An elephant having an ‘aha’ moment.
- Foerder P. 2011. Insightful Problem Solving in an Asian Elephant. PLoS ONE.
by Mark James Adams
A worker in quantitative genetics, primate psychology, and cooperative breeding. I research the evolutionary dynamics of correlated suites of behavior in wild animals. I am trying to answer the question Why do our personalities differ?
About Differential biology? Ask the Reader
A worker in quantitative genetics, primate psychology, and cooperative breeding. I research the evolutionary dynamics of correlated suites of behavior in wild animals. I am trying to answer the question Why do our personalities differ?
About Differential biology? Ask the Reader
August 19, 2011
August 10, 2011
"This foundation [for sociobiologists concerned with cooperation] includes Hamilton’s reformulation of natural selection as a force that maximizes “inclusive fitness” rather than individual fitness, George Williams’ expository evisceration of old-school group selection, Robert Trivers’ explanation of cooperation between unrelated individuals with the theory of reciprocity, and John Maynard Smith’s application of game theory to the study of animal behavior. Sadly, too few of us include George Price in this august company."
— Panchanathan K. George Price, the Price equation, and cultural group selection. Evol Hum Behav
July 5, 2011
Nonhuman primate ageing resembles its human counterpart…We examined whether, as in humans, orang-utan subjective well-being was related to longer life. The sample included 184 zoo-housed orang-utans followed up for approximately 7 years. …in a model that included, and therefore, statistically adjusted for, sex, age, species and transfers, orang-utans rated as being “happier” lived longer. The risk differential between orang-utans that were one standard deviation above and one standard deviation below baseline in subjective well-being was comparable with approximately 11 years in age. This finding suggests that impressions of the subjective well-being of captive great apes are valid indicators of their welfare and longevity.
Our analysis was prospective rather than causal, but it is good evidence for a general covitality factor in our and allied species. The figure shows the year-over-year risk of death depending on subjective well-being (SWB, i.e., happiness).
The BBC have some comments from Alex and Dick Byrne.
- Weiss, Adams, King. Happy orang-utans live longer lives. Biology Letters.
- figure CC-by the authors.
July 4, 2011
"Happiness is more like knowledge than like belief. There are lots of things we believe but don’t know. Knowledge is not just up to you, it requires the cooperation of the world beyond you — you might be mistaken. Still, even if you’re mistaken, you believe what you believe. Pleasure is like belief that way. But happiness isn’t just up to you. It also requires the cooperation of the world beyond you. Happiness, like knowledge, and unlike belief and pleasure, is not a state of mind."
— David Sosa, “The Spoils of Happiness,” via brainpicker (via dianakimball)
June 27, 2011
"It’s probably just a coincidence that when people get exercised about the reasoning behind inferring function from form, it just happens to be in the context of one tiny part of the natural world, the computational mechanisms that underlie human social behavior."
— Robert Kurzban, To Which Organisms, If Any, Does The Logic Of Adaptationism Apply?
June 20, 2011
"A test is said to be face valid if it appears to measure what it purports to measure, especially to subjects. Face validity bears no relation to true validity and is important only in so far as adults will generally not co-operate on tests that lack face validity, regarding them as silly and insulting. Children, used to school, are not quite so fussy."
— Paul Kline, A handbook of test construction: introduction to psychometric design, 1986 via Mind Hacks
June 9, 2011
SUBMISSION: Elements of Happiness
How can a life be visualized? Can a happy life be captured in numbers and diagrams?
The Harvard Study of Adult Development is the longest prospective study of mental and physical well-being ever conducted. For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been following 824 individuals through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age.
In this book, I’ve taken 10 representative case studies and visualized their salient character traits, personal timeline, social supports, and physical health to draw conclusions about “the happy life.”
May 11, 2011
Gorilla traditions for eating nettles.
- Byrne, Hobaiter, Klailova. 2011. Local traditions in gorilla manual skill: evidence for observational learning of behavioral organization. Animal Cognition.
(Source: newscientist.com)
May 11, 2011
How to incentivise research through reputation. Same.as Reputation (by @yahnyinlondon via @kaythaney)
May 9, 2011
"We’re often tempted to add decimal places to the answer to one question instead of moving on to the next question."
— John D Cook, Move on to the next question — The Endeavour
May 5, 2011
Star plot to visualize factor loadings.
- Bielby et al. 2007. The fast-slow continuum in mammalian life history: an empirical reevaluation. Am Nat 169.
May 4, 2011
Personality and the senses
there is an apparent relationship between certain personality traits and sensory capacities.…[S]ensory capacity may provide a filter through which we perceive the world, and that this filter may influence the picture we receive of the world….We found no coherence between personality traits and gustatory modality (mainly related to eating) but significant coherence between personality traits and olfactory, trigeminal sensory and electrical cutaneous modality; systems usually thought to be related to detection of social cues and awareness of danger.
If behavior is the output of a reaction to a stimulus, part of the behavior (and therefore personality) will be related to how each stimulus is perceived. It is interesting to find this at such a basic level (as opposed to say, the global stimulation experienced by the extravert versus the introvert).
- Croy I, Springborn M, Lötsch J, Johnston ANB, Hummel T, 2011 Agreeable Smellers and Sensitive Neurotics – Correlations among Personality Traits and Sensory Thresholds. PLoS ONE 6(4): e18701. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0018701
(Source: plosone.org)
April 16, 2011
David Attenborough on identifying individual animals in field studies.
BBC Radio 4 - David Attenborough’s Life Stories, Series 2, Identities
March 29, 2011
"[T]heory [is] the formation of testable hypotheses, while…empirical work [is] hypothesis testing. This pair of definitions highlights the false dichotomy between theory and empirical work insofar as models, mathematics, and methods do not fall in either category, but instead provide the operational link between theory and empirical work."
— R Gorelick, What is theory? _Ideas in Ecology and Evolution_.
March 9, 2011
"All of what follows will appear ridiculously obvious to those who have had no statistical training. Those who have must struggle."
— William M. Briggs, Group Differences: An Exceedingly Brief Introduction To Bayesian Predictive Inference via @StatFact.
