Scientific American - Bering in Mind

Top Scientists Get to the Bottom of Gay Male Sex Role Preferences

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:45:00 EST

It’s my impression that many straight people believe that there are two types of gay men in this world: those who like to give, and those who like to receive. No, I’m not referring to the relative generosity or gift-giving habits of homosexuals. Not exactly, anyway. Rather, the distinction concerns gay men’s sexual role preferences when it comes to the act of anal intercourse. But like most aspects of human sexuality , it’s not quite that simple.

I’m very much aware that some readers may think that this type of article does not belong on this website. But the great thing about good science is that it’s amoral, objective and doesn’t cater to the court of public opinion. Data don’t cringe; people do. Whether we’re talking about a penis in a vagina or one in an anus, it’s human behavior all the same. The ubiquity of homosexual behavior alone makes it fascinating. What’s more, the study of self-labels in gay men has considerable applied value, such as its possible predictive capacity in tracking risky sexual behaviors and safe sex practices.

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Why We Blush: The Social Purpose of Showing Embarrassment

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:15:00 EST

Among the many disadvantages of being pasty white in complexion is the fact that a mere blush can broadcast one’s social discomfort for all the world to see. Granted, people of all colors and ethnicities blush at a basic physiological level--that is to say, human facial veins dilate in response to subtle psychosocial cues. But for mongrelized Caucasians such as yours truly, a white epidermis often acts rather embarrassingly like an objective gauge of subjective discomfort. And there’s not much you do about it, either: blushing is involuntary and uncontrollable.

The good news is that although it may cause you some chagrin, blushing appears to serve a functional purpose. Recent findings by Dutch psychologists Corine Dijk , Peter de Jong and Madelon Peters reveal that if you ever find yourself in a pickle after, say, committing a social offence or being caught in an embarrassing mishap, the presence or absence of blushing can help determine if you’ll be forgiven by others. Surprisingly, these findings , published earlier this year in the journal Emotion , are among the first to address the adaptive significance of the blushing display--what Charles Darwin referred to as “the most peculiar and most human of all expressions.” The gist of Dijk and her colleagues’ evolutionary argument for blushing is as follows:

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"So Then I Said to Roger Federer . . .": The Tricky Business of Name-Dropping

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:20:00 EST

A former colleague of mine--whose name shall not be spoken, neither for joy nor strategy--was so transparently boastful of his tissue-thin associations with “famous psychologists” that I found him, well, rather unlikable as a result of it. Not only did he name-drop at every possible opportunity, but just in case you missed the reference to So-and-So popping up in the conversation about, say, lactose intolerance or Frisbee golf, his office was also visually booby-trapped to produce the same effect. Like some groupie at a rock concert, he’d capitalized on the many photo-ops at various academic conferences so that these grinning photos showed him with his arms draped around a virtual Who’s Who of accommodating (and usually slightly befuddled, or at least mildly inebriated ) star scientists.

Why is it that we find “name-dropping” and related behaviors so unappealing in others? Similar to many other social behaviors, the phenomenon of name-dropping is one of those human foibles that is so routine and commonplace that scientists have almost completely overlooked it as a potentially fruitful topic of investigation. An exception to this was a study published earlier this year in the journal Social Influence . In this study, University of Zurich psychologists Carmen Lebherz , Klaus Jonas and Barbara Tomljenovic conducted a controlled experiment in which participants were introduced to a stranger who name-dropped to various degrees. The volunteers were then asked to rate this stranger on several key dimensions.

