Social Science posts
- July 13, 2016
- 04:33 PM
- 723 views
"Shocking" new role of the immune system: Controlling social interaction
by Dr. Jekyll in Lunatic Laboratories
In a startling discovery that raises fundamental questions about human behavior, researchers have determined that the immune system directly affects - and even controls - creatures' social behavior, such as their desire to interact with others. So could immune system problems contribute to an inability to have normal social interactions?
... Read more »
Filiano, A., Xu, Y., Tustison, N., Marsh, R., Baker, W., Smirnov, I., Overall, C., Gadani, S., Turner, S., Weng, Z.... (2016) Unexpected role of interferon-γ in regulating neuronal connectivity and social behaviour. Nature. DOI: 10.1038/nature18626
- July 13, 2016
- 02:00 AM
- 889 views
Another one bites the dust?
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
The music theory literature has been suggesting it for a long time: the idea that simultaneous sounding tones with frequency relationships that are low integer multiples, like 1:2 (octave) or 3:2 (a perfect fifth), are determinant of how listeners perceive consonance. It is an idea that is often related to the overtone structure of natural sounds (such as the voice or string instruments) suggesting that musical harmony is reflective or even a result of the acoustic structure that is found in nat........ Read more »
Honing, H., ten Cate, C., Peretz, I., & Trehub, S. (2015) Without it no music: cognition, biology and evolution of musicality. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 370(1664), 20140088-20140088. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2014.0088
- June 29, 2016
- 07:20 AM
- 815 views
Birdsong Babel: Different birds use different grammar rules
by gdw in FictionalFieldwork
Zizou listens carefully. She ignores her confines and tries to focus on the intruder’s song. There’s something odd about it. Something she can’t quite put her feather on. It’s familiar, yet… not familiar. The intruder is strong. He or she keeps signing incessantly. There’s no sight of him or her, though. She has to make a […]... Read more »
Olkowicz S, Kocourek M, Lučan RK, Porteš M, Fitch WT, Herculano-Houzel S, & Němec P. (2016) Birds have primate-like numbers of neurons in the forebrain. PNAS, 113(26), 7255-60. PMID: 27298365
Spierings, M., & ten Cate, C. (2016) Budgerigars and zebra finches differ in how they generalize in an artificial grammar learning experiment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(27). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1600483113
- June 21, 2016
- 06:42 AM
- 659 views
Anonymity Doesn't Always Promote Online Aggression
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
It's widely said that anonymity on the internet helps to promote aggressive, low quality or trolling comments. On this view, the anonymous commenter, knowing they cannot be held accountable, is free to do things that they would be ashamed to do under their real name.
But now German researchers Katja Rost and colleagues challenge this view, in a new study published in PLOS ONE. Rost et al. say that real names can actually be associated with more aggression than anonymous posts, based o... Read more »
Rost K, Stahel L, & Frey BS. (2016) Digital Social Norm Enforcement: Online Firestorms in Social Media. PloS one, 11(6). PMID: 27315071
- June 20, 2016
- 11:44 AM
- 959 views
The Mesh of Civilizations in Cyberspace
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
A team of researchers from Stanford University, Cornell University and Yahoo recently decided to evaluate the "connectedness" of the hypothesized Huntington civilizations in cyberspace and published their results in the article "The Mesh of Civilizations in the Global Network of Digital Communication".
The researchers examined Twitter users and the exchange of emails between Yahoo-Mail users in 90 countries with a minimum population of five million. In total, they analyzed........ Read more »
State, B., Park, P., Weber, I., & Macy, M. (2015) The Mesh of Civilizations in the Global Network of Digital Communication. PLOS ONE, 10(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0122543
- June 16, 2016
- 12:01 PM
- 514 views
Reflections On Voodoo Neuroscience
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
Seven years ago, neuroscientists Ed Vul and colleagues made waves with their paper on 'voodoo correlations' in social neuroscience. Now, in a new paper, historian of medicine Cornelius Borck looks back on the voodoo correlations debate and asks whether neuroscience might be likened to voodoo in another sense.
