Prior beliefs can limit our understanding. Our potential to learn, even. In the least, like a set of blinders, beliefs can direct our attention onto one view of a phenomenon and keep it there. This can be true for the scientist as well as the lay person.
Recent research into gossip and bullying got me thinking. In particular, the write-up of a psychological finding in Anti-bullying program reduces malicious gossip on school playgrounds seemed to express the attitude that gossip is bad. Which is a common connotation carried by the word. But is it? Fundamentally? Always?
The study, led by the University of Washington, is the first to show that the widely-used Steps to Respect bullying prevention program can curb children’s gossip, an element of playground culture often seen as harmless but capable of causing real harm.
Should gossip be viewed as not harmless but bad, and efforts be made to curb it?
“Gossip is an element of bullying, and it can lead to physical bullying,” said Karin Frey, a UW research associate professor of educational psychology. “Kids will tell you that gossip is just as painful as physical bullying.”
So perhaps gossip is a sort of gateway behavior. Hmm. Can ‘talk’ really lead to bullying? How did the researchers differentiate between mere talk and gossip? And how do they know it leads to bullying?
But wait, isn’t fully free speech a good thing? Is this true only for adults? Shouldn’t we train our attention on the actual harmful behavior … the action, as we do with adults?
The research seems to convey the assumption that all gossip is by nature bad. It can lead to children using sticks and stones against others, and the name-calling itself is portrayed as not inert but hurtful — even when the target is out of earshot.
Should gossip be frowned upon in this broad-brush fashion? Just the malicious form? What exactly is that? How do you draw the line? Is it something like pornography — that we just know it when we observe it?
What about ‘malicious’ gossip about a dangerous kid? Is that bad? What about a malicious gossip about a cheat, about a truly pernicious influence, about…?
As my Almighy Alpha project explores in part, it seems gossip can serve a number of functions [see these]. That is why the behavior is found on all corners of the globe and has been classified by anthropologists as a “human universal.” To gossip is in our nature. Why?
I can see gossip serving a number of functions, including:
1) Information exchange. The ole’ grapevine. Gossip helps answer important questions such as “who can we trust?” For an extremely social species, the who and whats of relationships are a big deal.
Consider the incredible popularity of such media as gossip-laden television programs (and the “gossiping” fans do about the fictional characters) People magazine, sports radio. Etc., etc. Don’t these largely consist of gossip about people outside our social group yet in our lives? We can be fascinated. Why? Because they present a type of information we are drawn to.
2) Verbal attempts at status adjustment: to bring others down, to elevate the self and associates via reputation shaping.
3) A means of transmitting and maintaining social/cultural norms (dress, behavior, values). How else are these norms transmitted? Are they included in health class or social studies? No. Norms are largely transmitted behind gestures, between words.
4) And last and certainly not least, verbal grooming. After talking about the weather, and our own news, what exciting content is there to chat and bond over? The goings-on of others. The exciting goings-on. When two girls criticize a non-present third, the primary function of this gossip, I bet, is for the girls to feel closer to one another. Which is verbal grooming.
Is all gossip bad? No. When is it bad? Now that’s the question — a question that to best answer we need a wider perspective than is evidenced by a narrow view of gossip.
1) Does this explain the fashion phenomenon of the red “power tie”?
Headline: Women Attracted to Men in Red, Research Shows
Some of the all-important details:
To quantify the red effect, the paper analyzed responses from 288 female and 25 male undergraduates to photographs of men in seven different experiments. Participants were all self-identified as heterosexual or bisexual. In one color presentation, participants looked at a man’s photo framed by a border of either red or white and answered a series of questions, such as: “How attractive do you think this person is?” . . . .
In several experiments, the shirt of the man in the photographs was digitally colored either red or another color. Participants rated the pictured man’s status and attractiveness, and reported on their willingness to date, kiss, and engage in other sexual activity with the person. They also rated the man’s general likability, kindess, and extraversion. [all emphases added]
The results:
The researchers found that the red effect was limited to status and romance: red made the man seem more powerful, attractive, and sexually desirable, but did not make the man seem more likable, kind, or sociable. The effect was consistent across cultures: undergraduates in the United States, England, Germany, and China all found men more attractive when wearing or bordered by red.
Very interesting. I like the cross-cultural component. Gives it greater credence.
Questions: Shouldn’t the title have included the word more between women and attracted? Would the results be similar for men wearing crimson? Scarlet? Magenta? What colors influence whether or not a woman is perceived as more attractive? We’ve all heard about the “little red dress.” Would light shades of blue make a woman appear more innocent and agreeable — and the marrying kind?
2) It seems male spiders of any color don’t sumo wrestle for access to females.
Headline: Why Are Male Spiders Small While Females Are Giant?
Some of the all-important details:
The researchers investigated 204 spiders from 13 different species. They suggest that females do not feel the same pressure to be smaller as, for them, a larger body size confers and advantage in generating offspring.
The results:
“In species where bridging is a very common mode of locomotion, small males, by being more efficient bridgers, will enjoy more mating opportunities and thus will be better at competition to reach receptive females. This may lead to a selective pressure for smaller size.”
Bridging, FYI, is arachnid behavior “in which spiders use the wind to carry a strand of web to their destination and then clamber upside down along the resulting bridge.” More results: “small size was associated with a greater ability to carry out the maneuver.”
