Thus, power is stressful for those under it. This is true in political, professional, and personal lives. Those with less power often lead double lives because they can never let the powerful know who they are. They cannot get caught even thinking the wrong thing, let alone doing the wrong thing.  So low power people use “tools of weakness:” cheating, talking behind a person’s back, singing mocking songs with other people of similar power, etc.

Intrauterine position has a large impact on the lives of Mongolian gerbils.   Denote by 2M a gerbil that is positioned between 2 male fetuses, and by 2F a gerbil that is positioned between 2 female fetuses.   For reasons that will become clear later, 2M males will be called Maxes and 2F males will be called Mins.  The positions of fetuses and Mins and Maxes are illustrated in the figure below (which I stole and edited Principles of Animal Behavior):

In the uterus, Maxes essentially take the most testosterone (maximum), and Mins take the least (minimum).  This has a big impact on who these gerbils will become as adults.  Mins “have lower circulating levels of testosterone, less well-developed genital musculature, and lower reproductive success” than do Maxes (pdf).  Mins end up spending more time caring for young gerbils and a lot less time having sex.  In fact, Mins often end up caring for the offspring of the Maxes.  It’s fascinating the impact of intrauterine position!

In general, I prefer the terms Max and Min over the usual alpha and omega.  Hopefully this will become more clear in the next section.

Sensory Space Invaders

We all have seen human Maxes and Mins. I like to think of their behavior in terms of how much territory they routinely claim.

If a Max sits next to you on the train, he will spread his legs and take up a lot of space.  A Min will slide over and make himself small.  The Max behaves as if the space is his.

Maxes will invade all of your sensory space, whereas Mins will tend to only enter if invited.

Maxes are loud.  They might stink up the air in a crowded room (from passing gas or being sweaty).  They’ll put their hands on you. They might invade your sight by changing in front of you.  When they drive, they’ll cut you off.   Maxes are sensory space invaders.

Mins are quiet.  They will only touch you if you’ve given them permission. They will go in another room to pass gas.  In traffic, they will make space and let you in.

Environment

Robert Sapolsky noticed that when his Max baboons ate poison meat and died, the next generation changed its entire social structure, creating a more egalitarian and peaceful society.

It used to be thought that urbanization caused dominance or agression. Studies show that when when animals are put in confined spaces or are exposed to over crowded conditions, animals who were on the more dominant end of the behavioral spectrum, became even more dominant. Animals who were more submissive became even more submissive. Crowding and confinement conditions exaggerated behavioral traits, leading to Maxes and Mins of an extreme nature.

A dramatic study involving guppies demonstrate how environments can create Maxes.  Min guppies have physical and behavioral differences.   They are smaller and lack the color of Max. Their testis are sucked up in their body.  Mins do not even have the capability to produce sperm. They do not act aggressive or territorial like their Max counterparts. Their biology is such that they are not space invaders. In fact, they try to disappear to ensure their safety.   However, when Max is removed, within 35 minutes, Min’s testis descend, he grows in body size, develops color and stripes, and behaves in territorial ways that keep other fish biologically suppressed. New Max will swim to females and mate and keep other males away. Even if old Max is put back into the territory (as long as Min has gone through changes) he will continue to be max. Enviroment created New Max.

—

This was co-written by Charlene Lewis-Estornell

• Epigenetics, toolkit genes, genetic switches and how most conversations about heritability are flawed.  I learned a lot about imprinted genes from Charlene Lewis (especially BDNF), about toolkit genes from reading Sean Carroll’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful (which I highly recommend) and about all of these topics from (some of) Robert Sapolsky’s lectures on human behavioral biology (which are fantastic, and free on youtube and itunes).
• Social belonging sits atop the hierarchy of needs.  Sister Y introduced this idea with her blog here: “the need for social belonging is more pressing than the need for food.”  I have noticed that people are far more likely to want to kill (themselves or someone else) when they have been socially shamed, rejected, or ostracized.  NYU Psychology Professor James Gilligan noted:”The emotional cause that I have found just universal among people who commit serious violence, lethal violence is the phenomenon of feeling overwhelmed by feelings of shame and humiliation. I’ve worked with the most violent people our society produces who tend to wind up in our prisons. I’ve been astonished by how almost always I get the same answer when I ask the question—why did you assault or even kill that person? And the answer I would get back in one set of words or another but almost always meaning exactly the same thing would be, ‘Because he disrespected me,’ or ‘He disrespected my mother,’ or my wife, my girlfriend, whatever.”

