tagged w/ Evolutionary Biology
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Scientific American...
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Losing Your Religion: Analytic Thinking Can Undermine Belief
A series of new experiments shows that analytic thinking can override intuitive assumptions, including those that underlie religious belief
By Marina Krakovsky | April 26, 2012 | 38
The Thinker Musee Rodin Image: Wikimedia Commons/innoxiuss
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People who are intuitive thinkers are more likely to be religious, but getting them to think analytically even in subtle ways decreases the strength of their belief, according to a new study in Science.
The research, conducted by University of British Columbia psychologists Will Gervais and Ara Norenzayan, does not take sides in the debate between religion and atheism, but aims instead to illuminate one of the origins of belief and disbelief. "To understand religion in humans," Gervais says, "you need to accommodate for the fact that there are many millions of believers and nonbelievers."
One of their studies correlated measures of religious belief with people's scores on a popular test of analytic thinking. The test poses three deceptively simple math problems. One asks: "If it takes five machines five minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?" The first answer that comes to mind—100 minutes—turns out to be wrong. People who take the time to reason out the correct answer (five minutes) are, by definition, more analytical—and these analytical types tend to score lower on the researchers' tests of religious belief.
But the researchers went beyond this interesting link, running four experiments showing that analytic thinking actually causes disbelief. In one experiment, they randomly assigned participants to either the analytic or control condition. They then showed them photos of either Rodin's The Thinker or, in the control condition, of the ancient Greek sculpture Discobolus, which depicts an athlete poised to throw a discus. (The Thinker was used because it is such an iconic image of deep reflection that, in a separate test with different participants, seeing the statue improved how well subjects reasoned through logical syllogisms.) After seeing the images, participants took a test measuring their belief in God on a scale of 0 to 100. Their scores on the test varied widely, with a standard deviation of about 35 in the control group. But it is the difference in the averages that tells the real story: In the control group, the average score for belief in God was 61.55, or somewhat above the scale's midpoint. On the other hand, for the group who had just seen The Thinker, the resulting average was only 41.42. Such a gap is large enough to indicate a mild believer is responding as a mild nonbeliever—all from being visually reminded of the human capacity to think.
Another experiment used a different method to show a similar effect. It exploited the tendency, previously identified by psychologists, of people to override their intuition when faced with the demands of reading a text in a hard-to-read typeface. Gervais and Norenzayan did this by giving two groups a test of participants' belief in supernatural agents like God and angels, varying only the font in which the test was printed. People who took the belief test in the unclear font (a typewriterlike font set in italics) expressed less belief than those who took it in a more common, easy-to-read typeface. "It's such a subtle manipulation," Norenzayan says. "Yet something that seemingly trivial can lead to a change that people consider important in their religious belief system." On a belief scale of 3 to 21, participants in the analytic condition scored an average of almost two points lower than those in the control group.
Analytic thinking undermines belief because, as cognitive psychologists have shown, it can override intuition. And we know from past research that religious beliefs—such as the idea that objects and events don't simply exist but have a purpose—are rooted in intuition. "Analytic processing inhibits these intuitions, which in turn discourages religious belief," Norenzayan explains.
Harvard University psychologist Joshua Greene, who last year published a paper on the same subject with colleagues Amitai Shenhav and David Rand, praises this work for its rigorous methodology. "Any one of their experiments can be reinterpreted, but when you've got [multiple] different kinds of evidence pointing in the same direction, it's very impressive."
The study also gets high marks from University of California, Irvine, evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala, the only former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science to have once been ordained as a Catholic priest, and who continues to assert that science and religion are compatible. Ayala calls the studies ingenious, and is surprised only that the effects are not even stronger. "You would expect that the people who challenge the general assumptions of their culture—in this case, their culture's religious beliefs—are obviously the people who are more analytical," he says.
The researchers, for their part, point out that both reason and intuition have their place. "Our intuitions can be phenomenally useful," Gervais says, "and analytic thinking isn't some oracle of the truth."