Questions: So evolution simply didn’t exert a pressure for females to get larger and thus be able to “make more babies,” and males remained at the default size? Is this evidence of the alleged truism that it’s not the size that matters (of the organ-ism), but how it performs?
3) Mind ‘transcends’ matter, but does it transcend energy?
The headline: Mind over matter? The psychology of healing
Some of the all-important details:
During the five-year study 93 patients (68 men and 25 women) with diabetic foot ulcers were recruited from specialist podiatry clinics across the UK. Clinical and demographic determinants of healing; psychological distress, coping style and levels of cortisol (a stress hormone) in saliva were assessed and recorded at the start of a 24 week monitoring period. The size of each patient’s ulcer was also measured at the start, and then at 6, 12 and 24 weeks to record the extent of healing or otherwise of the ulcer.
The results:
The results of the research showed that the likelihood of the ulcer healing over a 24 week period was predicted by how individual’s coped. Surprisingly perhaps, patients who showed a ‘confrontational’ way of coping (a style characterised by a desire to take control) with the ulcer and its treatment were less likely to have a healed ulcer at the end of the 24 week period.
Questions: If the extremely outdated phrase (IMO) “mind over matter” is valid, how can psychology be a science? Could I likewise say this about my HP inkjet printer, It’s bytes over hardware? In the above case, is “mind” merely a slapdash way of describing such dynamic things as “a ‘confrontational’ way of coping”?
To wrap up and put a bow on all the above — Maybe fat male spiders ought to truly exercise ‘mind over their hefty matter’ and attempt to bridge great distances to access females. But first they might want don a red scarf. “Here I come, baby!”
A fascinating bit of psychological science can be found at this ScienceDaily article: Is Your Left Hand More Motivated Than Your Right Hand?
First, the background research -
Mathias Pessiglione, of the Brain & Spine Institute in Paris, and his colleagues showed that motivation could be subconscious; when people saw subliminal pictures of a reward, even if they didn’t know what they’d seen, they would try harder for a bigger reward. In the earlier study, volunteers were shown pictures of either a one-euro coin or a one-cent coin for a tiny fraction of a second. Then they were told to squeeze a pressure-sensing handgrip; the harder they squeezed it, the more of the coin they would get. The image was subliminal, so volunteers didn’t know how big a coin they were squeezing for, but they would still squeeze harder for one euro than one cent. That result showed that motivation didn’t have to be conscious. [all emphases mine]
For the newer research, Pessiglione and his team looked into whether one hemisphere of the brain can be “motivated” while the other is not. The short answer – it seems so. (The saying “off two minds” just got more interesting.)
The test started with having the subject focus on a cross in the middle of the computer screen. Then the motivational coin — one euro or one cent — was shown on one side of the visual field. People were only subliminally motivated when the coin appeared on the same side of the visual field as the squeezing hand. For example, if the coin was on the right and they were squeezing with the right hand, they would squeeze harder for a euro than for a cent. But if the subliminal coin appeared on the left and they were squeezing on the right, they wouldn’t squeeze any harder for a euro.
Cool. Darn cool even.
I wonder if that explains why every-so-often I get the urge to simultaneously pat myself on the head with one hand while slapping my cheek with another? (Kidding.)
Brace yourself now, here comes a flight of intellectual fancy. Imagine a person silently “saying” to herself about her own thoughts and feelings: Hey, who’s in charge here? An educated answer might be, A whole lot of stuff.
Well, except for the “stuff” part. The educated answer would likely be a little more specific.
Does human life have meaning? Is the existence of berries meaningful? They both, after all, are the product of evolution (at least to those without their heads up their dogma).
The above berries aren’t edible. Is that meaningful? Of course by inedible, I mean to human beings.
Hmm. I wonder how human cosmology would differ if we couldn’t see ourselves as the top ‘o the food chain? Say there were a huge sasquatch-like predator that lurked the forests and subway stations at dark. And every day we heard news of yet one more poor individual who had their head snapped off and their innards devoured like a raw chicken pot pie. Would untutored worldviews simply have a more robust ideation about evil in the world, and, in particular, about this devil in the world (our world)? Would we still think of ourselves as the reason for all seasons? I wonder.
New research has found that Neanderthals settled the New World. Well not that New World.
The title to the ScienceDaily news release reads – Neanderthals Walked Into Frozen Britain 40,000 Years Earlier Than First Thought, Evidence Shows
Evidence of Neanderthals in Britain 100,000 years ago. Wow. Maybe they weren’t the cave-dwelling morons that the connotations of their name paints them as.
Here’s the part I found particularly interesting:
The country was previously assumed to have been uninhabited during this period.
Uninhabited by humanoids, that is. That fact makes their originality more original than that of Columbus and other Old world explorers. But maybe not.
How did the Neanderthals travel to their own New World? Rafts called the Ooog, the Oooga, and the Santa Ooog-Oooga? (Sorry.)
Aha. Land bridge thanks to climate-caused drop in ocean levels. Lot of water got tied up in ice.
But wait, there’s more to learn. There is evidence that 100,000 before the Neanderthal settlers, pre-Neanderthals inhabited Britain! But then died out.
Pre-Neanderthals? Gosh darn. How frackin exciting. Makes me want to study more world history. Of the pre-history variety. If that makes sense.
One thing seems certain: Our kind really gets around. The globe. Did and do we have wanderlust in our genes? Or was it just a desire for new and better dining experiences?
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