Author: tomstafford

The cognitive basis of good and evil

Michael Shermer, who writes the Skeptic column for Scientific American, and who is normally right on the mark has this to say about the concepts of Good and Evil:


‘The myth of good and evil is grounded in Christian theology and the belief that such forces exist independently of their carriers,’

You can read the full article – byline ‘It is too simple to blame evil people for horrifying acts of terror’ – <a href="http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/SomethingEvil.htm
“>here. I don’t want to disagree with Shermer’s conclusions, but just nit-pick on this specific point. In effect, I think i totally disagree with the above statement – let’s call it the ‘Cultural Invention of Evil Theory’. Rather, and readers of Mind Hacks might have guessed, I believe seeing Good and Evil in the world is the result of a basis cognitive process which we we all share.

The myth of good and evil arises from a psychological bias we all have, and which in the social psychology biz is called the ‘the fundamental attribution error’. This is simply that when looking at other people’s behaviour we tend to over-emphasise inherent characteristics (eg “he didn’t do the washing up because he’s lazy”), while when looking at our own we tend to over-emphasise situational variables (“i didn’t do the washing up because i had to go to work and do lots of marking”). Why this exists is probably because although it is often wrong, it is an adaptive way to think about the causal world. When trying to understand your own behaviour it is easiest to look at the things that vary (ie the situation) and try and control that, but when looking at other people’s behaviour the major variable is which other person you are looking at. It doesn’t make it right, but it is just easier to see other people as Good, or Evil, or Lazy, or Clever than it is to take full account of the complexity of both their situation and their personality.

Surely that is sufficient reason to explain the persistence of notions of good and evil, and also helps avoid the problem of how non-Christian cultures come also to use the concepts. The cultural background just flavours a universal, a universal which arises from the information-mechanics of our cognitive apparatus.

Behavioural and Brain Functions journal

Open access journals are good. Not only do they mean that the copyright on publicly funded-research doesn’t end in the hands of private companies, and that scientists don’t have to pay to read their own research, but it also means that everyone can read scientific research as it is communicated directly by scientists to their peers. There aren’t that many open access journals in psychology, so it great to hear about Behavioral and Brain Functions is a new, open access journal from biomedcentral, edited by Terje Sagvolden. Well done guys

Social problems activate additional brain resources

Continuing the recent evolutionary psychology theme (here,here), I’d like to recommend a piece posted by the ever excellent Carl Zimmer. Recent brain scanning evidence shows, possibly, that problems involving social exchange activate additional specific brain regions compared to problems of the same logical form which don’t involve social exchange. What’s this got to do with Evolutionary Psychology? Well the particular tasks involved are something called the Wason Selection Task, and a variant on it developed by the Evolutionary Psychologists Tooby and Cosmides, and subsequently used as a foundational piece of research for the Evolutionary Psychology movement (note the capital E and the capital P). Swing over to Carl’s place and take a look.

Are our memories suffering from our reliance on gadgets?

So I’m in this month’s edition of Wired, just a short quote. Since it’s here and it’s now I’ve reproduced the full quote I sent them below:

> I’m looking for a response to this question: “Are tools like Google and PDAs
> ruining our ability to remember things?”

So we have this amazing brain which constantly scans our environment and seeks out short-cuts. New bits of tech, like google or mobile phones, stop being strange very quickly (even though, truely, they’re just incredible. Unthinkable just a few years ago). They get absorbed, become artifical information-processing prosthetics. Are they making us forget things? Sure, we’re forgetting the things they allow us not to have to remember. But when we use something, or design something, we get a choice about what it asked us to remember. My mobile phone means the only numbers i remember are the ones i deliberately haven’t put in their so i’m forced to learn them. Not knowing any phone numbers is fine – as long as i don’t lose my phone. Then it becomes a bit of a problem.

But phone numbers are hard to learn anyway – a hang-up from an old technology. The situation is completely reversed for getting in touch with people through the web. Knowing the URL or email isn’t so useful – it might change. But with Google, knowing a person’s name (exactly the piece of information you store in your phone to allow you to forget their number) means you can find their details on-line in seconds. The technology lets us forget an implementational detail, and allows us to concentrate on remembering a versatile, tech-enabled, solution.

the emperor’s new paradigm

And to follow up on recent posts (here, and here) on evolutionary psychology there is a new review in the latest edition of Trends in Cognitive Sciences:

Evolutionary psychology: the emperor’s new paradigm
David J. Buller
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Volume 9, Issue 6 , June 2005, Pages 277-283
Abstract
For some evolutionary psychology is merely a field of inquiry, but for others it is a robust paradigm involving specific theories about the nature and evolution of the human mind. Proponents of this paradigm claim to have made several important discoveries regarding the evolved architecture of the mind. Highly publicized discoveries include a cheater-detection module, a psychological sex difference in jealousy, and motivational mechanisms underlying parental love and its lapses, which purportedly result in child maltreatment. In this article, I argue that the empirical evidence for these ‘discoveries’ is inconclusive, at best. I suggest that, as the reigning paradigm in evolutionary psychology has produced questionable results, the evolutionary study of human psychology is still in need of a guiding paradigm.