Borck argues that neuroscience has something in common with animism, the religious belief that spirits inhabit various objects. In particular, he says, fMRI studies can be likened to... Read more »
Borck, C. (2016) Animating Brains. Medical History, 60(03), 308-324. DOI: 10.1017/mdh.2016.25
- June 16, 2016
- 09:30 AM
- 830 views
An omelette of extinction
by gdw in FictionalFieldwork
~50 000 years ago He wakes. The first sunrays slowly crawl over the horizon. As he gets up, the others in his family group stir. He surveys this new land. His stomach grumbles… # Present day Born in an African cradle, humanity has spread across the globe. And almost everywhere we went, we managed to […]... Read more »
Miller G, Magee J, Smith M, Spooner N, Baynes A, Lehman S, Fogel M, Johnston H, Williams D, Clark P.... (2016) Human predation contributed to the extinction of the Australian megafaunal bird Genyornis newtoni ∼47 ka. Nature communications, 10496. PMID: 26823193
- June 14, 2016
- 04:16 PM
- 695 views
Even when help is just a click away, stigma is still a roadblock
by Dr. Jekyll in Lunatic Laboratories
Stigma is a major barrier preventing people with mental health issues from getting the help they need. Even in a private and anonymous setting online, someone with greater self-stigma is less likely to take that first step to get information about mental health concerns and counseling.
... Read more »
Lannin, D., Vogel, D., Brenner, R., Abraham, W., & Heath, P. (2016) Does self-stigma reduce the probability of seeking mental health information?. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 63(3), 351-358. DOI: 10.1037/cou0000108
- June 8, 2016
- 05:08 PM
- 841 views
Air pollution affects young people's psychiatric health
by Dr. Jekyll in Lunatic Laboratories
Smog has been a part of modern life since the industrial revolution, unfortunately all that pollution isn't just hurting the environment -- but come on, you saw this coming... right? New research from Sweden indicates that dispensed medication for psychiatric diagnosis can be related to air pollution concentrations. More and more studies show that the brain and human cognitive development are affected by pollution.
... Read more »
Oudin, A., Bråbäck, L., Åström, D., Strömgren, M., & Forsberg, B. (2016) Association between neighbourhood air pollution concentrations and dispensed medication for psychiatric disorders in a large longitudinal cohort of Swedish children and adolescents. BMJ Open, 6(6). DOI: 10.1136/bmjopen-2015-010004
- June 6, 2016
- 01:36 PM
- 912 views
Love, War and Genital Shape
by Miss Behavior in The Scorpion and the Frog
The size and shape of your junk may depend on how much sex your ancestors had… that is, at least, if you are a burying beetle. Buring beetles caught in the act. Photo by Jena Johnson. Burying beetles are unusual among insects in that they provide parental care and are often monogamous. When burying beetle pairs find a small dead bird or rodent, they pluck it bald, coat it in antibacterial and antifungal body secretions, and dig a hole around it. The female lays her eggs around the carcass-ba........ Read more »
Hopwood, P., Head, M., Jordan, E., Carter, M., Davey, E., Moore, A., & Royle, N. (2016) Selection on an antagonistic behavioral trait can drive rapid genital coevolution in the burying beetle, . Evolution. DOI: 10.1111/evo.12938
- June 5, 2016
- 02:05 AM
- 943 views
Why does English spread in global academia?
by Jinhyun Cho in Language on the Move
The Linguistic Ethnography Forum’s e-seminar devoted to Ingrid Piller’s recent book Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice: An Introduction to Applied...... Read more »
Piller, I., & Cho, J. (2013) Neoliberalism as language policy. Language in Society, 42(01), 23-44. DOI: 10.1017/S0047404512000887
- June 3, 2016
- 02:42 PM
- 593 views
The Myth of the Optimism Bias?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
Are humans natural, irrational optimists? According to many psychologists, humans show a fundamental optimism bias, a tendency to underestimate our chances of suffering negative events. It's said that when thinking about harmful events, such as contracting cancer, most people believe that their risk is lower than that of 'the average person'. So, on average, people rate themselves as safer than the average. Moreover, people are also said to show biased belief updating. Faced with evidence that t........ Read more »
Punit Shah, Adam J. L. Harris, Geoffrey Bird, Caroline Catmur, & Ulrike Hahn. (2016) A Pessimistic View of Optimistic Belief Updating. Cognitive Psychology. info:/
- June 3, 2016
- 12:45 AM
- 895 views
Systemic change, effective altruism and philanthropy
by Artem Kaznatcheev in Evolutionary Games Group
The topics of effective altruism and social (in)justice have weighed heavy on my mind for several years. I’ve even touched on the latter occasionally on TheEGG, but usually in specific domains closer to my expertise, such as in my post on the ethics of big data. Recently, I started reading more thoroughly about effective altruism. […]... Read more »
Falk, A., & Szech, N. (2013) Morals and Markets. Science, 340(6133), 707-711. DOI: 10.1126/science.1231566
- May 30, 2016
- 05:22 PM
- 599 views
Google searches for 'chickenpox' reveal big impact of vaccinations
by Dr. Jekyll in Lunatic Laboratories
Countries that implement government-mandated vaccinations for chickenpox see a sharp drop in the number of Google searches for the common childhood disease afterward, demonstrating that immunization significantly reduces seasonal outbreaks. That's one of the findings from a new study that analyzed thousands of Google searches for "chickenpox."
