quirks, it varies from individual to individual — and from population to population. from “Heritability of cooperative behavior in the trust game” in which the researchers studied twins taking part in the trust game [pgs: 3724-25, link opens pdf]:

“Our results thus suggest that humans are endowed with genetic variation that can partially account for differences in trust and trustworthiness when interacting with anonymous partners in the laboratory….

“Although we do find that genetic differences play a significant role for behavior in the classic trust game, the largest portion of the variance is explained by differences in unique environment. This is consistent with general results from the trust game that indicate behavior is more susceptible to state (unique mood, context) than trait. However, a result that may surprise some social scientists is that genetic differences appear to be a more important source of phenotypic variation than differences in common environment. This finding is in line with a broad consensus in the behavior genetics literature. Indeed, the second ‘law of behavior genetics’ proposed by Turkheimer is that the effect of being raised in the same family is generally smaller than the effect of genes.”

swedes appear to be more trusting than americans to me. unfortunately, “american” is such a catch-all description, it’s difficult to know what sort of ethnic groups we’re talking about here (note that the americans had more options of how much to share than the swedes did):

and the heritability of trust amongst swedes seems to lean a bit more towards a genetic explanation than amongst americans. (interesting that the shared environments of the twins seems to have amounted to diddly squat.):

people who are more agreeable — as in agreeableness in the big five personality traits — tend to be more trusting:

“People who score high on this dimension are empathetic, considerate, friendly, generous, and helpful. They also have an optimistic view of human nature. They tend to believe that most people are honest, decent, and trustworthy…. [I]n general, people who are concerned about others also tend to cooperate with them, help them out, and trust them.”

i’m not very agreeable (32nd percentile). i just know i’m gonna wind up a cranky, old cat-lady yelling at the kids to GET OFF MY LAWN! (~_^)

previously: trust and i’m abnormal

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linkfest – 10/09/11

A Moral Gene? — one of ‘em.

Copping a Latitude: Genetics Supports Idea Cultural Interaction Was More East to West Than North to South — not to mention genetic interaction.

Study finds crows can distinguish symbols representing quantities

Racial differences in narcissistic tendencies — higher levels of narcissism in black than in whites.

Cannibalism Confirmed Among Ancient Mexican Group – “Eating humans ‘crucial’ to spiritual life of the Xiximes people.” – ancient? we’re talking about 1425 a.d. here.

Chinese Kids Feel More Obliged Toward Parents? — from parapundit.

5 Things That Internet Porn Reveals About Our Brains – no big surprises here. except maybe for the number of guys searching for granny pr0n!

Climbing up the social ladder — Mouse study may tell how. — that’s some geeky looking chinese people there! not that there’s anything wrong with that. (~_^)

‘Dumb’ Neanderthals Likely Had a Smart Diet

Birth Order and the Big Five – “A new study reports that there is no connection between birth order and Big 5 personality traits.” – @the inductivist.

bonus: Charles Darwin, Economist

bonus bonus: Afghanistan Holds Enormous Bounty of Rare Earths, Minerals – “Geologists actually mapping the country’s mineral bounty suspect its prime cache of coveted rare earth elements is considerably larger than the latest estimate lets on”

bonus bonus bonus: Is the Present Better Than the Past? — from everyone’s favorite über-pessimist, john derbyshire.

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linkfest – 10/02/11

Tea Leaves – “Denisovans may stem from Homo erectus, at least in part….” – from greg cochran, via race/history/evolution notes. see also: All One Species.

and on that note: We Are All Laurasians – from the reluctant apostate.

The Spread of Inequality – “In variable environments, stratified societies spread more and are also better able to survive resource shortages by sequestering mortality in the lower classes.”

Willingness to lie manipulated with magnets – “Magnetic stimulation of parts of the prefrontal cortex can influence the propensity to lie or tell the truth”

The Level and Nature of Autistic Intelligence II: What about Asperger Syndrome? – “Asperger individuals’ scores are much higher when they are evaluated by a test called Raven’s Progressive Matrices, which encompasses reasoning, novel problem-solving abilities, and high-level abstraction.” [source] – from the research article: “We have proposed that autistic patients’ cognitive processes function in an atypically independent way, leading to ‘parallel, non-strategic integration of patterns across multiple levels and scales’ and to versatility in cognitive processing.” – our brains are parallel processors, not serial processors. (~_^)

“The Emperor’s New Clothes” book review/critique – from jay.

Neurotics experience more immersion when watching films – yes. yes, we do.

Some South Caucasian perspectives on female exogamy – from ahnenkult.

Schizophrenia And The Developing World Revisited

bonus: the propaganda is working – Americans move dramatically toward acceptance of homosexuality – “Young people lead the changes.”

bonus bonus: The euro delusion – goodbye to the third stupid, utopian idea of the last century – “Contrary to what proponents of this delusion claim, it is not about xenophobia or racism; the issue, as Charles Moore wrote on Saturday, is one of sovereignty, and sovereignty relies on the legitimacy that only nations can provide.” – wow. see also: Europe’s problem is that no one knows who’s in charge.

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linkfest – 09/10/11

Earliest Signs of Advanced Tools Found — also, john hawks on the find.

The Verge of Human – @the loom. there might be some fossilized skin from one of these fossils, too. cool!!

Modernity and the Lynn-Flynn Effect – from dennis mangan.

Human ancestors interbred with related species – “Analysis suggests genetic mixing occurred in Africa around 35,000 years ago…. Hammer says this disproves the conventional view that we are descended from a single population that arose in Africa and replaced all other Homo species without interbreeding. ‘We need to modify the standard model of human origins,’ he says.”

Study links baby’s behavior and adult brain function – “A new study that tracked children from before they were teething until they were graduating high school suggests that a baby boy’s temperament may predict his brain activity nearly two decades later.”

Freedom to Riot: On the Evolution of Collective Violence – “Collective violence, extending from riots to warfare, presents a challenge to our ordinary understanding of free will. Actions that would rarely be taken by an individual on their own seem to be embraced when supported by a larger group.”

Scientists find they can control how people react to group pressure – baaaaaaah.

Why Is Average IQ Higher in Some Places? – it’s not the whole story, but it’s likely part of it.

Couch Potatoes Explained? Missing Key Genes May Be Cause for Lack of Resolve to Exercise, Researchers Find

Blacks are more narcissistic – @the inductivist.

bonus: The “Yellow Snow” Test for Self-Recognition – watch out where the huskies go!

bonus bonus: The irrationality of politics

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