Minds Designed For Murder?

The notable evolutionary psychologist David Buss thinks that Murder is in our blood. Specifically that homicide isn’t a rare pathology, or the product of social forces, of culture, poverty or poor parenting – but is an evolutionary adaptation that we all share. He’s saying that in the right circumstances we will all kill, because ancestors of ours who killed had greater reproductive success.

Emotive stuff. I’d be interested to hear what readers of mindhacks.com have to say on it. Here are a few of my first thoughts:

As an observation, this is as old fashioned as original sin. What would make this interesting to me, is detailed, rigourous, demonstration of the psychological mechanisms behind murderous behaviour. Self-styled ‘Evolutionary psychology’ tells a plausible story about the context of murder, but I don’t think there’s much content to disagree or agree with until the experimental work has been done.

Related to this, Buss maligns theories that social forces/parenting/culture/poverty are behind killing while at the same time (in the penultimate paragraph) using them to explain why the rate of murder is so much lower in modern society compared to stone-age civilisations (“Among the Yanomamo of Venezuela and the Gebusi of Africa, for example, more than 30% of men die by being murdered” remember that next time someone trys to force a declension narrative about the collapse of society upon you). The thing about, say, the theory that parenting style produces murder is that at least it is a specific theory – both with regard to the factor and the mechanism. You may not agree, but at least you have something to disagree with (maybe it isn’t that particular style of parenting? maybe it isn’t parenting at all but peer group involvement? etc).

Evolution is an essential theoretical background to psychology, but it only provides hints and allegations – the real work still has to be done. Alas, you can’t derive your answers from the calculus of reproductive success, but need to go collect data to test your each hypotheses against.

Control context to aid memory

Reader Matt Doar writes in with this Mind hack which uses our brain’s natural ability to encode context as an aid to writing code:

My hack/tip/thing that makes people look at me oddly, useful for when I’m working on a large piece of software, an activity which involves holding a lot of related abstract information in your head. Here it is:

1. Pick one tune or one album that you like.

2. Listen to it while you develop the code. Over and over, on repeat. Listen to no other music. Headphones are a must for the office!

3. Don’t listen to it again until …

4. You need to work on the same code, then listen to it.

Lots of context returns with the tune and helps to write better code. One colleague suggested using scents too. Other colleagues (and my wife) just stared at me, then shook their heads sadly 😉

I think this is great. By training in a tune-as-context you can then use it as a trigger to help recall everything else that was on your mind at that time. And the idea of using scents instead of tunes might work well – smell and memory are famously intertwined, and there may be a neuroanatomical basis for this: the nerves from the nose enter the brain next to the areas associated with storing memories for episodes. The only drawbacks are that you may not get as many distinct smells as distinct tunes, and tunes come with headphones to stop you distracting your colleagues – there’s no such device for smells (although maybe the message is that smells should be used for pair-programming or group projects).

A Dancer Without A Body

A reader sent in a link to this piece of Flash artwork, Drift. The globes dance and drift, moving together in such a way as to suggest a person. The science behind this is discussed in Hack #77 ‘See A Person In Moving Lights’.

drift_dancer.jpg

The short story is that the way our brains pick out the principle components of moving people allows us to project a really powerful illusion of personhood onto lights that move in just the right way (the right way being the way lights would move if they are put on someone’s joints). It is moving together in time that creates the illusion, which is why this screenshot won’t convey any of the power of the illusion and you’ll need to watch the movies if you want to see exactly what i’m talking about.

The interesting thing about the Drift animation, I think, is that although it is elegant and at times evocative it isn’t quite convincing. Two reasons for this are, I think, that a) the balls are quite large and so do not precisely indicate a point on the body and b) this is an animation of how someone thinks someone’s joints should move, not a recording from real joints. Compare with these Dancing Lights which are done with real people in darkness with lights attached to their joints. Although, in some senses, there is less information here, the illusion is so much, so much, more convincing. There is a shock of recognition that you just cannot deny “Yes”, my brain says, “These are definitely real people, not just a collection of lights”. But you are not seeing real people, you are seeing a collection of moving lights. It is impossible to perceive it any other way that as people thought- every nuance of motion and timing is rendolent of personhood. The illusion in the animation suffers because it doesn’t capture these small things and the brain knows the difference.

