People have stereotypical beliefs

Scientific American magazine reports:

"There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life,” Jesse Jackson once told an audience, “than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery -- then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”

Jackson’s remark illustrates a basic fact of our social existence, one that even a committed black civil-rights leader cannot escape: ideas that we may not endorse -- for example, that a black stranger might harm us but a white one probably would not -- can nonetheless lodge themselves in our minds and, without our permission or awareness, color our perceptions, expectations and judgments.

Using a variety of sophisticated methods, psychologists have established that people unwittingly hold an astounding assortment of stereotypical beliefs and attitudes about social groups: ...

Now researchers are probing deeper. They want to know: Where exactly do such biases come from?

One of the themes of this blog is that when researchers attempt mindreading, they often devise overly complex theories when simple ones suffice. In this case, there is a simple explanation for why someone might fear being robbed by a black man more than a white man.

Requiring photo id

A reader writes to favor photo ID for voting, and claims that her bank requires photo ID just to make a deposit. But after a couple of questions, she admitted that she had never tried making a deposit without photo ID, and does not really know what the bank policy is!

I think that a lot of people probably like to present photo ID. It is their way of saying, "I am not an illegal alien." They also like to show off their major credit card, as a way of saying, "I am not a deadbeat with a low credit score." California is crawling with illegal aliens and deadbeats. You have to show off your status however you can, I guess.

Update: The reader writes to say that the bank teller told her that it is bank policy to ask for photo ID or an ATM card. She does not know what the bank would do if no such card were presented.

Mohammedan man kills daughter

Here is news from Iraq:

For Abdel-Qader Ali there is only one regret: that he did not kill his daughter at birth. ‘If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her,’ he said with no trace of remorse.

Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British solider in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city’s Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death.

Abdel-Qader, 46, a government employee, was initially arrested but released after two hours. Astonishingly, he said, police congratulated him on what he had done. ‘They are men and know what honour is,’ he said. ...

‘Death was the least she deserved,’ said Abdel-Qader. ‘I don’t regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion,’ he said. […] ‘That girl was a mistake in my life. I know God is blessing me for what I did,’ he said, his voice swelling with pride.

These folks are not going to be civilized any time soon.

How girls get knee injuries

The NY Times explains how Title IX has led to thousands of girls getting seriouns knee injuries:

Title IX, the federal law enacted in 1972 mandating equal opportunity in sports, has helped to shape a couple of generations of girls who believe they are as capable and as tough as any boy. With a mix of resignation and pride, Rich Pierson said to me: "We've raised these girls to be headstrong and independent. ...

By Janelle's and her mother's count, her club team, with 18 players, had suffered eight A.C.L. tears — eight — during her high-school years: Janelle's two, another player's two and four other girls with one each. A high-school teammate one class above Janelle endured chronic ankle problems and, according to a Miami Herald article, six ankle operations — three in each leg — over the course of her four years on the varsity soccer team.

This casualty rate was not due to some random spike in South Florida. It is part of a national trend in the wake of Title IX and the explosion of sports participation among girls and young women. From travel teams up through some of the signature programs in women's college sports, women are suffering injuries that take them off the field for weeks or seasons at a time, or sometimes forever.

Girls and boys diverge in their physical abilities as they enter puberty and move through adolescence. Higher levels of testosterone allow boys to add muscle and, even without much effort on their part, get stronger. In turn, they become less flexible. Girls, as their estrogen levels increase, tend to add fat rather than muscle. They must train rigorously to get significantly stronger. The influence of estrogen makes girls' ligaments lax, and they outperform boys in tests of overall body flexibility — a performance advantage in many sports, but also an injury risk when not accompanied by sufficient muscle to keep joints in stable, safe positions. Girls tend to run differently than boys — in a less-flexed, more-upright posture — which may put them at greater risk when changing directions and landing from jumps. Because of their wider hips, they are more likely to be knock-kneed — yet another suspected risk factor.

