Category: sociality

Why would any biological scientist possibly be surprised that a one-year-old baby understands some of the rules governing society?

Bioblog posts are featured at the following recent carnivals: Carnival of Educators The Bobo Carnival of Politics Carnival of Opinions Scientia Pro Publica 23 Click on the links to find out what these are all about. Sphere: Related Content

We need to keep making an effort to interact with people not like us, because if we do not, our social brains easily fall into the trap of demonizing them. School integration is still an obvious way to do this.

In “Sunday in the Park with George,” the 1984 broadway musical, Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics) and James Lapine (book) explore the meaning and process of art. They really produced two different plays about art, each exploring different aspects of the creation of art, but with the theme running through both of the problem artists [...]

No one would try to defend politics as a rational process, although some like to agonize over phenomena such as the conundrum of people who do not vote for their economic self-interest (e.g. What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America). People from both extreme ends of the political spectrum claim [...]

Continued from Part 1… Except possibly for the most committed long-term breast-feeders, breasts spend the majority of their lives as secondary sexual characteristics, arguably unnecessary for reproduction, but certainly unnecessary post-reproduction. Although they may be considered necessary by some for mate attraction, they clearly have the broader role in most societies as a gender cue. [...]

A lot of breast cancer literature out there encourages the option of lumpectomy + radiation over mastectomy. This is understandable, since for a long time, mastectomy was considered the only option, and may be overkill for a lot of early stage breast cancers. But the NIH’s current statement on the matter seems rather strong in [...]

Our slightly tangential question today is, why are people so irrational about marriage? There have been cultures and times when legal marriage was important, and others when it was not. But there will always be people who are convinced that marriage is somehow a magic bullet for our social problems. Missives such as this one [...]

My last post covered a paper that found brain physiological correlates of political attitudes. That paper did not address the origin of the physiological differences, i.e. whether they might be genetic or environmental. An earlier paper (Alford, J.R., C.L. Funk, and J.R. Hibbing, 2005. Are political orientations genetically transmitted? American Political Science Review, 99:153-167), though, [...]

A recent paper in Nature Neuroscience (Amodio, D.M., J.T. Jost, S.L. Master & C.M. Yee, 2007. Neurocognitive correlates of liberalism and conservatism. Nature Neuroscience 10:1246-1247) has been presented as far more controversial than it is – although surely the authors knew they would ruffle a few feathers with their study. Here is the abstract: Political [...]