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Bakker, K. M.,, Martinez-Bakker, M., Helm, B., & Stevenson, T. J. (2016) Digital epidemiology reveals global childhood disease seasonality and the effects of immunization . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. info:/
- May 30, 2016
- 04:54 PM
- 844 views
The Harm of Verbal Promiscuity
by Miss Behavior in The Scorpion and the Frog
Eastern chimpanzees don't want to be judged. Image by Ikiwaner at Wikimedia.com.Whether they have one true love for life, multiple partners, or are free-loving, animals have many different mating systems. We have different scientific terms for these different mating systems, and most of these terms have very specific meanings. An animal is socially monogamous when it has one exclusive mating relationship, but maybe has sex with others outside of that relationship. It is sexually monogamous when ........ Read more »
Elgar, M., Jones, T., & McNamara, K. (2013) Promiscuous words. Frontiers in Zoology, 10(1), 66. DOI: 10.1186/1742-9994-10-66
- May 29, 2016
- 04:30 PM
- 586 views
Why everyone wants to help the sick -- but not the unemployed
by Dr. Jekyll in Lunatic Laboratories
New research explains why healthcare costs are running out of control, while costs to unemployment protection are kept in line. The answer is found deep in our psychology, where powerful intuitions lead us to view illness as the result of bad luck and worthy of help.
... Read more »
Jensen, C., & Petersen, M. (2016) The Deservingness Heuristic and the Politics of Health Care. American Journal of Political Science. DOI: 10.1111/ajps.12251
- May 27, 2016
- 04:40 PM
- 674 views
How the brain makes -- and breaks -- a habit
by Dr. Jekyll in Lunatic Laboratories
Not all habits are bad. Some are even necessary. It's a good thing, for example, that we can find our way home on "autopilot" or wash our hands without having to ponder every step. But inability to switch from acting habitually to acting in a deliberate way can underlie addiction and obsessive compulsive disorders.
... Read more »
Christina M. Gremel,, Jessica H. Chancey,, Brady K. Atwood,, Guoxiang Luo,, Rachael Neve,, Charu Ramakrishnan,, Karl Deisseroth,, David M. Lovinger, & Rui M. Costa. (2016) Endocannabinoid Modulation of Orbitostriatal Circuits Gates Habit Formation. Neuron. info:/10.1016/j.neuron.2016.04.043
- May 27, 2016
- 01:10 PM
- 990 views
Enhance the Salience of Relevant Variables
by Joshua Fisher in Text Savvy
Post has moved: http://guzintamath.com/blog/2016/05/enhance-salience-relevant-variables/
Performing the discrete mode of presentation test strongly enhances the salience of the relevant variable, perimeter, and somewhat decreases that of area. This enhancement supports appropriate solution strategies that lead to improved performance. This effect is robust and transfers to continuous mode of presentation for at least 10 days. In line with this conclusion, a student who performed the continuou........ Read more »
Babai, R., Nattiv, L., & Stavy, R. (2016) Comparison of perimeters: improving students’ performance by increasing the salience of the relevant variable. ZDM, 48(3), 367-378. DOI: 10.1007/s11858-016-0766-z
- May 26, 2016
- 11:04 AM
- 707 views
Deductive, Inductive and Abductive Research in SCM
by Andreas Wieland in Supply Chain Management Research
Like it or not: Our discipline is very much dominated by positivism and the application of the scientific method, which assumes that new knowledge can be created by developing and testing theory or, in other words, by induction or deduction. Another type of inference is abduction. Spens & Kovács (2006) present an overview of the […]... Read more »
Spens, K., & Kovács, G. (2006) A Content Analysis of Research Approaches in Logistics Research. International Journal of Physical Distribution , 36(5), 374-390. DOI: 10.1108/09600030610676259
- May 25, 2016
- 05:00 PM
- 878 views
Humiliation from stares are worse than tiny seats for obese air travelers
by Dr. Jekyll in Lunatic Laboratories
Feelings of shame and humiliation bother obese air passengers more than tight seat belts and tiny seats, according to a study published by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers. Participants interviewed for the study recounted the typical challenges they encounter while boarding, in-flight and deplaning.
... Read more »
Yaniv Poria, & Jeremy Beal. (2016) An Exploratory Study about Obese People’s Flight Experience . Journal of travel research. info:/10.1177/0047287516643416
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