Tuesday, July 2, 2019

Factors of social partners' selection: who helps/harms others (signal of how someone may act towards ourselves) & who acts like/unlike others (capacity for coordination)

The selection of social partners based on the moral actions of the group vs. the individual. Brandon M. Woo, Jason Paul Mitchell. Human Behavior and Evolution Society 31st annual meeting. Boston 2019. http://tiny.cc/aa1w6y

Abstract: The ability to select appropriate social partners enables the human species to better navigate the social world. Research has demonstrated that at least two factors influence the selection of social partners, even as early as infancy: (i) who helps vs. harms others (Hamlin et al., 2007), as a signal of how someone may act towards ourselves; and (ii) who acts like vs. unlike others (Powell & Spelke, 2018), as a signal of someone’s capacity for coordinated action. Although people have studied these two factors, they have done so independently. It is unknown whether these two factors interact. At times, they may even come into conflict. In the present study, we presented 128 participants with agents who help others, harm others, or do a non-moral action after the agents’ friends either have done the same thing, have done a different thing, or have not done anything. Participants rated people who acted like vs. unlike their friends as a better potential friend: (i) when the friends did a non-moral action; and (ii) even more strongly when the friends helped others. When the friends harmed others, however, participants rated people who acted like vs. unlike their friends as a worse potential friend.

Nuclear Twin Family analysis: Political orientation is often assumed to be shaped by socialization processes, but previous studies have shown substantial genetic variance components in party affiliation, political attitudes & behaviors

Hufer, A., Kornadt, A. E., Kandler, C., & Riemann, R. (2019). Genetic and environmental variation in political orientation in adolescence and early adulthood: A Nuclear Twin Family analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000258

Abstract: Political orientation is often assumed to be shaped by socialization processes; however, previous studies have shown substantial genetic variance components in party affiliation, political attitudes and behaviors, or closely related personality traits. The majority of these studies have relied on the Classical Twin Design, which comes with restrictive assumptions, some of which are easily violated. Moreover, most analyses lack a perspective of age-group differences. In this study, we investigated political orientation in adolescents (age: 16–18) and young adults (age: 21–25) in a cross-sectional Nuclear Twin Family Design. We used data of the German TwinLife project, including data from same-sex twins reared together, their biological parents, and nontwin full siblings. We found genetic variation in political orientation, which was significant in the older cohort, possibly indicating an increasing importance of active gene-environment correlation from adolescence to adulthood. Individual differences in political orientation because of passive gene-environment correlation and shared environmental effects were larger in the younger cohort, substantiating the same theoretical consideration and the importance of shared socialization contexts for adolescents’ political views. By running Nuclear Twin Family model analyses, and considering age-group differences, as well as the relationship of political orientation with the Big Five personality traits, our study extended previous work, and resulted in more robust and fine-grained estimates of genetic and environmental sources of variance in political orientation. Therefore, it contributed to a better understanding of the complex nature–nurture interplay that forms political orientation in emerging adulthood.

Direct evidence for transport of RNA from the mouse brain to the germline and offspring?

Direct evidence for transport of RNA from the mouse brain to the germline and offspring. Elizabeth A. O’Brien, Kathleen S. Ensbey, Bryan W. Day, Paul A. Baldock, Guy Barry. bioRxiv, June 28, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1101/686634

Abstract: The traditional concept that heritability occurs exclusively from the transfer of germline-restricted genetics is being challenged by the increasing accumulation of evidence confirming the existence of experience-dependent transgenerational inheritance. Transgenerational inheritance is emerging as a powerful mechanism for robustly transmitting phenotypic adaptations to offspring. However, questions remain unanswered as to how this heritable information is passed from somatic cells. Previous studies have implicated the critical involvement of RNA in heritable transgenerational effects and the high degree of mobility and genomic impact of RNAs in all organisms is an attractive model for the efficient transfer of genetic information. Here we show, for the first time, robust transport of RNA from the brain of an adult male mouse to sperm, and subsequently to offspring. Our observation of heritable genetic information originating from a somatic tissue may reveal a mechanism for how transgenerational effects are transmitted to offspring.