This divergence between the sexes occurs just at the moment when we increasingly ask more of young athletes, especially if they show talent: play longer, play harder, play faster, play for higher stakes. And we ask this of boys and girls equally — unmindful of physical differences.

Phyllis Schlafly warned about this five years ago.

People like cheap wines that are labeled expensive

Here is wine research:

The researchers scanned the brains of 21 volunteer wine novices as they administered tiny tastes of wine, measuring sensations in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, the part of the brain where flavor responses apparently register. The subjects were told only the price of the wines. Without their knowledge, they tasted one wine twice, and were given two different prices for that wine. Invariably they preferred the one they thought was more expensive.

The best wines are the cheap wines that have been relabeled as expensive wines.

Michael McClish to be charged with murder

I commented previously that Michael McClish was tried and convicted of rape on some very flimsy evidence. He did not get a fair trial. It appeared to me that he was framed because the authorities suspect him of murder, and could not prove it.

Now he is being charged with murder:

SANTA CRUZ - The only person ever publicly named a suspect in the 2006 murder of a pregnant Ben Lomond woman was arrested on two counts of murder Tuesday.

Michael Patrick McClish, 38, will be charged with the slaying of Joanna "Asha" Veil, 28, and her unborn child, Anina, today, according to authorities at the Wednesday afternoon press conference at the District Attorney's Office.

I hope he gets a fair trial. The authorities have finally revealed that the father of the unborn baby was the victim's estranged husband, not McLish. No motive or murder weapon has been reported.

I will be waiting to see the actual evidence. I know that there are a lot of local folks who think that McLish must be guilty because he has shifty eyes, or because he was once rude to a customer, or some similar reason. I hope that someone has better evidence than that.

No American science grad shortage

A new Nature mag article addresses the myth that the USA has a shortage of skilled scientists and engineers:

In absolute numbers, the U.S. has more top-scoring kids in math and science than any other country studied–by far. ...

The answer, of course, is that the groups that stand to benefit from a public perception of an S&E shortage–the tech industry (who want an expanded H-1B work visa program for its cheap labor), the immigration lawyers (who want an expanded H-1B for obvious reasons), the education lobby (”Give us more money so we can remedy the shortage”) and so on hire the slickest PR people money can buy. They’ve been at it for years, to the point at which many people in Congress, the press and the public at large simply take it for granted that “Johnnie can’t do math.”

We are producing as many college grads in science and engineering as we can use. We do not need to import cheap labor from elsewhere.

Phyllis gets honorary degree

Some people are complaining that Wash. U. (St. Louis) is giving Phyllis Schlafly an honorary degree. The quote that seems to bug people the most is:

By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape.

Until about 30 years ago, the word "rape" was used for serious crimes other than marital sexual relations. Even today, many people do not accept the notion that marital rape is comparable to stranger rape, Eg, this article says:

Today there is considerable evidence that marital rape is still perceived as a lesser crime than other forms of rape within our culture and some studies have found a significant number of participants still question whether it is possible to rape one’s wife (Whatley, 2005; Kirkwood & Cecil, 2001). In a recent study of attitudes among college students, Monson, Byrd and Langhinrichsen-Rohling (1996) found that marital rape was perceived as less serious than rape perpetuated by a stranger and only 50% of the male students thought that it was possible for a husband to rape his wife.

There are some feminists who argue that marital rape is worse than stranger rape. Most people disagree.

Fast food and liver damage

Here is a science scare story about fast food:

Diets high in fast food can be highly toxic to the liver and other internal organs, but that damage can be reversed, says one of the country’s leading experts on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, who offers four steps to undo the effects of a 'super-size me' diet.

Late in the story we learn:

etri is quick to emphasize that fast food per se doesn’t causes liver damage. Rather, he says, the harm comes from eating too many calories and ... “The big issue here is caloric content,” says Tetri.

Yes, calorie content. If you go on a super-size movie diet where you double your calories eaten and avoid all exercise, then you will gain weight and have other health problems. The mice is the study displayed an increase in liver enzymes.

The article suggests avoiding fast food, but the research doesn't really show that fast food is any worse than any other food with the same calories.

