Disney Elevates Heterosexuality To Powerful, Magical Heights

It's common to think of "the media" as providing a window on the "real world" that's imaginative and metaphorical – ostensibly to make it more "entertaining" – yet nevertheless essentially accurate.

At some level people also know and, to an extent, understand and even approve that mass media are distinctly slanted to celebrating and inculcating the majority ideology and values of the society in which they are embedded.

What doesn't seem to be generally understood, though, is how distorted the resulting picture of the "real world" can be, in order to reinforce the fortuitous ideology and values prevailing in any given society.

Here's research demonstrating how extreme the distortion can become. And the focus on Disney is so appropriate. It is so exquisitely fitting that a place called "Fantasyland" is found at the heart of Disney's theme parks Disneyworld/Disneyland. It's a metaphor for what is to be found at the heart of "real world" societies.

Disney Elevates Heterosexuality To Powerful, Magical Heights (6/22/09)

Martin and Kazyak analyzed all G-rated movies released, or rereleased, between 1990 and 2005 that grossed more than $100 million in the United States (see Supplemental Materials). Three trained research assistants extracted story lines, images, scenes, songs and dialogue that addressed anything about sexuality, including depictions of bodies, kissing, jokes, romance, weddings, dating, love, where babies come from, and pregnancy. The text describing this material was inductively coded using a qualitative software program.

The analysis found the films "depict a rich and pervasive heterosexual landscape," despite the assumption that children's media are free of sexual content. The movies repeatedly mark relationships between opposite sex lead characters as special and magical.

Research article abstract:

Hetero-Romantic Love and Heterosexiness in Children's G-Rated Films

In this article, the authors examine accounts of heterosexuality in media for children. The authors analyze all the G-rated films grossing $100 million dollars or more between 1990 and 2005 and find two main accounts of heterosexuality. First, heterosexuality is constructed through hetero-romantic love relationships as exceptional, powerful, magical, and transformative. Second, heterosexuality outside of relationships is constructed through portrayals of men gazing desirously at women's bodies. Both of these findings have implications for our understanding of heteronormativity. The first is seemingly at odds with theories that claim that heterosexuality's mundane, assumed, everyday ordinariness lends heteronormativity its power. In fact, the authors suggest heterosexual exceptionalism may extend the pervasiveness of heterosexuality and serve as a means of inviting investment in it. The second offers ways to begin to think about how heteronormativity is gendered and racialized.

Tags: mass media, ideology, social conditioning, social construction of reality

Why Do We Rape, Kill and Sleep Around?

The "new" Newsweek is running an article on the evolutionary psychology debate that seems heavily slanted to one side. There seem to be some confusions in the article. They leave a bad impression of its objectivity.

Why Do We Rape, Kill and Sleep Around?

Over the years these arguments have attracted legions of critics who thought the science was weak and the message (what philosopher David Buller of Northern Illinois University called "a get-out-of-jail-free card" for heinous behavior) pernicious. But the reaction to the rape book was of a whole different order. Biologist Joan Roughgarden of Stanford University called it "the latest 'evolution made me do it' excuse for criminal behavior from evolutionary psychologists." Feminists, sex-crime prosecutors and social scientists denounced it at rallies, on television and in the press.

Such commentary is entirely political and nonscientific. It hardly merits a moment's response. Of course heinous behavior is not justified even by facts that are beyond dispute. The fact that humans have hands and arms that can wield weapons, or can even kill with bare hands, does not excuse murder. Likewise, behavioral traits that can be explained by evolution do not excuse rape and killing. (As for "sleeping around", that is in a different moral category entirely, if in any moral category at all.) Nothing more needs to be said about this kind of inanity that the article offers up.

So on to more substantive issues.

Scientific objectivity tends to be the victim of its own special kind of rape when "philosophers" enter the scene. Too bad "philosophers" don't stick to their own business and limit the damage to their own ranks. Philosophers (and their even more badly behaved kin, the "theologians") have certainly left enough carnage in other scientific topics, such as embryonic stem cells.

But read the article yourself, and then consider its shortcomings.

Exactly how was it decided that "evolutionary psychology" and "mental modules" are coextensive hypotheses? It seems to me that EP could easily be valid without the stronger hypothesis of modules. Who is it that's insisting the two ideas are inseparable?

Same question regarding "universal human nature". EP can easily explain traits that have context-dependent behavioral expression. Likewise, why does "universal human nature" have to be taken to rule out context-dependency of behavior?