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Breasts in Mourning: How Bottle-Feeding Mimics Child Loss in Mothers' Brains

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:30:00 EST

Discussions of breastfeeding versus bottle-feeding usually focus on the baby: What’s best in terms of nutrition? Or an infant’s future mental health? [More]

"Annoying Habits of College Professors" (circa 1935 to 1937)

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 10:00:00 EST

Occasionally, in preparing stories for this column , I’ll stumble across an ancient, glittering gem of empirical research that has been either buried in the dust of an obscure library bookshelf or swallowed up in the great electronic morass of some online academic archive. Such studies contain precious, long-forgotten data or ideas that, in being ahead of their time, now twinkle in the modern-day sun of science with the extraordinary promise of revolutionizing our thinking or jarring loose an otherwise stagnant paradigm. But more often, I come across old studies like the one I’m about to describe--not so much a bright diamond to newly illuminate the discipline, but rather a little chunk of gray asphalt wedged into its foundations. Nobody notices it and probably for good reason. [More]

Think Crying Is Cathartic? Not Always

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:30:00 EST

I can’t remember the last time I had a good, long cry . Well, that’s not entirely true. I was bawling my eyes out just the other night at the inevitable climax to the movie Marley & Me . But with the possible exception of my eggshell-fragile Achilles’ heel for old and dying dogs, I’ve never been much of a weeper. I’ve always wanted to be, though. At times I’ve even felt a little guilty when tears seemed appropriate but I couldn’t muster any up. Even onions let me down when I once tried to use them to jumpstart a liquid catharsis. [More]

It Ain't Easy Being a Pit Bull Owner

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:00:00 EST

With all the negative publicity surrounding pit bulls today, why would anyone choose to have this type of dog that triggers prejudice in many people’s minds? Both the dog and the owner are likely to suffer from the negative stereotypes others hold: killer and thug, respectively. I’m not proud of these bigoted associations, but I must say that, prior to writing this piece, when I thought “pit bull,” my mind immediately conjured up an Eminem soundtrack and naked lady mud flaps.

But that was then and this is now. Although I fully expected to write about pit bull owners being stunningly naive about the inborn characteristics of their own breed of choice, insisting on seeing these creatures as “ blank slates ” whose temperaments are infinitely malleable to suit their needs, having now read up on the recent literature in this area I have changed my mind.

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Pedophiles, Hebephiles and Ephebophiles, Oh My: Erotic Age Orientation

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:00:00 EST

Michael Jackson probably wasn’t a pedophile --at least, not in the strict, biological sense of the word. It’s a morally loaded term, pedophile, that has become synonymous with the very basest of evils. (In fact it’s hard to even say it aloud without cringing, isn’t it?) But according to sex researchers, it’s also a grossly misused term. [More]

Dreaming of Nonsense: The Evolutionary Enigma of Dream Content

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:00:00 EST

Friday, June 19, 2:12 a.m. : Loading up the trunk of my car with clothes hangers when approached by two transients… try to engage them in good-natured conversation about the benefits of wooden clothes hangers over metal ones, but they make me uneasy, say they want to go out to get a drink but I’ve got to go. In a city somewhere… looks like a post-apocalyptic Saint Louis.

Saturday, June 20, 4:47 a.m. : Was just now trying to return my dead grandmother’s cane to her. Took elevator to her apartment… meant to go to the 8th floor, but elevator lurched up to the 18th floor, swung around violently then shot back down. Could hear voices in the corridors outside elevator shaft…. a mother yelling at her child. Grandma then became my other grandma, also deceased, yet in a nursing home; doctors say she’s doing fine.

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Equal Right to Kiss? Why You May Be Disgusted by Gay Behavior without Knowing It

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:30:00 EST

While walking through a park in Budapest a few weeks ago, I spied a very strange sight. In that fleeting moment between sensation and perception, when images settle on the retina but aren’t yet processed in a form fully accessible to conscious awareness, what I saw was a multicolored, gyrating mass of vaguely human substance, squirming and twisting on a park bench in animalistic fervor. My brain , unfortunately, was soon able to peel apart what I was actually observing, which was a particularly corpulent young woman devouring a young man half her size in what can only be described as a feast of open-mouthed, public lovemaking. The expression, “get a room,” seemed wholly inadequate for this carnal scene. “Get a porn studio” was more like it. [More]