Here is a funny cartoon about bacon being bad for your health. In reality, bacon is good for you.

Fat is good for you

Men's Health magazine reports:

What if Bad Fat is Actually Good for You?

For decades, Americans have been told that saturated fat clogs arteries and causes heart disease. But there's just one problem: No one's ever proved it

The article traces efforts since 1953 to prove that eating saturated fats causes heart disease. I suspect that millions of people have died younger because of this bad advice.

Smarter ladies have worse sex

The UK Sun newspaper reports:

BRAINY babes find it harder to have an orgasm – because they are too busy thinking, a study claims.

The German survey found that the more educated a woman was, the less likely it was that she would be satisfied by sex.

In the study 62 per cent of women who had completed their education said they often had problems achieving orgasm.

Only 38 per cent of women with a lower educational qualification said they had such problems.

The study conducted by a German lifestyle website surveyed over 2,000 women between the ages of 18 and 49.

I always thought that the brainy women are able to complete their education because they have fewer sexual distractions.

Detecting liars by facial expressions

Here is some new mindreading research:

How can we tell who’s lying, who’s not? New research out of Stephen Porter’s Forensic Psychology Lab at Dalhousie University determines the face will betray the deceiver’s true emotion, but not in the stereotypical ways we think. It’s not the shifty eyes or sweaty brow or an elongated nose (à la Pinocchio) the lie detector should look for. Instead, other elements of a liar’s face will give them away – “cracking” briefly and allowing displays of true emotion to leak on to the face. In fact, when Porter and his team analyzed White’s plea frame by frame, they found hints of anger and disgust in his face, not noticed by most of the supportive public.

Others have reported similar results. I am not sure if I believe it or not.

Why we have lousy math teachers

The left-wing San Jose Mercury News newspaper has this editorial:

California faces a shortage of math and science teachers, ...

Paying these teachers more makes sense under the law of supply and demand. College graduates with math and science majors can choose from many lines of work - accountant, researcher, financial analyst - more lucrative than teaching. And if they do want to teach, they gravitate toward higher-performing schools.

But what would seem an obvious solution in the private sector is prohibited in K-12 schools in California. Under a standard union contract, teachers in all subjects must be paid on the same salary scale. ...

The CTA believes that all teachers, like assembly-line workers, should be paid the same wage. It argues that a "two-tier pay structure" will "corrode the morale and overall effectiveness of all the teachers at the site." That view ignores the needs of struggling children and the competition in the job market for math and science majors.

The result is that we have overpaid teachers who do not know how to teach math and science.

New definition of rape

News from Baltimore MD:

The state's highest court ruled yesterday that a man can be charged with rape if he ignores a woman's calls to stop - even if she had previously consented to sex.

With this expansion of the legal definition of rape, Maryland joins seven other states whose courts have determined that a woman can revoke her consent after intercourse begins. ...

The victim testified in Montgomery County court that she agreed to sex "as long as he stops when I tell him to." As he began, she told him to stop because he was hurting her, but he kept going for five or 10 seconds, she said.

When a boy is a victim of statutory rape, he gets punished by a special tax that makes him pay 25% of his income to the state for the next 18 years:

A 12-year-old kid has sex with 16-year-old girl ..., the girl gets pregnant, goes on welfare, and the state welfare agency sues the father (now 13 years old) for reimbursement of the welfare money paid to the girl.

The Supreme Court of Kansas upheld the judgment against the 13-year-old kid. The Court wrote that the State's interest in requiring minor parents to support their children overrode its interest in protecting juveniles from their improvident acts, even when such acts might include criminal activity. ... many states have followed this decision.

These laws seem crazy to me. The next time that you hear that some guy is paying child support, remember that he might have been a statutory rape victim. The next time you hear some man is a rape, remember that his only crime may have been that he took five seconds to do what the girl asked.

Reason to fear the outside world

ABC News reports:

Bruce Perry, a child psychologist, testified that the traditional foster care system could be destructive to children taken from the sect's ranch. But he also testified that the children could be at risk if they are returned to the ranch.

