Invasion of the Body Geeks

I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam. Two items about who we humans are. Both date from back on September 6 but I doubt we have changed all that much since then.

1) The Baltimore Sun had an article about a study by a team of researchers in Switzerland indicating a biological basis for revenge. (Link no longer valid.)

The researchers invented an economic game which included the possibility of gaining revenge (by imposing fines) on those who doublecross their partners. What they found is that in contemplating such revenge, a portion of the brain called the dorsal striatum became active. That part of the brain has been experimentally associated with pleasant stimuli such as "cocaine, money, a lover's face, [and] good food."

In short, revenge actually is sweet.

The same article also note this:

Even as scientists gain a better understanding of the biological underpinnings of fairness, others are trying to understand its origins.

Sarah Brosnan, an Emory University anthropologist, says an important question is whether a sense of fairness is something people pick up in school, home or church, or whether it's a concept that has been hardwired into the human brain over the eons.

In continuing work with capuchin monkeys, Brosnan and her colleague Frans de Waal of Emory have found compelling evidence of an evolutionary origin. The monkeys, it turns out, know a raw deal when they see one.

In a study published last year, researchers trained the monkeys to barter small pebbles for slices of cucumber. Initially the capuchins, a small tree-dwelling species known for their smarts and discriminating tastes, were satisfied with the trade.

But that quickly changed when researchers placed pairs of capuchins in adjoining cages that enabled them to observe the deal making.

When scientists handed one monkey a plump grape for its pebble but offered the other only a cucumber slice, it balked. When one capuchin was handed a grape without being asked for payment in return, its cagemate became even more incensed - sometime hurling its pebble or cucumber slice at experimenters.

What made these protests so surprising, Brosnan and de Waal noted, is that the animals rarely refuse food. In two years of one-on-one bartering, capuchins turned down a trade in fewer than 5 percent of trials.

What struck me about that result is the strength of the response. The second monkey still could have taken the cucumber slice despite the favoritism shown to the first. Yet to a statistically significant level, it would rather do without the cucumber slice altogether than accept the unfairness.

Admittedly, there is a way to read this as a measure of inborn selfishness, but then again selfishness and fairness are related. And if selfishness is thought of as trying to maximize one's own benefit even at the expense of others, it would still make more sense for the second monkey to accept the deal offered rather than wind up with nothing.

So while as far as I can see, the results don't show that there is an inborn drive to act fairly, they do provide a strong indication that there is an inborn sense that there is such a thing as fairness and what it is.

2) Psychologist Alan Slater of the University of Exeter told a British science conference that our sense of physical attractiveness is another thing that is inborn.

[B]abies can recognise their mother from as little as 15 hours after birth and also show a preference for looking at photographs of physically attractive people.

"Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder but in the brain of the newborn enfant," he told the British Association for the Advancement of Science. ...

Infants show several spontaneous visual preferences. They like watching moving rather than stationary objects, prefer to look at three-dimensional stimuli and find faces fascinating.

When given a choice of two facial photographs to look at, babies usually prefer and spend more time gazing at the person who is better-looking.

Slater did allow that experience - that is, acculturation - also plays a role in a particular person's conception of what constitutes beauty while maintaining that a preference for more attractive people is biological.

Personally, before I find that result too convincing I'd like to know what the people in the pictures looked like and how the researchers determined which one was more attractive. There is an issue in research about the risk of results being interpreted in line with your own preconceptions and expectations, and the more subjective the criteria, the greater the risk. It's fairly easy to count how many times a monkey will trade a pebble for a cucumber; judging to a scientifically-rigorous degree which of two faces is more attractive can be considerably harder.

If their findings are confirmed, however, I'd be interested in seeing research on why that is so, that is, what is the evolutionary advantage of it (which there must be if there is indeed a biological basis), as well as if and how that image of beauty changes over time.