The Sorriest Animal: Why We Seek Forgiveness

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:20:00 EST

It is a little-known fact that a life lived without enemies would be an extraordinarily dull affair. One person who understood this very clearly was the nineteenth century British essayist William Hazlitt, whose misanthropic-sounding On the Pleasure of Hating was in fact a gracefully written ode to this much maligned social emotion: “Without something to hate,” wrote Hazlitt, “we should lose the very spring of thought and action. Life would turn to a stagnant pool, were it not ruffled by the jarring interests, the unruly passions of men.” Suddenly the idea of a utopian society, where everyone is satisfied, equal and good, sounds like a rather drab and stultifying place. Heaven , according to this view, would be a special kind of Hell, a land filled with the souls of smiling, slumbering idiots intoxicated by unending love, understanding and pleasant company. (And an especially interminable ocean of boredom , since one couldn’t even escape through death .) [More]

Women Really Are More Socially Aggressive Than Men (With Apologies to Jezebel.com )

Fri, 29 May 2009 11:30:00 EST

Let me nip this little brouhaha caused by my last post in the bud. So perhaps--just perhaps--I made a slight gaffe in directing readers to the Jezebel.com Web site in order to illustrate social aggression in reproductive aged females. It was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek rub at that Web site, I must admit, precipitated by a rather nasty editorial there on an earlier article of mine. But I didn’t anticipate a humorless mob of “Jezebelers” commenting angrily in defense of their own tight-knit online community. Well, maybe I expected the reaction a little bit; I’m not entirely naïve to viral marketing campaigns. [More]

The "Bitch" Evolved: Why Girls Are So Cruel to Each Other

Wed, 27 May 2009 13:30:00 EST

About a month ago I was invited to give a brief talk to my nephew Gianni’s first grade class--nothing too deep, mind you, rather simply about what it’s like living in a foreign place such as Belfast. The highlight of my presentation was the uproarious laughter that erupted when I mentioned that people on this side of the Atlantic refer to diapers as “nappies” and cookies as “biscuits.” But one must play to the audience. [More]

Armpit Psychology: The Science of Body Odor Perception

Wed, 13 May 2009 12:30:00 EST

How does one broach such an indelicate topic as body odor except perhaps to borrow from the immortal words of the Roman playwright, Terence, who famously said that, “nothing human is alien to me.” True, Terence probably wasn’t referring to flatulence, armpit secretions, halitosis, foot odor, and the many and unspeakably loathsome scents associated with various fungal infections in the body’s hinterlands when he wrote this. Still, his axiom covers a lot of territory on the human condition, including our somewhat smelly natures. And as mature science-minded adults, perhaps we shouldn’t be so shy about our stenches, anyway, since it turns out that our social behaviors--particularly human sexual instincts--are driven by our perceptions of each other’s aromas more than we tend to realize. [More]

What's Your Story? The Psychological Science of Life History Research

Tue, 05 May 2009 11:10:00 EST

One late summer day in 1970 in Brighton, Massachusetts, Katherine Ann Power, an articulate, starry-eyed sociology major from nearby Brandeis University and also a fervent Vietnam War protester, sat behind the wheel of an idling getaway car as her heavily armed partners in crime liberated a bank of its “warmongering” funds. (To properly overthrow the federal government, the group oddly believed, one must first pilfer then cleanse its dirty loot by reinvesting in antiwar causes.) Unbeknownst to Power, one of her peace-loving compatriots shot a police officer in the back as they fled, which was the making of a widow and nine fatherless children. Reportedly shocked by this botched robbery, Power assumed the identity of an infant who’d died a year before she was born and reinvented herself as “Alice Louise Metzinger.” She went underground in the small northwest Oregon town of Lebanon where, reminiscent of Jean Valjean in Les Misérables , she dedicated herself to a life of contrition. Power became a doting mother to a young son and a loving wife to the local meat cutter; she bought into a popular restaurant, became an active volunteer, taught a class at the community college and even gave her car away to a neighbor. [More]

The Misunderstood Penis

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:00:00 EST

So, it seems people have some pretty strong feelings about penises. Reactions to my last post--“ Secrets of the Phallus: Why Does the Penis Look Like That? ”-- ranged from the incredulous ( are you seriously suggesting that chimpanzees aren’t promiscuous?--“tomrees” ), to the imaginative ( penises! they're so cute, you just want to pinch their cheeks and give them cookies--“montavilla” ), to the rather irritable ( stupid, biased thinking again from an ‘evolutionary psychologist’--“hcollins2009” ).

