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Best of the Web: Are Beautiful People 'Selfish by Nature'?

Natalie Portman
© Steve Granitz/WireImageA study suggests that people with symmetrical faces, such as Natalie Portman, are naturally more self-sufficient.
People with symmetrical faces are more self-sufficient and less likely to co-operate, new research suggests

Kate Moss, George Clooney, Natalie Portman or Cristiano Ronaldo may be many people's ideas of dream dates, but pioneering research that combines economics with biology suggests they may not be perfect life partners.

According to a study to be discussed this month at a gathering of Nobel prizewinners, people blessed with more symmetrical facial features, which are considered more attractive, are less likely to co-operate and more likely to selfishly focus on their own interests.

Santiago Sanchez-Pages, who works at the universities of Barcelona and Edinburgh, and Enrique Turiegano, of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, base their claims on the "prisoner's dilemma" model of behaviour, played out under laboratory conditions. Two players were each given the option of being a "dove" and co-operating for the greater good; or a "hawk", taking the selfish option, with a chance of gaining more if the other player chose "dove" and co-operated. The subjects' faces were then analysed.

Magic Wand

Saying swear words actually stresses your brain

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© GranniesKitchen
While there's nothing quite like reeling off a string of profanities to blow off some steam, our brains might not agree with that sentiment. Saying swear words out loud actually triggers reactions deep in the emotion centers of the brain.

That's the finding of Professor Jeffrey Bowers and Dr. Christopher Pleydell-Pearce, both of the University of Bristol's School of Experimental Psychology. They designed an experiment in which participants read from three lists: one with swear words on it, another with euphemisms for those swear words, and finally a list of neutral words with no profane connections. The test subjects consistently had a far greater autonomic response when reading the actual swears - in other words, swearing was more stressful than not swearing, neurologically speaking.

Book

Spoiler alert: Stories are not spoiled by 'spoilers'

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© Jean-Honoré FragonardYoung Girl Reading
Many of us go to extraordinary lengths to avoid learning the endings of stories we have yet to read or see - plugging our ears, for example, and loudly repeating "la-la-la-la," when discussion threatens to reveal the outcome. Of book and movie critics, we demand they not give away any plot twists or, at least, oblige with a clearly labeled "spoiler alert." We get angry with friends who slip up and spill a fictional secret.

But we're wrong and wasting our time, suggests a new experimental study from the University of California, San Diego. People who flip to the last page of a book before starting it have the better intuition. Spoilers don't spoil stories. Contrary to popular wisdom, they actually seem to enhance enjoyment.

Even ironic-twist and mystery stories - which you'd be forgiven for assuming absolutely depend on suspense or surprise for success - aren't spoiled by spoilers, according to a study by Nicholas Christenfeld and Jonathan Leavitt of UC San Diego's psychology department, to be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science.

Dollar

Best of the Web: The Rich Are Different - and Not in a Good Way, Studies Suggest

Rich Shopper
© The New York TimesA shopper choses a pair of $1,495 Christian Louboutin shoes at Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan.
The 'Haves' show less empathy than 'Have-nots'

Psychologist and social scientist Dacher Keltner says the rich really are different, and not in a good way: Their life experience makes them less empathetic, less altruistic, and generally more selfish.

In fact, he says, the philosophical battle over economics, taxes, debt ceilings and defaults that are now roiling the stock market is partly rooted in an upper class "ideology of self-interest."

"We have now done 12 separate studies measuring empathy in every way imaginable, social behavior in every way, and some work on compassion and it's the same story," he said. "Lower class people just show more empathy, more prosocial behavior, more compassion, no matter how you look at it."

In an academic version of a Depression-era Frank Capra movie, Keltner and co-authors of an article called "Social Class as Culture: The Convergence of Resources and Rank in the Social Realm," published this week in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, argue that "upper-class rank perceptions trigger a focus away from the context toward the self...."

Book

Days Spent Reading to Dogs During Summer May Help Avoid Decline of Reading Skills

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© Charles B. BartonCompulsory Education
Pilot study's results published in veterinary school white paper.

Second graders who read aloud to a canine over the summer seem to maintain their reading skills during the dog days of summer, according to a pilot study published today by the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University.

In the study, published in a whitepaper on the school's website, second-grade students with a range of reading aptitudes and attitudes toward reading were paired with dogs - or people - and asked to read aloud to them once a week for 30 minutes in the summer of 2010.

At the end of the program, students who read to the dogs experienced a slight gain in their reading ability and improvement in their attitudes toward reading, as measured on the Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) and Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (ERAS), respectively - while those who read to people experienced a decrease on both measures.

Another surprising result was the high rate of attrition among students in the control group. Of the original cohort of nine, a third failed to complete the program. No students left the dog-reading group.

No Entry

Rioters have 'lower levels' of brain chemical that keeps impulsive behaviour under control

Some men may be more likely to riot because of their 'impulsive' brains, according to a study.

Certain individuals have lower levels of a brain chemical that helps keep behaviour under control, scientists believe.

Researchers from the University of Cardiff uncovered a link between impulsiveness and levels of the neurotransmitter GABA in a key brain region.