Greene concurs, while also raising a provocative question implicit in the findings: "Obviously, there are millions of very smart and generally rational people who believe in God," he says. "Obviously, this study doesn't prove the nonexistence of God. But it poses a challenge to believers: If God exists, and if believing in God is perfectly rational, then why does increasing rational thinking tend to decrease belief in God?"
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Losing Your Religion: Analytic Thinking Can Undermine... more
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The New York Times...
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December 26, 2011
The Hormone Surge of Middle Childhood
By NATALIE ANGIER
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PART ONE...
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VIEWED superficially, the part of youth that the psychologist Jean Piaget called middle childhood looks tame and uneventful, a quiet patch of road on the otherwise hairpin highway to adulthood.
Said to begin around 5 or 6, when toddlerhood has ended and even the most protractedly breast-fed children have been weaned, and to end when the teen years commence, middle childhood certainly lacks the physical flamboyance of the epochs fore and aft: no gotcha cuteness of babydom, no secondary sexual billboards of pubescence.
Yet as new findings from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, paleontology and anthropology make clear, middle childhood is anything but a bland placeholder. To the contrary, it is a time of great cognitive creativity and ambition, when the brain has pretty much reached its adult size and can focus on threading together its private intranet service — on forging, organizing, amplifying and annotating the tens of billions of synaptic connections that allow brain cells and brain domains to communicate.
Subsidizing the deft frenzy of brain maturation is a distinctive endocrinological event called adrenarche (a-DREN-ar-kee), when the adrenal glands that sit like tricornered hats atop the kidneys begin pumping out powerful hormones known to affect the brain, most notably the androgen dihydroepiandrosterone, or DHEA. Researchers have only begun to understand adrenarche in any detail, but they see it as a signature feature of middle childhood every bit as important as the more familiar gonadal reveille that follows a few years later.
Middle childhood is when the parts of the brain most closely associated with being human finally come online: our ability to control our impulses, to reason, to focus, to plan for the future.
Young children may know something about death and see monsters lurking under every bed, but only in middle childhood is the brain capable of practicing so-called terror management, of accepting one’s inevitable mortality or at least pushing thoughts of it aside.
Other researchers studying the fossil record suggest that a prolonged middle childhood is a fairly recent development in human evolution, a luxury of unfolding that our cousins the Neanderthals did not seem to share. Still others have analyzed attitudes toward middle childhood historically and cross-culturally. The researchers have found that virtually every group examined recognizes middle childhood as a developmental watershed, when children emerge from the shadows of dependency and start taking their place in the wider world.
Much of the new work on middle childhood was described in a recent special issue of the journal Human Nature. As a research topic, “middle childhood has been very much overlooked until recently,” said David Lancy, an anthropologist at Utah State University and a contributor to the special issue. “Which makes it all the more exciting to participate in the field today.”
The anatomy of middle childhood can be subtle. Adult teeth start growing in, allowing children to diversify their diet beyond the mashed potatoes and parentally dissected Salisbury steak stage. The growth of the skeleton, by contrast, slows from the vertiginous pace of early childhood, and though there is a mild growth spurt at age 6 or 7, as well as a bit of chubbying up during the so-called adiposity rebound of middle childhood, much of the remaining skeletal growth awaits the superspurt of puberty.
“Adulthood is defined by being skeletally as well as sexually mature,” said Jennifer Thompson of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “A girl may have her first period at 11 or 12, but her pelvis doesn’t finish growing until about the age of 18.”
The 18-year time frame of human juvenility far exceeds that seen in any other great ape, Dr. Thompson said. Chimpanzees, for example, are fully formed by age 12. With her colleague Andrew J. Nelson of the University of Western Ontario, Dr. Thompson analyzed fossil specimens from Neanderthals, Homo erectus and other early hominids, and concluded that their growth pattern was more like that of a chimpanzee than a modern human: By age 12 or 14, they had reached adult size.