Clearly, brain organization is very complex. From a programming perspective, it would be expected to involve a lot of conditional logic. Evolution nevertheless produced the organization the brain has now. Why would that be limited to only the most simplistic forms of organization - straight-line coding that has no alternative paths and data dependencies?

How hard is it to imagine that certain traits evolved in older stages of the human brain (or pre-human brain, for that matter), but that these traits have been partly been modified in later stages, with override switches when appropriate?

A nebulous "flexibility" is itself a debatable hypothesis, and it smells of the vacuousness that EP is accused of. It needs its own scientific evidence before being accepted. New social and physical conditions (for example, very high population densities, unlike any that humans have experienced over multiple generations) may require further evolutionary reprogramming when the supposed flexibility can't handle the changes.

Are straw man arguments being proposed to make EP look bad, or do most EP proponents really believe hypotheses that are obviously stronger than necessary?

Although the article makes valid points, it seem rather slanted to use these points as arguments against EP. The article has lots of spin and preoccupation with political agendas, not so much scientific objectivity.

Update (7/29/09) - For the record, I got into an extended discussion on that Newsweek article with Massimo Pigliucci (who was quoted in the article) on Facebook. It can be found here - dated June 21, 2009.

Tags: evolutionary psychology

Serotonin

It's always interesting to find out that important hormones and proteins play multiple disparate roles in an organism. Such a finding suggests that problems in one area may be related to problems in very different areas.

I suppose everyone knows that serotonin is "that brain chemical" which is messed up somehow when you're depressed and need some Prozac. But it turns out there's more to it than just that.

Here are some recent examples.

The first may seem somewhat surprising, since it relates to metabolism, and it isn't obviously connected with mood, with which serotonin is commonly linked.

Actually, a link between mood and hunger via serotonin shouldn't be so surprising. The chemical name for serotonin is 5-hydroxytryptamine (or 5-HT for short). This hints at its chemical relationship to the amino acid trytophan. Although the connection between tryptophan and post-prandial drowsiness is more complicated than generally supposed, there is a connection, and synthesis of serotonin (and melatonin) from tryptophan is involved. (Have you ever felt grumpy or depressed, or had trouble sleeping, while dieting? The relative lack of tryptophan is what's responsible.)

But that's not what the recent research is about:

Eating And Weight Gain Not Necessarily Linked, Study Shows (6/3/08)

You may not be what you eat after all. A new study shows that increased eating does not necessarily lead to increased fat. The finding in the much-studied roundworm opens the possibility of identifying new targets for drugs to control weight, the researchers say.

The discovery reveals that the neurotransmitter serotonin, already known to control appetite and fat build-up, actually does so through two separate signaling channels. One set of signals regulates feeding, and a separate set of signals regulates fat metabolism. The worm, known scientifically as Caenorhabdtis elegans, shares half of its genes with humans and is often a predictor of human traits.

Serotonin affects how hungry an organism feels. But there's more to it than that. Apparently, serotonin also affects how cells metabolize fat.

An abstract of the original research summarizes this latter effect:

Serotonin Regulates C. elegans Fat and Feeding through Independent Molecular Mechanisms

Serotonergic fat regulation is dependent on a neurally expressed channel and a G protein-coupled receptor that initiate signaling cascades that ultimately promote lipid breakdown at peripheral sites of fat storage. In turn, intermediates of lipid metabolism generated in the periphery modulate feeding behavior. These findings suggest that, as in mammals, C. elegans feeding behavior is regulated by extrinsic and intrinsic cues. Moreover, obesity and thinness are not solely determined by feeding behavior. Rather, feeding behavior and fat metabolism are coordinated but independent responses of the nervous system to the perception of nutrient availability.

This news report explains it even better:

Mood hormone may affect fat, U.S. study finds (6/3/08)

Serotonin may help the body decide whether to burn off excess calories, or store them as fat, Ashrafi said. ...

"It has been known for a long time that increasing serotonin causes fat reduction," Ashrafi said.

"At the molecular level we are trying to understand what is the mechanism that allows that to happen. What we discovered in the worm is that those mechanisms can be separated from the mechanisms that mediate the effects of serotonin on appetite."

The research found serotonin levels affected the worms' appetite, but they also affected how much fat the worms accumulated, and this was via a separate process.

If the worms detect a food shortage, their metabolisms shift and they store more fat.

More: The Skinny on Fat: You're Not Always What You Eat (6/4/08)

The second recent research report on serotonin concerns its effects on mood, but in rather more complex ways than simply in terms of "depression". Serotonin also seems to affect feelings of fairness, anger, and aggression in social decision-making. Significantly, with respect to the research just discussed, these feelings are modulated by recent feeding experience. And there are ramifications for impulsivity and obsessive tendencies.

