Up In The Air


Generations of kids, both human and goat, play climbing games to occupy the high point on the mound. The understanding that occupying the high ground gives one an advantage is genetically coded into us, so that we can skip over that part when studying Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War.” Occupying ‘the moral high ground’ is also something that we all rush to do, whether or not it can be validated.

But it seems that being elevated actually makes us more virtuous. Sanna and his colleagues from several US Universities has just published a paper (1), which gives experimental confirmation of this. Studying the results is well worth our time and enjoyment, especially as the experiments were conducted on that strange animal, the ‘mall shopper’.

Charitable giving was found to be elevated when donors were ascending the escalators from the upper reaches of shopping heaven, compared to those who were emerging into the light from the bowels of store below. The difference was a factor of two, and this was Christmas!

A group of participants were either taken up steps onto a stage or down into the orchestra pit and then asked to help with a task. Those who climbed up, stayed helping almost twice as long as those who went down.

The famed ‘Hot Sauce Test,’ my favorite, was utilized to measure compassion handed down or up. In this experiment, a very hot sauce mixture is doled out into a cup by a participant and given to another poor soul to drink. Those who had to climb up to carry out the task, handed out less than half the amount of hot sauce that those who had climbed down into the pit gave to their charges to drink.

Cooperation was also improved by elevation, as was shown by performance of the participants after being shown a video of looking out of an airplane or a car.

Clearly, preaching hell fire and brimstone from a raised pulpit is contraindicated. A much better plan would be to show heavenly videos in an iMax theater configuration. Next time I climb up the hill to feast on roast beef with my betters, I shall make sure that it is they that dole out the horseradish.


  1. L.J.Sanna, E.C.Chang, P.M.Micel & K.B.Lundberg, J. Exptl. Social Psych. 47, 472-476, (2011).

I Know What I Like


The world’s art museums are testament to the pleasure felt by the public when viewing the great art of the current and previous civilizations. These days it is no longer sufficient to say, “I like that one” or “I don’t think much of that.” We need a more scientific or objective measure.

We now have a field of scientific endeavor call neuroaesthetics that works to unravel what the ‘little grey cells’ are doing when we stare at a nude by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Prof. Zeki at U C London has started down the road to finding out what is going on inside our heads. His latest study was described in the UK’s daily telegraph (1).

A group of volunteers were stuffed headfirst, one at a time, into MRI machines to have their medial orbitofrontal cortex watched while they were shown images of old masters at intervals of ten seconds. Now our medial orbitofrontal cortex is the part of our brain in which we experience pleasure and desire. Increased blood flow indicates that we are working those little grey cells hard.

There were no surprises in that artists like Ingres and Constable caused to greatest rush of blood to the head. Viewing pictures by artists such as Quentin Matsys caused the least excitement. A reproduction in oil of his ‘The Ugly Duchess’ is available from the Oil Painting Factory (2), so you can try the experiment for yourself and see if your medial orbitofrontal cortex gets overheated.
'The Ugly Duchess, Quentin Matsys
photo National Gallery, London
The effects of the beautiful pictures was sufficiently strong that the suggestion was made that art should be made as widely available as possible to the general public where ever they are. However, this begs the question as to who is going to choose, and what are  they going to choose to keep us looking, at if the aim is to keep us topped up with feelings of pleasure and desire from morning ‘till night. I, for one, am unsure if I can survive such sensory overload. We will have to have a sufficient smattering of ‘ugly art’ added into the mix.











  1. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/8500012/Brain-scans-reveal-the-power-of-art.html
  2. http://www.oilpaintingfactory.com/english/oil-painting-102133.htm

    Urgent Issues


    As we get the family ready for the car trip, the big question before we ask “Did we lock the door?” is the interrogation of the kids: “Do need to go to the bathroom?” Most of us are aware of how, when we are crawling along in traffic, our critical perception of the skill set of other drivers around us is sharpened in direct proportion to the pressure on our bladder. This improved performance in our criticizing ability and creative use of language is known among the cognoscenti as ‘inhibitory spillover’.

    Although it is known that this type of visceral state can screw up our ability to exert self-control, this is not what we are addressing here. We are discussing the improved performance at making important judgments. This has not been sufficiently appreciated in the past. The situation has now been remedied by the publication of a study (1) from an international team centered at the Katholieke U of Leuven, in which nearly two hundred students, who were hopping from one foot to the other after having been fed beakers of water, were asked to do interesting psychological tests. Their performance was compared to a control group who were relaxed and comfortable.

    The tests were particularly interesting. For the first, the students had to give the meaning to a list of words that were printed in a variety of colors.  Color identification in this case is a secondary response and, of course, speed was of the essence. Those, whose need for speed was the greatest, performed more accurately indicating that inhibitory spillover from the dominant response (word meaning) to the secondary had occurred.

    After a water break, the next task was undertaken. In this case, the students had to make a choice between the instant gratification of a cash reward and a longer-term investment with a substantially bigger cash reward. The greater the bladder pressure, the better the choice, that is, the more likely that they would choose the higher reward option.

    Finally, there were one hundred and thirty students left standing. Giving lists of words to the students to read tested the feedback link between cognition and perception. The control group just had ordinary words to read. The pressure tested had a list of words connected to their predicament, such as ‘bladder,’ ‘toilet’ etc. The inhibitory spillover here increased their patience as they were focusing on important issues.