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December 26, 2011
The Hormone Surge of Middle... more
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A long-standing idea that human languages share universal features that are dictated by human brain structure has been cast into doubt.A study reported in Nature has borrowed methods from evolutionary biology to trace the development of grammar in several language families.
:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13049700A long-standing idea that human languages share universal features that are dictated... more
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suzane
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1 year ago
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Science Guy Bill Nye Explains Why Evolution Belongs in Science Education
A recent poll found that a majority of teachers in the U.S. are avoiding teaching evolution as a fundamental tenant of biology in the science classroom. We talked to science proponent and television star Bill Nye (the science guy) about what this means for U.S. education.
In a recent survey of 926 public high school biology teachers across the nation, only 28 percent of teachers taught evolution as a well-supported fundamental idea of science. Meanwhile, 13 percent openly supported "intelligent design" in the classroom, and 60 percent fell somewhere in-between. This majority presented evolution cautiously—by including non-scientific viewpoints, by limiting discussion to genetics, or by saying that students only needed to learn the material to pass exams.
Q - What do you think about this?
A - Bill Nye, Executive Director of the Planetary Society: It's horrible. Science is the key to our future, and if you don't believe in science, then you're holding everybody back. And it's fine if you as an adult want to run around pretending or claiming that you don't believe in evolution, but if we educate a generation of people who don't believe in science, that's a recipe for disaster. We talk about the Internet. That comes from science. Weather forecasting. That comes from science. The main idea in all of biology is evolution. To not teach it to our young people is wrong.
Q - Why is there resistance to teaching evolution in schools?
A - It's reluctance to change. It's wanting the world to be different than it is. And if you don't want the world to be different you are an unusual human being. We all want the world to be different. But to deny evolution is in no one's best interest.
Q - Do you think there's anything that can be done about it?
A - Well the longest journey starts with just a single step. Science education: We should support it. Especially elementary school science. Nearly every rocket scientist got interested in it before they were 10. Everybody who's a physician, who makes vaccines, who wants to find the cure for cancer. Everybody who wants to do any medical good for humankind got the passion for that before he or she was 10. So we want to excite a new generation of kids—every generation—about the passion, beauty and joy—the PB&J—of science. These anti-evolution people are frustrating in two ways. The first way is, almost certainly they know better. Those people really do believe in flu shots. They really do understand that when you find fossil bones of ancient dinosaurs, you are looking at deep time, not just 5000 years. And secondly, and much more importantly, having raised a generation of kids who don't understand science is bad for everyone. And with the United States having a leadership role in science and technology, having a generation of kids not believing in science is bad for the world.
Q - Is there a funding issue? Is that why the teachers aren't teaching it correctly?
Read more at link:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/evolution-classroom-bill-nye-science-educationScience Guy Bill Nye Explains Why Evolution Belongs in Science Education
A recent... more
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Don't be surprised if one day your high school kid asks you how humans came into being. Wondering why? Well, majority of the U.S. high school teachers fail to effectively teach evolutionary biology, states a new survey finding.Don't be surprised if one day your high school kid asks you how humans came into... more
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Alstom
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Evolution's "new twist": Neanderthal-like "sister group" bred with humans like us.
Ker Than
for National Geographic News
Published December 22, 2010
A previously unknown kind of human—the Denisovans—likely roamed Asia for thousands of years, probably interbreeding occasionally with humans like you and me, according to a new genetic study.
In fact, living Pacific islanders in Papua New Guinea may be distant descendants of these prehistoric pairings, according to new analysis of DNA from a girl's 40,000-year-old pinkie bone, found in Siberian Russia's Denisova cave.
This "new twist" in human evolution adds substantial new evidence that different types of humans—so-called modern humans and Neanderthals, modern humans and Denisovans, and perhaps even Denisovans and Neanderthals—mated and bore offspring, experts say.
