Progress Daily

The following graph was transcribed by Alex Tabarrok from Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate.

Lawrence Keeley’s 1996 War Before Civilization used archaeological evidence to show that prehistoric villages in both Europe and North America had almost all been constructed with fortifications and that a high proportion of the skeletal remains of their inhabitants showed they had been killed by weapons of war. Massacre sites were common.

Keeley used anthropological studies to show that in most remaining tribal societies, whether Amazon Indians or New Guinea highlanders, comparative fatality rates from war were 4 to 6 times higher than even the worst experienced by modern nations, such as Germany and Russia in the 20th century.

For at least 95% of the past 200,000 years, humans were hunter-gatherers. Agriculture — even the most elementary kind such as that still practiced in New Guinea — is a comparatively recent invention, less than 10,000 years old.

Steven A. LeBlanc, in Constant Battles, analyzes 3 hunter-gatherer populations for which there is reliable evidence: the !Kung bushmen of south-west Africa, the Eskimos of arctic America and the Aborigines of Australia. These foragers’ record of violence is little different from that of more sedentary agriculturalists.

“Enduring myth of ‘noble savage’ vs. a species at continuous war?,” by Keith Windschuttle

 People have a harder time coming up with alternative solutions to a problem when they are part of a group.

Scientists exposed study participants to one brand of soft drink then asked them to think of alternative brands. Alone, they came up with significantly more products than when they were grouped with two others.

H. Shanker Krishnan: “When a group gets together, they can miss out on good options. Whether it’s with family or a group of co-workers, we could very quickly fixate on things and all come up with the same options.”

Individuals should take time to consider the facts on their own before coming to a consensus.

“Meetings make us dumber, study shows,” by Abigail W. Leonard

Tanya L. Chartrand and her husband Gavan Fitzsimons have demonstrated that some people will act in ways that are not to their own benefit simply because they wish to avoid doing what other people want them to.

Even the slightest nonconscious exposure to the name of a significant person in their life is enough to bring about reactance and cause people to rebel against that person’s wishes.

In the first experiment, participants were asked to name a significant person in their lives whom they perceived to be controlling and who wanted them to work hard, and another significant and controlling person who wanted them to have fun. Participants then performed a computer-based activity during which the name of one or the other of these people was repeatedly, but subliminally, flashed on the screen. The participants were then given a series of anagrams to solve, creating words from jumbled letters.

People who were exposed to the name of a person who wanted them to work hard performed significantly worse on the anagram task than did participants who were exposed to the name of a person who wanted them to have fun.

The experimenters then assessed each participant’s level of reactance (the tendency to resist social influences that perceivee as threats to one’s autonomy). People who were more reactant responded more strongly to the subliminal cues and showed greater variation in their performance than people who were less reactant.

“Nagging Spouse? You May Have An Excuse For Not Responding,” by Laura Brinn

US pop culture tends to be popular in regions like Scandinavia that are lightly populated, not very hierarchical and looking for new global cultural symbols. But most of the world’s population is in countries — China and India, Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, Indonesia, etc. — that do not fit that description.

Hollywood movies often capture 70% or more of a typical EU cinematic market.

The Indian music market is 96% domestic in origin. It is common in Central America for domestically produced music to command up to 70% of market share. In Ghana, domestic music has captured 71% of the market. Data supplied by Omar Lizardo (see “Globalization and Culture“) show that the poorer a country, the more likely it will buy and listen to its own domestic music.

“Some Countries Remain Resistant to American Cultural Exports,” by Tyler Cowen

Tribalism alters our thoughts. Show older people a negative image of the aged, and they act more feeble. Asian women reminded of their Asian heritage did better on a math test than those who were reminded they were women. In a small room, the lone holdout against a group’s opinion usually gives in and changes.

It also affects our health. People’s sense of their status directly links to measures of stress, depression, and cholesterol levels.

Us and Them, David Berreby

A large percentage of “gifted” students (those who score in the top 10% on aptitude tests) severely their abilities. Those afflicted adopt lower standards for success and expect less of themselves, underrate the importance of effort, and they overrate how much help they need from a parent.

A growing body of research suggests that giving kids the label of “smart” might cause them to underperform.

For the past ten years, Carol Dweck has studied the effect of praise on students in 12 NY schools.

She sent 4 female research assistants into NY 5th-grade classrooms. The researchers would take a single child out of the classroom for a nonverbal IQ test consisting of a series of puzzles easy enough that all the children would do fairly well. Once the child finished the test, the researchers told each student his score, then gave him a single line of praise. Randomly divided into groups, some were praised for their intelligence. They were told, “You must be smart at this.” Other students were praised for their effort: “You must have worked really hard.”

Then the students were given a choice of test for the 2nd round. One choice was a test that would be more difficult than the 1st, but the researchers told the kids that they’d learn a lot from attempting the puzzles. The other choice was an easy test, just like the 1st. Of those praised for their effort, 90% chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test.

In a subsequent round, none of the 5th-graders had a choice. The test was difficult, and everyone failed. But the 2 groups responded differently. Those praised for their effort on the 1st test assumed they hadn’t focused hard enough. Those praised for their smarts assumed their failure was evidence that they weren’t really smart.

Dweck gave all the 5th-graders a final round of tests that were engineered to be as easy as the 1st round. Those who’d been praised for their effort improved on their first score by about 30%. Those who’d been told they were smart did worse than they had — by about 20%.

This effect holds true for students of every socioeconomic class, boys and girls (the brightest girls especially), & even pre-schoolers.