    It is interesting to note that the study was from the Department of Marketing and Organisation Studies in the Faculty of Business and Economics. I expect to see a rapid decrease in the availability of those ubiquitous bottles of water at important discussions with clients who are there to purchase, but at the same time all negotiating execs will be carrying a large capacity personal water bottle along with their Blackberry when go into critical business negotiations.

    No uninhibited spillovers were reported, so no one was sent home for a change of clothing after having mopped the floor.


    1. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1720956

                                                                                                                         

    The Big Sleep


    Is over, at least for the people who reside in the region where the Thirteen-Year Periodical Cicadas live. (The seventeen-year ones will have to wait a little longer.) Huge numbers are crawling out of their bunkers over the Carolinas, Arkansas, Georgia and Mississippi. The throw off their coveralls and pump up their wings, then the partying begins. The males sing away to make the females turn into groupies. The wild times go on for a month or so with tree sap being drunk with abandon.

    The inevitable result of all this wild partying is loads of new cicadas nymphs. They hatch out from eggs laid on the tree branches and rush to build their bunker ten inches underground among the roots of bushes and trees where they scrape out a meager living sucking away at the roots.

    This Big Band of cicadas is known as the Great Southern Brood to the general public and to their hard-core fans as Brood XIX. Lesser bands come out to sing at other times and places, but this is the big one. Gene Kritsky of the College of Mt. St. Joseph in Cincinnati is reported as saying (1) that we should enjoy them while we can and points out that “The Iroquois ate them all the time.” I guess if you have to wait for thirteen years until your next gourmet treat, you might be tempted to overindulge when the crop is in.


    http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2011-05-11-cicada-great-southern-brood-13-years_n.htm

    Now Where Did I Put That?


    The old saw ‘a place for everything, everything in its place’ is something that we all give at least lip service to. When someone comments about those unruly piles of papers on and around one’s desk, they will usually get the response “I know where everything is, don’t move anything.”

    How does your refrigerator or food storage cupboard look? Everything clearly visible or the oldest things pushed to the back, out of sight? But of course you know that they are there, and you will get round to using them before it’s too late. It is not just us who think we know where we put important things. (Things that we can’t find are always important.) Animals do too.

    Birds, squirrels and mice, for example, store food for the winter, and have to remember where they put it. Many trees are there, standing in their majestic glory today because some squirrel sat scratching its head, muttering, “Now where did I put that acorn?” Insects are generally more organized. Honeybees live in the middle of their store cupboard and spiders wrap up their food in silk and hang it up on their web.

    A new study by Rodríguez and Gloudman in the journal of Animal Cognition was directed at the memory of spiders. They chose the Bowl and Doily spider for their study. This spider spins a bowl shaped web above a non-sticky sheet. The bowl catches its prey and the spider then bites around the prey so it falls through and is stored on the sheet underneath.

    In the study various bits of stored prey were filched by the investigators and the spider was watched whilst it searched for it. The higher quality and larger the prey stolen, the harder the search, indicating that the spider was well ware of what she had lost and where it had been. The report didn’t mention if they returned the stolen property or fenced it elsewhere.

    1. http://www.springerlink.com/content/8w523504h1215244/

    The Benefits of Being Bored


    Daytime television has taken on a new important significance. Previously, I had thought that it was just a cheap form of keeping an audience softened up for advertisements. But after a new hypothesis, put forward by van Tilburg and Igou from U of Limerick (1), it is clearly playing a much more valuable role in society.

    Boredom is a good thing for society as a whole and for you and me in particular.  Nasty, antisocial behavior, such as hostility or aggression, have long been but down to the participants being bored and seeking excitement. Perhaps someone will determine that those guys have an antisocial gene because the reaction to boredom is very different with other people.

    When most of us feel bored, we apparently look for more meaningful activities. These may not be the most pleasant activities, but they are both meaningful and prosocial. The report points to activities such as donating blood and working for a charity as being a common cure for boredom. So the next time that we are feeling bored and miserable, we can take heart that it can just be the precursor to our rushing out to do some good works for our fellow citizens. 

    Long boring harangues by our politicos, or at our religious gatherings, may be much more effective than I’d realized at producing good works from the audience. I can picture parents all over the country, after reading this new study, looking at their kids who are whining, “But I’m bored,” no longer saying, “Go read a book,” but saying “Go donate a pint of blood.” I just hope the kids won’t get bored too often, though.

    1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/may/06/boredom-good-for-you-claims-study

    Duckling à la Pond



    Good news at the Ponds today. Everything looked very quiet and deserted, but then in a protected corner the first batch of ducklings was brought out for a trip. They are at least two weeks behind the goslings who are growing up fast. Of course, they have to bulk up for the flight north soon. The ducklings can take their time and enjoy splashing about here all summer long.

    The ospreys are looking good with one now sitting. She is languidly picking at the sticks surrounding her, occasionally tossing one casually aside over the edge, maybe because it is a little rotten and the bark is going slimy or perhaps the shape didn’t quite fit her fancy. If one is going to sit up on a platform on top of a pole for around thirty-six days in wind, rain or sun, then I guess one is entitled to be a little picky about the twigs one is reclining on.

    The only other excitement is gained by following the doings of the turtles when the sun comes out. The logs are chock-a-bloc with basking beasts, big and small, all with necks stuck out as they like the sun on the back of their heads. After a few days of sunshine, I guess that we won’t know if they are Western Pond Turtles or Red-eared Sliders as the will all be red-necks.