Perry said the raid of the compound is a "very unique situation" and that the foster care system would be "destructive" to the children. ...

"So much of what they do out there is wonderful. But there is a part of what they do that is very destructive," Perry testified. He said he wished the sect's leaders wouldn't teach their children to be so fearful of the outside world.

After 416 kids were seized, I'd say that their fears were well-grounded.

Letting rich people use their money

Freakonomics blogger Daniel Hamermesh writes:

On the demand side, however, allowing people to bid for organs seems repugnant to me. (I do not want livers — except perhaps foie gras — on eBay!) Ethically, it seems wrong to let richer people move to the front of queues for scarce organs (to let the market implicitly value their lives more than those of poorer people).

Wrong? The rich people move to the front of every other line. I think that it is a little strange when people say that rich people can use their wealth to buy almost all goods and services, but not certain others.

Decisions take time

Here is some new mindreading research:

In a study published Sunday in Nature Neuroscience, researchers using brain scanners could predict people's decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them. ...

Haynes updated a classic experiment by the late Benjamin Libet, who showed that a brain region involved in coordinating motor activity fired a fraction of a second before test subjects chose to push a button. Later studies supported Libet's theory that subconscious activity preceded and determined conscious choice -- but none found such a vast gap between a decision and the experience of making it as Haynes' study has.

In the seven seconds before Haynes' test subjects chose to push a button, activity shifted in their frontopolar cortex, a brain region associated with high-level planning. Soon afterwards, activity moved to the parietal cortex, a region of sensory integration. Haynes' team monitored these shifting neural patterns using a functional MRI machine. ...

Hallett doubts that free will exists as a separate, independent force.

This is consistent with previous research, but it does not cast any doubt on free will. It just shows that it takes a few seconds to make a conscious decision.

I have noticed this myself while riding my bike. If I see a hazard in the road, I can slam on the brakes as fast as my reaction time will allow. Reaction time is usually a tenth of a second or so. But if I see something interesting on the side of the road and have to make a deliberate decision on whether to stop, then the decision takes a few seconds. I can only make a decision faster than a second if I had already prepared a programmed response.

Reading faces for lust

Here is some new UK mindreading research:

A new study by U.K. researchers found that you can tell just by looking at someone’s face whether they’re interested in casual sex or long-term commitment. ...

Both men and women who participated in the study thought that the more attractive women would be interested in something short-term, and they were right ...

If you’re more attractive, people might expect you to have more partners. And more often than not, we fulfill those expectations people have of us. ...

Because of the effect those expectations have on our behavior, our first impressions about people turn out to be right, says Keating.

“Physical appearance cues tell us more about people than we’re even consciously aware of,” Keating says. “So in fact, we do judge a book by its cover. And the funny thing is, it often works for us.”

There is no unconscious assessments or mindreading. I think that people are conscious of who is attractive and who is not.

Boys Will Be Boys, Even Among Monkeys

The Discovery Channel reports:

The notion that children's taste in toys might somehow be genetically determined has long been disparaged by psychologists -- pooh-poohed as unscientific, sexist or both.

But a study by researchers in the United States suggests that when it comes to choosing between trucks and cuddly stuffed animals, chromosomes could make a difference. ...

So a team of scientists led by Kim Wallen of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia decided to offer typical "male" and "female" toys to rhesus monkeys to see if preferences aligned with sex.

Much to their surprise, they did. The 11 male monkeys headed straight for the wheeled toys, such as dump trucks, leaving the plush toys more-or-less unmolested. The 23 females were more curious, and played with both.

"They are not subject to advertising. They are not subject to parental encouragement, they are not subject to peer chastisement," said Wallen.

This should not be a surprise to anyone with small kids.

CD is digital

The NY Times reports:

People with a history of buying alternative rock music on Amazon, for example, may find the site pitching them the new R.E.M. album, “Accelerate,” in both CD and digital form.

Both? Anything in CD form is also in digital form. All CDs are digital.