Life Sciences Secondary School’s 700 students are predominantly minority and low-achieving. Dweck’s protégé Lisa Blackwell split kids into 2 groups for an 8-session workshop. The control group was taught study skills, and the others got study skills and a module on how intelligence is not innate. These students took turns reading aloud an essay on how the brain grows new neurons when challenged, & saw slides of the brain and acted out skits.

The students who had been taught that intelligence can be developed improved their study habits and grades. In a single semester, Blackwell reversed the students’ longtime trend of decreasing math grades.

The only difference between the control group and the test group were 2 lessons, a total of 50 minutes spent teaching that the brain is a muscle. Giving it a harder workout makes you smarter.

After reviewing 200 studies on self-esteem, Dr Roy Baumeister concluded that having high self-esteem didn’t improve grades or career achievement. It didn’t reduce alcohol usage or violence (aggressive, violent people tend to think highly of themselves). For college students on the verge of failing in class, esteem-building praise causes their grades to sink further.

To be effective, researchers have found, praise needs to be specific & sincere.

Wulf-Uwe Meyer conducted a series of studies where children watched other students receive praise. He found that by the age of 12, children believe that earning praise from a teacher is a sign you lack ability and need extra encouragement. They believed it’s a teacher’s criticism that really conveys positive belief.

Dweck’s research on overpraised kids suggests that image maintenance becomes their primary concern. In one study, students are given two puzzle tests. Between the 1st and the 2nd, they’re offered a choice between learning a new puzzle strategy for the 2nd test or finding out how they did compared with other students on the 1st test: Students praised for intelligence choose to find out their class rank, rather than use the time to prepare.

In another study, students get a do-it-yourself report card and are told these forms will be mailed to students at another school. Of the kids praised for their intelligence, 40% lie, inflating their scores. Few of the kids praised for effort lie.

Dr. Robert Cloninger has trained rats and mice in mazes to have persistence by carefully not rewarding them when they get to the finish. “The key is intermittent reinforcement…. A person who grows up getting too frequent rewards will not have persistence, because they’ll quit when the rewards disappear.”

“How Not to Talk to Your Kids,” by Po Bronson

A survey of existing literature co-authored by Carl Winter, director of the FoodSafe Program at UC Davis, and Sara Davis, of the Institute of Food Technologists, makes three main points:- Research has consistently shown organic foods contain less pesticide residue than conventional food, but “the marginal benefits of reducing human exposure to pesticides in the diet through increased consumption of organic produce appear to be insignificant.”

- Some studies indicate organic production methods result in higher nutrient levels, but the same mechanisms that can produce potentially beneficial things like polyphenolic compounds may also generate higher levels of toxins such as glycoalkaloids in potatoes and tomatoes.

- Some research suggests the widespread use of animal manure as fertilizer in organic production can, when composted improperly, result in a higher occurrence of pathogens than conventional farming.

“Study: Organic not necessarily better option” by James Temple

A study of nearly 24,000 people found that those who regularly took midday naps were nearly 40% less likely to die from heart disease than non-nappers.

Dimitrios Trichopoulos recruited about 24,000 volunteers between the ages of 20 and 86, in Greece, who had no history of heart disease, stroke or cancer. The researchers collected information about the participants’ napping habits and followed them for 6 years, on average.

After controlling for risk factors such as diet and physical activity, Trichopoulos’s team found that people who took at least 3 naps per week lasting 30 minutes or longer had a 37% reduced risk of death from heart disease than their non-napping counterparts.

Those subjects who occasionally took short naps lasting less than half an hour had a 12% lower risk than people who never napped.

The results suggest that taking naps might be just as important to protecting the heart as measures such as eating right and taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, says Rajiv Dhand.

The apparent protective effect of these siestas was more pronounced among working individuals than retirees.

Previous studies have linked high levels of stress hormones to increased inflammation in the body and damaged blood vessels.

Earlier work has also indicated that taking naps can improve learning and productivity (see Snooze your way to high test scores and Power naps boost work performance).

“Afternoon naps may boost heart health,” by Roxanne Khamsi

Although you choose your spouse but not your parents, people seem to enjoy spending time with their parents more than they enjoy spending time with their spouses.

On the other hand, married people claim to be happier than single people do. How satisfied you are with your life is not at all the same thing as how you feel while you are living it.

Researchers can attempt to measure overall satisfaction with life or they can use the “day reconstruction method,” which tries to measure the flow of emotion by asking people to think back over a recent day and reconstruct what they did & how they felt while they did it.

Norbert Schwarz has shown that when you ask people how happy they are, the answer you get will depend on whether the sun is shining or whether they have just found a dime on the floor. (He would plant coins where people would find them.)

“The Not-So-Dismal Science” by Tim Harford

When evaluating facial attractiveness, participants may fail to notice a radical change to the outcome of their choice, according to a study by Petter Johansson, Sverker Sikström, etc.

Researchers showed picture-pairs of female faces to the participants and asked them to choose which face in each pair they found most attractive. Immediately after their choice, they were asked to verbally describe the reasons for choosing the way they did. Unknown to the participants, on certain trials, a card magic trick was used to secretly exchange one face for the other.

Less than 10% of all manipulations were detected immediately by the participants, and counting all forms of detection no more than 1/5 of all manipulated trials were exposed.

When asked to motivate their choices, the participants delivered their verbal reports with the same confidence, and with the same level of detail and emotionality for the faces that that were not chosen, as for the ones that were actually chosen.

The Choice Blindness Lab