"We don't think the Denisovans went to Papua New Guinea," located at the northwestern edge of the Pacific region called Melanesia, explained study co-author Bence Viola, an anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
(Full story at link)Evolution's "new twist": Neanderthal-like "sister group" bred... more
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kodada
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Scientists: Serengeti on road to ruin
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/09/21/serengeti.migration.threat.road/index.html?hpt=C1
Photo: Conservationists say a proposed new road through the Serengeti National Park will disrupt migratory patterns of wildebeests
Serengeti on road to ruin, scientists warn
By Matthew Knight for CNN
September 21, 2010 11:07 a.m. EDT
London, England (CNN) -- Plans to build a highway through Tanzania's Serengeti National Park will destroy one of the world's last great wildlife sanctuaries, a group of conservation experts has warned.
Writing in the journal Nature, 27 scientists have called for a re-think on a proposed 50 kilometer (31 mile) road which they say will cause "environmental disaster."
Under plans approved by the Tanzanian government earlier this year, the trade route would bisect a northern part of the park, forming part of the 170 kilometer-long Arusha-Musoma highway slated to run from the Tanzanian coast to Lake Victoria, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Construction is expected to begin in 2012.
In "Road will ruin Serengeti," lead author Andrew Dobson, professor at the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University, says laying a track across the park would disrupt the annual migratory patterns of tens of thousands of zebras and gazelles, and 1.3 million wildebeest.
Using computer simulations the scientists estimate that if the wildebeests' access to the Mara river in Kenya is blocked their numbers "will fall to less than 300,000."
The ecosystem could flip into being a source of atmospheric CO2
--Scientists writing in 'Nature'
"This would lead to more grass fires, which would further diminish the quality of grazing by volatizing minerals, and the ecosystem could flip into being a source of atmospheric CO2," the scientists said.
In addition to simulations, the scientists also cite the experience of other park ecosystems where large mammal migration has been hindered by roads and fences.
In Canada's Banff National Park in Canada, "habitat fragmentation" has led to the "collapse of at least six of the last 24 terrestrial migratory species left in the world."
In Africa, the ecosystems of Etosha National Park in Namibia and Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in Botswana have collapsed to "a less diverse and less productive state," the scientists said.
Scientists say a different route running south of the Serengeti should be considered to preserve the 1.2 million hectare UNESCO World Heritage Site.
This alternative route could utilize an existing network of gravel roads and would only be 50 kilometers longer than the proposed northern route, the scientists said.
While they acknowledge that Tanzania needs improved infrastructure to facilitate economic development, they argue that the road would damage wildlife tourism -- "a cornerstone" of the country's economy which was worth an estimated $824 million in 2005.
The Nature article adds weight to the growing pressure on the Tanzanian government to reconsider its position regarding the road.
Last month, the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Zoological Society of London voiced their concerns and campaigns against the highway are gaining support on social networking sites Facebook ("Stop the Serengeti Highway") and Twitter ("SaveSerengeti").
Earlier this year, Tanzania's President Jakaya Kikwete tried to placate opponents of the project by announcing that the section of new road running through the Serengeti would not be tarmacked.
"I am also a conservation ally and I assure you I'm not going to allow something that will ruin the ecosystem to be built," President Kikwete said in an address to the nation in July.Scientists: Serengeti on road to ruin... more
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On a number of occasions, Bonobos were filmed using side to side head movements to prevent others from doing something they did not want them to do.
In one film a mother is seen shaking her head to stop her infant playing with its food.
This may reflect an early precursor to head-shaking behavior amongst humans in one of our closest relatives.
"In Bonobos, our observations are the first reported use of preventive head-shaking," say Ms Christel Schneider from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
The study has been published in the journal Primates.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8659000/8659411.stmOn a number of occasions, Bonobos were filmed using side to side head movements to... more
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Emory University researchers have identified the first fish known to have switched from ultraviolet vision to violet vision, or the ability to see blue light. The discovery is also the first example of an animal deleting a molecule to change its visual spectrum.