  In the same program, Pieter Spierenburg pointed out that murder in defense of your reputation used to be viewed as a pretty minor offense: “Originally around 1300 the regular punishment for an honourable killing would be a fine or perhaps a banishment, whereas punishment for a treacherous murder would be execution.”

• Evidence in favor of our promiscuous past, the most interesting of which is sperm competition.  I was introduced to this topic in Sex at Dawn.
• Life cycles of parasites.  I learned about this from Robert Sapolsky and This Week in Parasitism.  I particularly love Toxoplasma and fish tapeworm.
• Lead and crime.  There are a lot of theories about why crime has declined since the 1990s.  These theories include:  legalization of abortion, tougher sentencing, end of crack epidemic, etc.  But I think the most interesting one is the reduction in lead exposure.  Total lead exposure was a non-decreasing function  from 1900 to 1970.  Lead exposure from gasoline increased sharply from 1930 to 1970.   We know that lead exposure, especially chronic exposure, has neurotoxic effects.  It can be particularly damaging to the frontal lobe.  Thus, we would expect that kids who were exposed to lead would be more likely to engage in impulse crimes when they are young adults.   Jessica Reyes documented the link between lead exposure and crime in the US in this paper.   The graph below, taken from her paper, overlays the lead exposure curve and crime rate curve (with a 22 year lag for lead exposure, because 22 is the average age at which violent crimes are committed, so we would expect childhood exposure to lead to have the largest impact approximately 20 years later):
  
  I think this is pretty compelling, and a fascinating story.  The League of Nations banned lead pain in 1922, but the US failed to adopt the measure.  The US didn’t take serious action until the 1970s.  To this day, lead paint exposure is a serious problem for people living in old homes in large cities.  I would love to see the lead exposure / crime link investigated using data from other countries.
• Religion. I learned about the history of god, its relation to changes in civilization (how transitions from polytheism to monotheism paralleled changes from foraging to farming, egalitarianism to hierarchy), lots of cool, related neuroscience, etc.  This is work in progress.  Hopefully I will have more to say about it next year.
• I found Sister Y’s views on nature very insightful.

In tournament species, there is a large amount of variability in male reproductive success (the big dude gets the chicks).  For example, an alpha male chimpanzee might sire 30% of the offspring.  In pair-bonding species, there is much less inequality in male reproductive success.

When income inequality increases to an extreme level, people tend to take action against it.  In the US, the top 1% of earners currently account for 24% of all income.  Thus, we have Occupy Wall Street and “tax the rich.”    Similarly, if there is too much income redistribution, people get upset (“That’s socialism!”)

“tax the rich” = “we’re not a tournament species!”

“That’s socialism!”=”we’re not a pair-bonding species!”

Lower “working” class cultures tend to talk more overtly. Insults are more direct and cutting, friends and co-workers often tease each other about their weaknesses. Nicknames often express weakness – a fat man might be nicknamed “slim.”

Upper class culture, in contrast, tends more to emphasize politeness and indirect communication. This helps to signal intelligence and social awareness, and distinguishes upper from lower classes. Upper class folks can be just as cruel, but their words have more plausible deniability.

While this all sounds plausible to me, and is an interesting observation, I couldn’t help but ask myself “where did Robin learn about lower class cultures?”  I am always a little skeptical when upper class folks describe the routine behaviors of lower class folks.   I will explain.

