Genes Help Shape Our Political Views, New Research Shows. Where do we get our political beliefs? Are they drilled into us by our parents? Did we "borrow" them from friends and colleagues? There's no doubt that environmental factors influence our beliefs and behavior. But a provocative new study shows another big contributor to our political views. We're talking genes. "We've tended to think of political attitudes and behaviors as being rooted in the environment," Dr. For the study, Smith and his colleagues surveyed 682 pairs of middle-aged twins, all recruited from a large database called the Minnesota Twin Registry. The survey included questions about the twins' attitudes toward a range of political issues, from gay marriage to school prayer to the best way to structure society.
What did the researchers find? "I know people get bent out of shape about this," Smith said in a written statement. "Some observers have the idea that if people just talk about politics long enough, everybody will come to agreement," Dr. Scientists decipher dog-tail wags. 31 October 2013Last updated at 13:24 ET By Rebecca Morelle Science reporter, BBC World Service According to the scientists, a dog's tail wag can reveal its mood Scientists have shed more light on how the movements of a dog's tail are linked to its mood. Earlier research had revealed that happy dogs wag their tails more to the right (from the dog's point of view), while nervous dogs have a left-dominated swish. But now scientists say that fellow canines can spot and respond to these subtle tail differences. The study is published in the journal Current Biology. Prof Georgio Vallortigara, a neuroscientist from the University of Trento, said: "It is very well known in humans that the left and right side of the brain are differently involved in stimuli that invokes positive or negative emotions.
"Here we attempted to look at it in other species. " Dogs on film They measured the pets' heart rates and analysed their behaviour. The team says dogs respond to lop-sided tail wags from other dogs. Remembering Robert Bellah (1927 – 2013), Discoverer of Civil Religion › The Nature of Faith. On July 31, one of the great contemporary scholars of religion has left this world. Growing up as a sociologist in the United States during World War II, followed by McCarthyism and the Vietnam War, this great scientist decided to move to Canada for some years in order not to compromise his analytical views.
His name will be remembered especially for the discovery and description of "Civil Religion", the inevitably emerging combination of symbols, myths, rituals and beliefs in every political body (such as a state, a city or a party). And while other scientists tried to stay away from evolutionary studies they neither liked nor even tried to comprehend, the late Robert Bellah did just the opposite: Understanding that any true scientific understanding of human behavior has to be rooted in evolution, he plunged headlong into the matter, dedicating his last book "Religion in Human Evolution" to our expanding field.
Credit: Evolution: This View of Life. What's In France's 'Do You Speak Touriste?' Guide? Physical Environment, Dishonesty Linked In New 'Embodied Cognition' Research. Sitting in the wrong chair can certainly send you to the chiropractor -- but can it make you a crook? That question's not as far-fetched as you might imagine. Provocative new studies link dishonesty with sprawling on a big chair or at a big desk. In one experiment involving a driving simulator, people sitting in "expansive" seats were more likely to drive recklessly and conduct more "hit and runs" -- compared to people sitting in smaller, more "contractive" seats (see picture below). And that's not at all. In related experiments, people standing in "expansive poses" were more likely to accept money they weren't owed. Why does this happen? "Power causes you to focus on rewards and take risks to achieve those gains," Dr.
This research is part of an emerging psychology field called embodied cognition. What are other surprising examples of this?