Progress Daily

People who are perceived to be trustworthy are more likely to have a higher credit score and pay lower interest rates on loans, and are less likely to default, according to a study by Jefferson Duarte & Stephan Siegel (”Trust and Credit“).

The researchers studied members of Prosper.com, where people looking for loans are matched up with individual lenders.

Each Prosper.com loan applicant submitted a profile which included credit and work history, education level, income and an optional photograph of themselves for lender review.

More than 6,800 loan applications, 2,600 loans and 12,000 photographs were used in the study.

Duarte hired a team of 25 people to rate the applicants’ trustworthiness on a scale of 1 to 5 using only the photographs of the borrowers. The team also judged the probability that the borrowers would repay a $100 loan.

Those judged to be trustworthy were more likely to get a loan from Prosper.com lenders and tended to have a credit score about 20 points higher than those determined to be untrustworthy.

“Untrustworthy” borrowers were 7% more likely to default on their loan than a perceived trustworthy borrower with the same credit score.

The researchers controlled for race, age, gender, obesity, attractiveness and education, employment status, income and homeownership.

“Creditworthiness may be linked to looks,” by Rebekah Kebede

The volume of the brain’s grey matter, made up of “processor” cells, is heritable and correlates with certain elements of IQ (Nature Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1038/nn758).

The amount of white matter, which provides the connections between these processors, is also heritable (Journal of Neuroscience, vol 26, p 10235).

And a new study suggests that the quality of these connections is also largely genetic, and correlates with IQ.

Paul Thompson scanned the brains of 23 sets of identical twins and the same number of fraternal twins, using HARDI (a type of magnetic resonance imaging).

By comparing brain maps of identical twins, which share the same genes, with fraternal twins, which share about half their genes, the team calculate that myelin integrity is genetically determined in many brain areas important for intelligence.

This includes the corpus callosum, which integrates signals from the left and right sides of the body, and the parietal lobes, responsible for visual and spatial reasoning and logic. Myelin quality in these areas is correlated with scores on tests of abstract reasoning and overall intelligence (The Journal of Neuroscience, vol 29, p 2212).

Myelin integrity is an especially promising target for manipulation, because, unlike the volume of grey matter, it changes throughout life.

Richard Haier said: “If it’s genetic, it’s biochemical, and we have all kinds of ways of influencing biochemistry.” 

“High-speed brains are in the genes,” by Aria Pearson