I spend a lot of social time with students and professors.  When I see academic life portrayed in movies, I often dismiss much of it as unrealistic (some of the scenes in The Social Network, for example).  It’s easy to spot and dismiss false portrayals of our own in-group in the media.

However, if there is a group of people that I do not interact much with, a lot of my views of them are probably formed by the media (and by portrayals of them described in my in-group).

Suppose, for example, that poor people are portrayed as being more crude.  If I observe a low income mother swearing at her child at the train station, that might reinforce the belief about crudeness.  However, seeing dozens of other low income mothers not swearing at their children might have little effect.

The opposite is true for my own in-group.  I might know a few people in my SES group who drink heavily and swear around their kids.  But I’d dismiss them as unusual cases, and not think of them when I think of how my peers behave.

Thus, my theory is that we largely ignore the extreme cases when we think of caricatures of our in-group, but let the extreme cases drive how we view our status non-peers.

–

note:  I’m not saying Robin is inaccurate.  His comments just lead me down this path of thinking.

• First, the issue of selection bias… In this case, Zimbardo advertised to students to participate in an experiment about “prison life”. Clearly, a large segment of the general population would be repulsed by such a concept, and you’ve got to have questions about anyone attracted to that idea. Thus, all applicants to the Stanford Prison Experiment were preselected for comfort with the idea of “prison life”.
• Most of the Stanford guards did not exhibit any cruel or unusual behavior, often being friendly and doing favors for the prisoners. The most notorious guard, nicknamed John Wayne, explained that he was simply trying to emulate Strother Martin’s character from Cool Hand Luke. Other analysts have found it difficult to support Zimbardo’s conclusions, since the allegedly poisonous environment did not affect most participants, and the most notorious participant explained that his motivation came from a completely different source.
• Zimbardo himself was also criticized for actively participating in the experiment as one of the characters. He was the prison superintendent. Although he may have restrained himself from having any influence on the experiment, the fact that he put himself in the position of ultimate active authority over the guards’ behavior calls this into question. Many designers of such experiments would summarily throw out such a study based on this alone.
• Some researchers have also questioned why Zimbardo neglected the effect of individual personalities, instead generally attributing all behavior to the prison environment. How did John Wayne’s behavior as a guard compare to his behavior outside the experiment? Was he generally a friendly guy, or might he already have been a royal jerk? We don’t know, so there was insufficient data to conclude that his behavior was changed by the experiment.

John Mark, who was a guard, said this (emphasis mine):

I didn’t think it was ever meant to go the full two weeks. I think Zimbardo wanted to create a dramatic crescendo, and then end it as quickly as possible. I felt that throughout the experiment, he knew what he wanted and then tried to shape the experiment—by how it was constructed, and how it played out—to fit the conclusion that he had already worked out. He wanted to be able to say that college students, people from middle-class backgrounds—people will turn on each other just because they’re given a role and given power.

Based on my experience, and what I saw and what I felt, I think that was a real stretch. I don’t think the actual events match up with the bold headline. I never did, and I haven’t changed my opinion.

It should also be pointed that the ‘experiment’ wasn’t even designed to provide evidence of anything (unlike Milgrim’s experiments).  It’s just putting people in an artificial environment, intervening in various ways to support Zimbardo’s opinions, and watching what happens.  There weren’t different conditions to compare.

This isn’t the only time Zimbardo was an active participant in a study.  In 1969, Zimbardo left abandoned cars in two neighborhoods.  Without saying anything else about it, it should already be clear to you that we will learn nothing from this ‘experiment,’ since we will only have 2 data points (and the locations clearly were not randomly selected).  In the Palo Alto location, nothing happened for a week.  So, Zimbardo decided to take a sledge hammer to the car.  Other people soon joined in.  From this we were supposed to learn something about human nature.