For some reason, when it comes to asking whether human beings have evolved some specialized trait over the past several million years I’ve found that people tend to get weirdly worked up about it. I once had the most unpleasant conversation with a very unlikable ornithologist while dining at a Japanese steakhouse in Binghamton. I think I was a hairsbreadth away from being strangled by this scientist who took considerable offense to my suggestion that magpie intelligence isn’t as humanlike as it may appear. But the subject of human penis evolution appears to have touched a special nerve. [More]

Secrets of the Phallus: Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That?

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:00:00 EST

If you’ve ever had a good, long look at the human phallus, whether yours or someone else’s, you’ve probably scratched your head over such a peculiarly shaped device. Let’s face it--it’s not the most intuitively shaped appendage in all of evolution. But according to evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup of the State University of New York at Albany, the human penis is actually an impressive “tool” in the truest sense of the word, one manufactured by nature over hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution. You may be surprised to discover just how highly specialized a tool it is. Furthermore, you’d be amazed at what its appearance can tell us about the nature of our sexuality .

The curious thing about the evolution of the human penis is that, for something that differs so obviously in shape and size from that of our closest living relatives, only in the past few years have researchers begun to study it in any detail. The reason for this neglect isn’t clear, though the most probable reason is because of its intrinsic snicker factor or, related to this, the likelihood of its stirring up uncomfortable puritanical sentiments. It takes a special type of psychological scientist to tell the little old lady sitting next to him on a flight to Denver that he studies how people use their penises when she asks what he does for a living. But I think labeling it as a “crude” or “disgusting” area of study reveals more about the critic than it does the researcher. And if you think there’s only one way to use your penis, that it’s merely an instrument of internal fertilization that doesn’t require further thought, or that size doesn’t matter, well, that just goes to show how much you can learn from Gallup’s research findings.

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Are Very Young Children Stuck in the Perpetual Present?

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:47:00 EST

Last week I found myself in a web video dialogue on Bloggingheads.tv . This is a sort of video blogging website sponsored by the New York Times where the two participants are meant to rally big ideas back and forth, or at least get a decent dialogue going about the topic at hand. I spoke with (soon-to-be) Yale philosopher Joshua Knobe on bloggingheads.tv on the natural foundations of religion. Our discussion was the first of a John F. Templeton Foundation series called Percontations, a term defined as “questionings or inquiries, especially those requiring more than a yes or no answer.” In the present context, this inquiry presumably concerns the achingly dull question over whether or not God exists. [More]

Intoxicating Studies: The Effects of Alcohol on Social Behavior

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:30:00 EST

Perhaps the only thing stopping me from becoming an alcoholic is the fact that I find the taste of alcohol unconscionably offensive. Beer is sewer water. Rum? Cough syrup. I’m likely betraying my unpolished, suburban upbringing here, but even the crème de la crème of liqueurs--say, a gilded bottle of vintage cognac festooned with Swarovski crystals--might as well be a dressed-up container of Liquid Drano to me. And if you’re ever sitting across from me at a fancy restaurant, note my uncontrollable wincing after I lift my glass in surrender to the moment and the first piquant coat of expensive wine rudely invades my taste buds. [More]

Religious Ideas Burrow into Brains

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:00:00 EST

Last week I described some recent cognitive research on the (rather unfortunate) naturalness of creationist reasoning. Another important body of work in the “cognitive science of religion” concerns how religious ideas are transmitted between generations. And the name Pascal Boyer , an anthropologist from Washington University of Saint Louis, is rightfully synonymous with this well-known research. [More]