Honest Babies

Live Science reports on research showing that babies are inherently turned off by people who are dishonest or unreliable. Humans are, from an extremely early age, able to judge the behavior of others around them and to develop preferences for people they can rely upon. They also prefer to imitate and learn from those people. Let's live up to their expectations, shall we?

Babies Picky About Who They Imitate

Prosocial Progress

Would you help an old lady cross the road? How about picking up a stamped addressed letter off the sidewalk and putting it in a nearby mailbox? Or perhaps you might return a lost wallet you found? All of those actions are known as "prosocial" or society-promoting behaviors, and it's been a question for the ages as to how a human culture is best able to foster them. David Sloan Wilson has been working on exactly that. First, he and his team set out to measure the prevalence and geographical distribution of prosocial behaviors in his hometown of Binghamton, New York. The results were striking - prosociality (and I guess its inverse, which might be antisociality?) proved to be a cluster-based phenomenon. Prosocial people are grouped into geographic neighborhoods, with voids between them. Basically, Wilson has figured out a way to scientifically define a "good neighborhood."

At this point, Wilson and his team then looked at the results from an evolutionary standpoint.

As an academic evolutionist, I knew that prosociality can evolve in any species when highly prosocial individuals are able to interact with each other and avoid interacting with selfish individuals - in other words, when those who give also receive. Our surveys show that this is what is happening in Binghamton. The most caring and altruistic individuals receive the most social support from multiple sources, including family, neighbourhood, school, religion, and through extracurricular activities such as sports and arts. Groups that satisfy this basic condition for prosociality are likely to thrive.

Not only that, but he tracked people over time as they moved from neighborhood to neighborhood around town, and he found that their prosociality changed to match the existing levels of their new neighborhood! So obviously humans are versatile and resilient, and able to a certain extent to change themselves to fit their environment. Given this, let's go back to our original question - how do we foster prosociality?

Projects in the works to test for this include a neighborhood "Design Your Own Park" initiative, and the Regents Academy - a program being rolled out in local schools to aid at-risk children.

A group that functions well is a bit like an organism with numerous organs: remove any single organ and the organism dies. The Regents Academy has all the necessary organs to function as an effective group, and it seems to be working.

If we can understand the anatomy of a healthy social group, then we can start tinkering with and improving our own social health. In a prosocial culture, everyone wins.

Read more here: Evolutionary theory can make street life better via New Scientist

The 10,000 Year Explosion

The University of Utah’s own Henry Harpending and Gregory Cochran have co-authored a new book about the ways that the human genome has evolved during the past 10,000 years – the blink of an eye in terms of the life of our species. From detailing the development of lactose tolerance and malaria resistance, to the startling suggestion that we may have improved our capacity for intelligence by interbreeding with Neanderthals, this book is a compelling and well-written exploration of this fascinating subject.

The 10,000 Year Explosion is available in local bookstores and via Amazon.com

Everything Evolves...

...even us. It's hard for us to really understand, because we experience things individually on a personal timescale, compared to which the development of our genetic inheritance goes on at a geological pace. But are we evolving? Yes. The gene for the "alcohol flush reaction" which is common among Asians arose around 10,000 years ago, and a set of genes to help cope with low oxygen levels (read: high altitudes) may have evolved among Tibetans as recently as 3,000 years ago.

Researchers are finding that the human genome is constantly changing, and that many traits are influenced by dozens of genes at a time, enabling those traits to be selected for more quickly in response to changing environmental pressures.

Read more here: Adventures in Very Recent Evolution via NYTimes.com

Bats Without Belfries

Maria Sagot and Richard Stevens, of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge recently correlated a lot of existing data about bats. Some bats, it seems, make their own shelters of leaves or other plant material under which to hang while they snooze during the day. Some shelters last longer than others, depending upon what kinds of plants grow in the places where the bats live. The scientists wanted to know, what kind of social bonds do these bats develop among them? The working theory was that flimsy shelters would correlate with poor social bonds.

In fact, they found exactly the opposite. Bats with sturdy houses tended to stick together less, and bats with more ad-hoc shelters displayed social bonds that were extremely strong. The Economist, reporting on this work, notes, "[as] in people, so in bats: adversity promotes solidarity."

This strikes at the heart of human instinct. Even in our sedentary, city-bound Western lifestyle, we still talk about our lives as if we are nomadic, although the span of time has replaced the physical path that was once laid in front of us. Where did we come from? Where are we going? Does some part of us suffer from too much comfort? Our distant ancestors walked endlessly back and forth across the African savannah, following game and avoiding predators. Our first shelters were flimsy huts that might have lasted a few weeks to a few months at most, and our tribes must have been very, very closely bonded.

Read more here: Bats building bonds via Economist.com