Serotonin Link To Impulsivity, Decision-making, Confirmed (6/5/08)

New research by scientists at the University of Cambridge suggests that the neurotransmitter serotonin, which acts as a chemical messenger between nerve cells, plays a critical role in regulating emotions such as aggression during social decision-making.

Serotonin has long been associated with social behaviour, but its precise involvement in impulsive aggression has been controversial. Though many have hypothesised the link between serotonin and impulsivity, this is one of the first studies to show a causal link between the two.

Their findings highlight why some of us may become combative or aggressive when we haven't eaten. The essential amino acid [i.e. tryptophan] necessary for the body to create serotonin can only be obtained through diet. Therefore, our serotonin levels naturally decline when we don't eat, an effect the researchers took advantage of in their experimental technique.

So the researchers reduced serotonin levels in volunteer subject by manipulating their diet. In order to probe the social effects of this, the researchers used a laboratory game called the "ultimatum game", which is something that social psychologists now like to use in order to study social variables of trust and sense of fairness. (There's much that's interesting to say about this game, as far as instinctive ideas of morality and ethics are concerned, but that must wait for another time.)

The researchers were able reduce brain serotonin levels in healthy volunteers for a short time by manipulating their diet. They used a situation known as the 'Ultimatum Game' to investigate how individuals with low serotonin react to what they perceive as unfair behaviour. In this game one player proposes a way to split a sum of money with a partner. If the partner accepts, both players are paid accordingly. But if he rejects the offer, neither player is paid.

Normally, people tend to reject about half of all offers less than 20-30% of the total stake, despite the fact that this means they receive nothing - but rejection rates increased to more than 80% after serotonin reductions. Other measures showed that the volunteers with serotonin depletion were not simply depressed or hypersensitive to lost rewards.

Contrary to how some news reports have described the results of this experiment, the increased rate of rejecting unfair was not found to be related to overall mood or perception of fairness, as this account notes:

Deal or No Deal? (6/5/08)

The lack of tryptophan did not affect the subjects' general moods or their perceptions of the fairness of an offer, the team reports online today in Science. It did, however, appear to make people more likely to reject unfair offers.

Indeed, according to the published abstract of the research:

Serotonin Modulates Behavioral Reactions to Unfairness

Participants with depleted 5-HT levels rejected a greater proportion of unfair, but not fair offers, without showing changes in mood, fairness judgments, basic reward processing, or response inhibition.

Additional reports: here, here, here

Further reading:

Low Serotonin Increases Desire To Punish Unfairness (6/5/08) – blog post

Tags: serotonin, ultimatum game, fairness

Moral choice: fairness, utility, and the insula

We continue to learn more about the neuropsychological basis of moral thinking and moral emotions in humans:

Justice In The Brain: Equity And Efficiency Are Encoded Differently (5/8/08)

Which is better, giving more food to a few hungry people or letting some food go to waste so that everyone gets a share" A study appearing in Science finds that most people choose the latter, and that the brain responds in unique ways to inefficiency and inequity.

The study, by researchers at the University of Illinois and the California Institute of Technology, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of people making a series of tough decisions about how to allocate donations to children in a Ugandan orphanage.

There are two main issues regarding moral decision making here.

The first involves two separate principles often used in analyzing moral/ethical problems related to the distribution of goods within a group of people. (The group might be children in a family or different classes of people in a society, among many possibilities.) On one hand, it is generally regarded as "good" to maximize "equity" in moral decisions, so that some individuals are not favored over others without significant justification. (I prefer the term "fairness" for this.)

On the other hand, it is also regarded as "good" to maximize "efficiency", so that the greatest total amount of benefit accrues to a group as a whole. (I prefer the term "utility" for this.)

But these principles can come into conflict, and the research discussed here investigates a contrived, but sharp, example. Philosophers of ethics call such dilemmas the problem of "distributive justice".

The second issue concerns the style of thinking that a decision maker faced with this kind of dilemma does use, and also, perhaps, what style the decision maker "should" use. On one hand, the decider might try to systematically and logically apply some standard set of rules that are considered appropriate for the situation. But on the other hand, the decider might rely more on emotional factors that indicate what "feels right", the "gut feeling", about what seems "right" in a concrete situation.

Philosophers often describe these two alternatives as "cognitivist" vs. "sentimentalist". The former is sometimes associated with the philosopher Immanuel Kant, and the latter with David Hume.

What emerges from the research is (not surprisingly) that individual decision makers differ in the degree that they favor "equity" vs. "efficiency", and also whether they tend to rely more on logic or emotion to make their decisions.