Traditional postpartum care: Alloparenting has been considered as an important factor in raising children; additional help can enhance further reproductive opportunity of new mother & her key role on enhancing the fitness of the newborn

Traditional postpartum care: Alloparenting from an evolutionary perspective. Sangkwon Woo, Mark V. Flinn, Robert S. Walker. Human Behavior and Evolution Society 31st annual meeting. Boston 2019. http://tiny.cc/aa1w6y

Abtract: Variation of traditional postpartum care practices vary across different regions. Paternal and alloparental support, however, are common components in human cultures. Whereas many ethnographic studies have accumulated information on cultural variation during antepartum/postpartum period, such as food taboo and couvade, systematically comparative data sets have not been broadly considered on these cultural traits, mainly due to the limited comparability of diverse variables. Alloparental care has long been considered as an important factor in raising children, but it is also essential in that additional help can enhance further reproductive opportunity of new mother and her key role on enhancing the fitness of the newborn. Here we examine how traditional care practices might have helped the health of mothers and infants. Traditional care practices in East/Southeast Asian population and indigenous populations in American continents involve not only intensive treatment and isolation but also strong cold-avoidance, or ‘hot-cold theory’ based care. We collected information on temperature management after childbirth during postpartum care practice and utilized the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS), a globally representative data of human populations. Using a phylogenetic supertree including the SCCS, the cultural evolutionary processes on the postpartum care are examined to indicate the association between genetic/linguistic phylogeny and vertical/horizontal transmission of cultural traits.

‘I Do Not Exist’: Pathologies of Self Among Western Buddhists

‘I Do Not Exist’: Pathologies of Self Among Western Buddhists. Judith Pickering. Journal of Religion and Health, June 2019, Volume 58, Issue 3, pp 748–769. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10943-019-00794-x

Abstract: This paper presents a clinical case involving a patient suffering ‘depersonalisation’ who had a psychotic episode at a Buddhist retreat. Recent writing on possible psychological risks of meditation has discussed problems of depersonalisation associated with misunderstandings of the Buddhist conception of non-self (anātman) and emptiness (śūnyatā). Drawing on the work of Winnicott and Bion, this article helps us to realise some of what is at stake in the failure to achieve and maintain an effective sense of self. What does Buddhist talk of non-self really mean? What conditions enable a creatively engaged and meaningful relational life, a sense of aliveness, human flourishing and a capacity for alterity?

Keywords: Depersonalisation Derealisation Non-self (anātman) Emptiness (śūnyatā) Self Alterity Nihilism Jung Bion Lévinas Winnicott

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‘Eve’

Eve 1 arrives for her first session. I hear the gate open, close, then silence. I go to open the door in welcome, but intuitively hold back. There is a tentative knock so quiet that I would not have heard it if I wasn’t already waiting by the door. I open it. Eyes downcast, she says very diffidently, ‘well, … here I am’. Once inside she sits on the edge of the couch. Like a marionette puppet with no puppet master to hold her up, she crumples into the cushions. Her face has a haunted, hollowed out look, covering profound anguish. Over the course of our analytic journey, her opening phrase ‘well, … here I am’ becomes something of a mantra, transmitting as yet unrealised potential. Like the ‘initial dream’ which encapsulates the patient’s psychological predicament, this simple phrase says it all. When she first came to see me, Eve was not ‘well’. She had not been psychologically ‘born’, so she was not yet ‘here’ on earth. She felt that she was no more than an amoeba-like semblance of pre-life with no form, no substance, no past, no future, no sense of on-going being. She was skinless and porous—the emotional states of others passed through her like the tides of an ocean. She was not ‘here’. There was no ‘I am’, no ‘I and thou’, no ‘we’, let alone any sense of being alive, real, interconnected with the world of others, let alone creativity, a sense of meaning, direction, or joie de vivre.

When, as a young adult, Eve found her way to a Tibetan Buddhist retreat, she initially felt great relief. Here was a philosophy that made sense of her states of non-being. Yet, due to excessive application of ascetic and meditative practices, Eve had a psychotic episode and was hospitalised. On discharge, she was advised to seek on-going psychological treatment. She sought me out as a Jungian because Jung, unlike Freud, did not dismiss spirituality.

Check also Potential negative consequences of mindfulness in the moral domain. Simon Schindler, Stefan Pfattheicher, Marc-Andre Reinhard. To appear in the European Journal of Social Psychology, January 2019, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/01/other-consequences-of-mindfulness-in.html