And, finally, my favourite link : The BioMotion Lab Point Light Walker of Prof. Nikolaus Troje. This demo, constructed using recordings from scores of real people, allows you to adjust the gender, build, and mood (both nervous-relaxed and happy-sad) of a set of walking lights. Playing with this you can see just how much information we can get out of this abstracted-kind of motion.

Subliminal mesages in music

Federico

Here we go. I’m no expert on subliminal messages, but I did some research on it a few years ago, and again recently for the book. The title of the section in Mind Hacks should give you a good clue as to scientific opinion “Hack #82: Subliminal Messages Are Weak and Simple”. Even that may be an exaggeration.

Continue reading “Subliminal mesages in music”

Zoomquilt and the MAE

So one of the things that didn’t work so well at the Foyles talk was the demonstration of the Motion After Effect (or MAE to those of us who know and love it). Mick Porter has pointed out this animation zoomquilt which will definitely give you a good after-effect (thanks mick!). Zoom through the animation for a few cycles- you don’t need to focus on anything in particular, just look at the center- and then stop it. When stopped everything should swirl back in the opposite direction for a bit: the motion aftereffect.

Why interesting? Well, it shows that motion has dedicated represention in the brain, aside from just being computed from just location and time (which is all you theoretically need to calculate). The after-effect – a percept of motion without anything changing location – shows that motion is specifically represented somewhere in the brain (in area MT in the visual cortex as it happens) and can be fooled.

Also, you can show that the effect is occuring in your brain, rather than in your eyes, by looking at the animation with one eye and then looking at it stopped with the other. You should get the effect transfering across.

Neuroethics and Law Blog

Adam Kolber, Professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, has started a Neuroethics and Law Blog. I’m a big fan of specialist blogs; i think they play an important part in the knowledge economy of the net. So, welcome, Adam! Anyone who thinks they may be interested in the legal and ethical issues related to the brain and cognition is invited to take a look, here: http://kolber.typepad.com

Test Your Synaesthesia

Dear Kathryn

I’ve been thinking about the way you see colours that go with each number, and also colours for each day of the week. It’s called synaesthesia- but you probably know that- and you seem like the have number-colour synaesthesia (which is common). There are other kinds like sound-colour synaesthesia or even sound-taste synaesthesia (people who get a taste whenever they hear certain sounds!). Anyway we were talking about it at Burning Man, maybe, or at Christmas, and I seemed to be able to guess the same associations between numbers and colours as you actually see, even though I know I’m definitely not synaesthetic (did you know that synaesthesia is much more common in women than men?). So I thought what I was probably doing was remembering a synaesthetic association from childhood (did you know that synaesthesia is far more common in children?), and that was how I was getting a colour for each number- from memory .

So, next thought, is there a way to distinguish between someone who just has a memory of an association- or is just imaging an association- from someone who really is seeing actual colours when they are shown numbers? Is there, in other words, a test we can do to check if you are really synaesthetic? And of course there is, so I thought I’d write to you and tell you about it and you can have a go.

Continue reading “Test Your Synaesthesia”

Quirks and Quarks

This saturday, Mind Hacks goes audio – you can hear an interview I did yesterday with a Canadian radio show, CBC’s Quirks and Quarks (“the show that defi[n]es science”!). It’s broadcast on Saturdays on CBC Radio One from 12:06 – 1pm.

You can hear me discussing the book and going through a few of the hacks. For those of you who have read the book I can’t promise a lot of added value – but hopefully I was pretty coherant, and definitely excited, and it might be a good introduction to anyone thinking of getting the book. (it was also loads of fun to do, thanks guys!)

I think you’ll be able to hear the interview over the internet as it happens, but they will also certainly put it up as an MP3 afterwards. While you’re at the site, you can browse the show’s eight year backlog of audio files, which is a pretty impressive corpus of science broadcasting.

The blurb from the Q&Q site:

Mind Hacks: Tips and Tricks for Using your Brain.

Did you know that you go blind every time you move your eyes? And that what you’re seeing affects what you’re hearing? And that you can get stronger just by thinking about it? Well, it’s all strange but true, according to a neuroscientist who’s just written a new book containing 100 Tips and Tricks for using your brain. It’s a catalogue of illusions and experiments that show just how powerful, and how peculiar, the human brain really is – and you can try them all at home.

Research Digest blog

Mind Hacks contributor Christian Jarrett [Hacks #18, #62, #66] has started a blog for the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest. Writes the BPS:

Each fortnight we send out an email full of fun, engaging accounts of the most exciting new research, together with invaluable syllabus advice. This unmissable service is aimed primarily at undergraduate and A-level students, but academics have been signing up too, either to help with their teaching or simply to keep abreast of the best research outside of their specialist area.

So now you can get via blog rather than via email – and contribute comments back on papers Christian has summarised.