More interestingly, most people normally process considerations of both equity and efficiency in order to reach a decision, but different parts of the brain are used for the two. Likewise, in making the decision, distinct parts of the brain which normally handle emotional or logical processing can become involved in processing the equity/efficiency trade-off.

One way to think of this is that there are separate calculations of both equity and efficiency that are made for each available choice. And then the result of those calculations are fed to separate subsystems to weigh the alternatives.

The different moral and ethical decisions that different people will arrive at can be attributed to individual differences as to how the various stages of the decision process are handled. For instance, an individual may favor equity over efficiency, and tend to use emotion rather than logic to reach the decision.

Here's what the study found:

In these trails, subjects overwhelmingly chose to preserve equity at the expense of efficiency, Hsu said. "They were all quite inequity averse." The findings support other studies that show that most people are fairly intolerant of inequity.

The animation, in conjunction with the fMRI, allowed the researchers to view activity in the brain at critical moments in the decision-making process. After analyzing the data, they found that different brain regions -- the insula, putamen and caudate -- were activated differently, and at different points in the process, Hsu said.

Activation of the insula varied from trial to trial in relation to changes in equity, while activity in the putamen corresponded to changes in efficiency, he said.

In contrast, the caudate appeared to integrate both equity and efficiency once a decision was made.

The role of the insula (or, more formally, insular cortex) is especially interesting, since this brain region has been associated with quite a few other types of social-emotional mental processing. We'll come back to that in a moment. But here are the conclusions of the researchers:

The involvement of the insula appears to support the notion that emotion plays a role in a person's attitude towards inequity, Hsu said.

The insula is known to play a key role in the awareness of bodily states and emotions. Studies have shown that it is activated in people experiencing hunger or drug-related cravings, and in those feeling intense emotions such as anger, fear, disgust or happiness. Other research has implicated the insula in mediating fairness. ...

Together, the results "show how the brain encodes two considerations central to the distributive justice calculus and shed light on the cognitivist/sentimentalist debate regarding the psychological underpinnings of distributive justice," the authors wrote.

Here's how another report about this research summed it up:

Your Brain on Ethics (5/8/08)

The fMRI scans contain hints of how these two factors might be encoded by the brain. The insula, a brain region linked to processing emotion, became more active when subjects considered more inequitable distributions of meals; it was also more active in subjects whose choices suggested a greater-than-average aversion to inequity. Activity in another region, the putamen, seemed to track the common good, rising in proportion to the total number of meals that could be donated in a given case.

Now let's have a quick overview of the insula. Turns out that it's involved in a lot more than just moral decision-making. Here's a general article from a bit over a year ago:

A Small Part of the Brain, and Its Profound Effects (2/6/07)

According to neuroscientists who study it, the insula is a long-neglected brain region that has emerged as crucial to understanding what it feels like to be human.

They say it is the wellspring of social emotions, things like lust and disgust, pride and humiliation, guilt and atonement. It helps give rise to moral intuition, empathy and the capacity to respond emotionally to music. ...

If it does everything, what exactly is it that it does?

For example, the insula “lights up” in brain scans when people crave drugs, feel pain, anticipate pain, empathize with others, listen to jokes, see disgust on someone’s face, are shunned in a social settings, listen to music, decide not to buy an item, see someone cheat and decide to punish them, and determine degrees of preference while eating chocolate.

Damage to the insula can lead to apathy, loss of libido and an inability to tell fresh food from rotten. ...

Of course, like every important brain structure, the insula — there are actually two, one on each side of the brain — does not act alone. It is part of multiple circuits.

The insula itself is a sort of receiving zone that reads the physiological state of the entire body and then generates subjective feelings that can bring about actions, like eating, that keep the body in a state of internal balance. Information from the insula is relayed to other brain structures that appear to be involved in decision making, especially the anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortices.

Stay tuned. We'll be discussing the insula quite a bit more here, I think.

Further reading:

The Right and the Good: Distributive Justice and Neural Encoding of Equity and Efficiency – Original research report published 5/8/08 at Science Express (sub. rqd. for full access)

Which Orphans Do You Want to Starve? – Blog article by Sharon Begley at Newsweek

How Fairness Is Wired In The Brain – 5/28/08 press release about the research dealing with fairness and the insula

Tags: morality, fairness, utility, neuroscience, neurobiology, insula, insular cortex

Cheating

It's certainly appropriate – as well as hilarious – to draw the analogy between humans and slime molds. Kurt Vonnegut, Samuel Clemens, and H. L. Mencken would approve. But there's serious truth in it:

Some cheaters can keep it in their genes

A new study examining social behaviour suggests certain individuals are genetically programmed to cheat and often will do- providing they can get away with it.