This is the worst kind of research, and yet Zimbardo has been extremely influential.  What’s going on here?  Do we really love his message so much (that ordinary people will do evil things) that we are blind to his methods?

I think the most common thing to get congratulated for is an accomplishment, where you used some set of skills you have to achieve a goal (e.g., winning a race or passing a test).  The more unexpected the accomplishment, the more extreme the praise.

Unexpected good news also seems to be something people get congratulated for, even if it resulted entirely from luck (e.g., winning the lottery).  A subset of accomplishment falls under this category.

Expansion of family seems to bring praise (except, perhaps, in cases such as teenage pregnancy).

Buying a new car doesn’t seem to fall into these categories.  You could argue that what people are really doing is congratulating for being able to afford a car.  But then they could congratulate you for having a large savings account.

Perhaps it is about status?  Replacing a beat-up old car with a shiny new one is pretty major status elevation.  I suspect that you would receive more congratulatory remarks for buying a new sports car instead of a station wagon.   My friend tells me that women get congratulated for getting new boobs or for getting new jewelry (if it’s a gift from a significant other).  Are there examples of status purchases that do not result in praise?  Buying an expensive designer suit? $600 jeans? $1000 handbag?

The only person under any umbrella in all of Dallas standing right at the location where all the shots come into the limousine.  Can anyone come up with a non-sinister explanation for this?

It does seem weird.  People will naturally ask themselves informal questions such as “could that just be a coincidence?”  We can make the question increasingly formal:

What is the probability that the only person in Dallas holding an umbrella would be standing where the President was shot?

Or even better:

If we were to randomly place the Umbrella Man in one of the locations where a person was standing along the parade route in Dallas, what is the probability that he would end up right where the President was shot?

You will notice that our minds turn a retrospective observation (“hey, there was a guy with an umbrella standing next to the limo.  That’s weird.”) into a prospective randomization question (“if we randomly place the Umbrella Man…”).

We are only asking about the probability of the Umbrella Man standing there, because we already observed that he was standing there.  The observation drove the question.

I suspect that had the President been shot in a different location, we would have identified someone in the crowd that did something that seemed too weird to just be a coincidence.  That’s part of the reason why conspiracy theories are so seductive — there is always some observation that is hard to explain with chance.

I have made this point before, but this example is better than the ones I came up with.

As the narrator says at the 1:35 mark of this clip of Meerkat Manor:  “A deadly predator so close to the babysitting borough just won’t be tolerated”

Of course, the snake has to live somewhere.  It will probably move to an area with weaker, less vigilant meerkats.

This situation reminds me of sex offender registries.  If a sex offender moves into a neighborhood with vigilant parents, they will alert each other and possibly intimidate the predator into moving.    I wonder, though, if the unintended consequence of this policy is to push sex offenders into neighborhoods where parents aren’t frequently checking sex offender registry web sites.

Religious folks often say that, without god, life would have no purpose (i.e., God saves them from the state of depression that some nihilists find themselves in).

What could purpose look like?

Suppose a conscious intelligent designer (let’s call it ‘god’) creates a conscious being and gives it a specific purpose.   God might say “I created you because I wanted to see if you can get to the end of this corn maze.”   Suppose this being was even created with a very strong desire to get through the maze.  This being was created with a purpose.

But is that really objective meaning?

You could ask the meta question, “what is the purpose of the purpose?”  I conjecture that in any possible world you can find a meta-purpose question for which the answer is ‘there is none.’  Thus, there is no possible world in which life could have objective purpose or meaning (at every meta-level).

Why be depressed that we don’t live in a world that couldn’t exist?

It seems strange to be disappointed because something didn’t happen that couldn’t happen.  It seems strange to be disappointed by something having no purpose that couldn’t have a purpose.

Humans have as much purpose as any living thing in any world could have.  There are better possible worlds for sure, but I cannot imagine one with more meaning or purpose.

Complaining that life has no purpose is like complaining that salt is composed primarily of sodium chloride.