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© EPADo rioters, pictured looting a shop in Hackney, have lower levels of a brain chemical that helps keep behaviour under control? Scientists think so
Those with low levels tended to be more aggressive and to respond rashly to 'urges'.

GABA is one of a family of brain chemicals that allow signals to flow between neurons.

Attention

Study: Suicide, mental health linked to sex abuse

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© Unknown
Women who have experienced rape or other abuse have far higher rates of mental disorders and are up to 20 times more likely to attempt suicide than other females, an Australian study showed Wednesday.

The findings, reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed a very strong association between exposure to gender-based violence and mental disorder, said study leader Susan Rees.

"Based on other studies, we expected there to be a correlation and an association, but the strength of it was particularly concerning," said Rees, from the School of Psychiatry at the University of New South Wales.

"Not only was there a higher rate (of mental disorder) but there was also a greater severity."

Info

You Can Count On This: Math Ability Is Inborn, New Research Suggests

Brain Science
© Will Kirk / JHUMelissa Libertus is a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

We accept that some people are born with a talent for music or art or athletics. But what about mathematics? Do some of us just arrive in the world with better math skills than others?

It seems we do, at least according to the results of a study by a team of Johns Hopkins University psychologists. Led by Melissa Libertus, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, the study -- published online in a recent issue of Developmental Science -- indicates that math ability in preschool children is strongly linked to their inborn and primitive "number sense," called an "Approximate Number System" or ANS.

Research reveals that "number sense" is basic to all animals, not just human beings. For instance, creatures that hunt or gather food use it to ascertain where they can find and procure the most nuts, plants or game and to keep track of the food they hunt or gather. We humans use it daily to allow us, at a glance, to estimate the number of open seats in a movie theater or the number of people in a crowded meeting. And it is measurable, even in newborn infants.

Though the link between ANS and formal mathematics ability already has been established in adolescents, Libertus says her team's is the first study to examine the role of "number sense" in children too young to already have had substantial formal mathematics instruction.

Magic Wand

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Stress

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© Jonathon Rosen
How a broken heart can really break your heart, violent games can ease your stress, and the lowest-stress job around.
  1. Think about money, work, economic outlook, family, and relationships. Feeling anxious? In a 2010 American Psychological Association survey [pdf], those five factors were the most often cited sources of stress for Americans.
  2. Stress is strongly tied to cardiac disease, hypertension, inflammatory diseases, and compromised immune systems, and possibly to cancer.
  3. And stress can literally break your heart. Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, or "broken heart syndrome," occurs when the bottom of the heart balloons into the shape of a pot (a tako-tsubo) used in Japan to trap octopus. It's caused when grief or another extreme stressor makes stress hormones flood the heart.

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Visit the Éiriú Eolas site or participate on the forum to learn more about the scientific background of this program and then try it out for yourselves, free of charge.


Eye 2

Best of the Web: The Philosophical Significance of Psychopaths: Postmodernism, Morality, and God

psychopath work
© unknown
Psychopaths are fascinating, in a repugnant sort of way. Whether we read about Ted Bundy or Paul Bernardo or see psychopaths depicted in fictional characters such as Hannibal Lecter, we are forced to wonder how a human being could ever do such horrible things. We are also forced to wonder whether we ourselves could ever do those things - whether such darkness possibly exists deep within us all.

As a sensitive human being, I was always baffled by psychopaths until I studied the topic of psychopathy, especially as understood by its foremost expert, Robert Hare, the psychiatrist who developed the Psychopathy Checklist, now the standard tool for diagnosing people with psychopathy. But it was as a philosopher that I experienced a kind of awakening. This is because I not only came to understand what makes psychopaths tick, but I began to see the wider significance of psychopaths - connections with areas of inquiry that experts such as Hare (let alone philosophers) did not seem to see. (I am a "What is x ?" philosopher, the kind who takes science seriously, the kind who believes that it is not wisdom to ignore evidence.)

In this article, I shall focus on three areas of wider significance: postmodernism, morality, and theology. It is perhaps astonishing that the human phenomenon of psychopathy can teach us anything about these three fields, but as we shall see, it actually has a lot to teach us.

First we need to be reasonably clear on what psychopathy is. Following the work of Hare in his must-read Without Conscience (1995), psychopathy is not a form of insanity or even a mental illness, given the clinical meanings of these terms. Nor need psychopaths be lacking in rationality. Conceivably a psychopath could have the genius of an Einstein and function quite well in the world. There is no twisted logic necessarily involved with psychopathy, no warped thinking that is so obvious in the mentally ill and insane, no hallucinations, no depression, no dysfunctionality necessarily.

Psychopaths are defined in terms of something else - a cluster of features, most of which are deficiencies. This means that psychopathy is a matter of degree. Many of us might score relatively high in one or more of these defining characteristics, but that does not necessarily mean that we are psychopaths. On the other hand, there are those who score so high on the Psychopathy Checklist that they are considered full-fledged psychopaths. They are, so to speak, the interesting ones.

Comment: Well Yahweh certainly fits the psychopathic profile. The offspring of his followers, Christianity and Islam aren't any better. Monotheism is fertile ground for psychopathy.

This article makes many good points. To widen the field of view to include the effects of psychopathy on an entire society, be sure to read Political Ponerology.