The researchers looked at slime moulds - microscopic single-cell organisms or amoebae that are forced to cooperate with one another when food is in short supply. Studying slime moulds at the cellular level provides the scientists with a unique insight into the genes that may also influence human behaviour.

The international team, including biologists from The University of Manchester, found that some amoebae have the ability to use cheating tactics to give them a better chance of survival. The research - published in the journal Nature - not only demonstrates that cheating is a natural phenomenon governed by our genes but that it may be widespread among social creatures.

This is familiar territory. I wrote about it here, where the subject (among other things) was the evolutionary origins of altruism and cooperation. One needs to read that (or be familiar with the viewpoint of evolutionary psychology on the origins of morality and ethics) in order to see how the following speculations fit in.

Apparently, in many social species, there is a tendency for populations to evolve with an equilibrium mixture of cheaters and non-cheaters ("altruists"). Although cooperation increases the probability of group survival, some individuals in any group can gain an advantage by cheating, so they will tend to persist in groups as time goes on. But they can't become too numerous without harming the group's survival. So eventually some equilibrium is reached.

In the simulation of intergroup warfare I discussed in my earlier post, it was the warfare which worked against survival, so that under such conditions, there were pressures against a large equilibrium fraction of cheaters. These pressures were manifested in such things as religion and moral/ethical codes of behavior, together with formalized punishment of cheaters.

But warfare isn't the only factor that can put pressure on group survival. Simply living in a hostile or marginal environment can do it. This seems to be what happens with slime molds. Individuals can be, well, individualists until there is an existential threat.

One wonders whether this isn't what happened to the Neanderthals. Their environment was harsh. They must have migrated to that environment during favorable conditions (otherwise, why stay?), but eventually conditions got worse. If they were not able to evolve (biologically and/or socially) fast enough to reduce the percentage of cheaters, it's reasonable to suppose all would die. Modern humans living around the same time in similar environments – and who survived – perhaps were able to evolve faster. Or else they had already better capabilities for intragroup cooperation to deter cheating. Things like abilities in their brains for cheater detection, a "theory of mind", and ethical reasoning.

Other considerations suggest that worsening environmental conditions leads to more intergroup warfare (if population density is high enough, so that there is competition for resources, not merely strugle to survive, as on an island without competing groups). Such warfare would also promote cooperation and intragroup altruism over cheating.

What kind of cooperation is helpful in the non-warfare scenario? Sharing of resources (food, shelter, tools, clothing, etc.) Also communal support for raising orphaned children. Groups that had such customs and low proportions of cheaters would be more likely to survive at all.

Incidentally, one of the principal investigators (Chris Thompson) in the slime mold study, seems to know his subject pretty well. Here's another item about his slime mold research.

Tags: morality, slime molds, evolutionary psychology

Increasing social isolation?

This research got a lot of coverage when it came out recently:

Americans' Circle Of Friends Is Shrinking, New Study Shows

Americans' circle of close confidants has shrunk dramatically in the past two decades and the number of people who say they have no one with whom to discuss important matters has more than doubled, according to a new study by sociologists at Duke University and the University of Arizona.

"The evidence shows that Americans have fewer confidants and those ties are also more family-based than they used to be," said Lynn Smith-Lovin, Robert L. Wilson Professor of Sociology at Duke University and one of the study's authors.

"This change indicates something that's not good for our society. Ties with a close network of people create a safety net. These ties also lead to civic engagement and local political action," she said.

Assuming there's a real effect here, rather than some artifact, one certainly has to wonder what's going on. I should probably exercise restraint in speculating about this. But I can't escape the feeling that U. S. society in general has definite signs of increasing illness and dysfunctionality over the past few decades. There's an increasing sense of anxiety in the air. People seem more opinionated, less open-minded, and less willing to consider ideas outside of narrow ideological positions. There's a sense of fearfulness and insecurity everywhere. You know, terrorists and sexual predators hiding under every bed.

Perhaps it has something to do with increasing challenges and threats to certainties and eternal verities -- such as religion, patriotism, "free enterprise", and moral superiority -- Americans have assumed (mistakenly) that they could always depend on.

If there's anything to such observations, then perhaps people are retreating from close, confidential friendships because it's getting harder to deal with points of view different, perhaps even slightly, from the viewpoint one is already imbued with.

Just a thought. FWIW.

------------------------------

Additional references:

Social Isolation Growing in U.S., Study Says - Washington Post