Their findings on scabbardfish, linking molecular evolution to functional changes and the possible environmental factors driving them, were published Oct. 13 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"This multi-dimensional approach strengthens the case for the importance of adaptive evolution," says evolutionary geneticist Shozo Yokoyama, who led the study. "Building on this framework will take studies of natural selection to the next level."
The research team included Takashi Tada, a post-doctoral fellow in biology, and Ahmet Altun, a post-doctoral fellow in biology and computational chemistry.
Vision 'like a painting'
For two decades, Yokoyama has done groundbreaking work on the adaptive evolution of vision in vertebrates. Vision serves as a good study model, since it is the simplest of the sensory systems. For example, only four genes are involved in human vision.
"It's amazing, but you can mix together this small number of genes and detect a whole color spectrum," Yokoyama says. "It's just like a painting."
The common vertebrate ancestor possessed UV vision. However, many species, including humans, have switched from UV to violet vision, or the ability to sense the blue color spectrum.
From the ocean depths
Fish provide clues for how environmental factors can lead to such vision changes, since the available light at various ocean depths is well quantified. All fish previously studied have retained UV vision, but the Emory researchers found that the scabbardfish has not. To tease out the molecular basis for this difference, they used genetic engineering, quantum chemistry and theoretical computation to compare vision proteins and pigments from scabbardfish and another species, lampfish. The results indicated that scabbardfish shifted from UV to violet vision by deleting the molecule at site 86 in the chain of amino acids in the opsin protein.
"Normally, amino acid changes cause small structure changes, but in this case, a critical amino acid was deleted," Yokoyama says.
More examples likely
"The finding implies that we can find more examples of a similar switch to violet vision in different fish lineages," he adds. "Comparing violet and UV pigments in fish living in different habitats will open an unprecedented opportunity to clarify the molecular basis of phenotypic adaptations, along with the genetics of UV and violet vision."
Scabbardfish spend much of their life at depths of 25 to 100 meters, where UV light is less intense than violet light, which could explain why they made the vision shift, Yokoyama theorizes. Lampfish also spend much of their time in deep water. But they may have retained UV vision because they feed near the surface at twilight on tiny, translucent crustaceans that are easier to see in UV light.
A framework for evolutionary biology
Last year, Yokoyama and collaborators completed a comprehensive project to track changes in the dim-light vision protein opsin in nine fish species, chameleons, dolphins and elephants, as the animals spread into new environments and diversified over time. The researchers found that adaptive changes occur by a small number of amino acid substitutions, but most substitutions do not lead to functional changes.
"Evolutionary biology is filled with arguments that are misleading, at best," Yokoyama says. "To make a strong case for the mechanisms of natural selection, you have to connect changes in specific molecules with changes in phenotypes, and then you have to connect these changes to the living environment."Emory University researchers have identified the first fish known to have switched... more
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A new paper reveals analyzes the evolutionary relationships of Synodontis catfishes and finds that their biogeographic history is more complex than previously thought. Includes data figures, maps and pics of the fishes!A new paper reveals analyzes the evolutionary relationships of Synodontis catfishes... more
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One theory suggests IQ tests actually measure MODERNITY, not inherent, genetic intelligence.
I just think it's very interesting to find out the criteria for measuring intelligence, both the INcluded and EXcluded factors. I would like to also find out the supposed IQ's of those who develop the tests, but I guess that's another article.
Also, Gladwell offers this correction to his article:
http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2007/12/correction.htmlOne theory suggests IQ tests actually measure MODERNITY, not inherent, genetic... more
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sajh
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4 years ago
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Woah. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around this: humans have extinct viruses in our DNA.
You've gotta read the whole article but I'll try to boil one of the main ideas down to this: viruses may have contributed to the evolution of species in more than one way.Woah. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around this: humans have extinct viruses... more
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sajh
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4 years ago
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