Clik here to view.
Demise of the West
Rachel Silverthorne's Ride (1938), mural by John W. Beauchamp at Muncy Post Office. Government-funded art used to promote love of family, community, and nation.In my last post I discussed the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Unusually diverse
Portrait “Miijke”– Frans Koppelaar (1943 - ). Europeans are unusually diverse for hair color. Over 200 alleles have been identified in British subjects.Europeans are unusually diverse for hair color....
View ArticleClik here to view.
The evolution of empathy
Maria Walpole and her daughter Elisabeth Laura (1762), by Joshua Reynolds. Affective empathy may have initially evolved to facilitate the mother-child relationship. Empathy is key to the functioning of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Evolution of empathy, part II
Medical students, Monterrey (credit: Daniel Adelrio, Wikicommons). Mexicans feel more empathy if they have a university degree. Does university make people more empathic?We differ from individual to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Did cold seasonal climates select for cognitive ability?
Paleolithic artefacts (Wikicommons). The northern tier of Eurasia saw an explosion of creativity that pre-adapted its inhabitants for later developments.The new journal Psych will be publishing a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Nurture of Nature
Fleet Street, watercolor by Ernest George (1839-1922). In England, middle-class families used to be so large that they overshot their niche and flooded the ranks of the lower class.Until the last ten...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Alzheimer's and African Americans
A village elder of Mogode, Cameroon (Wikicommons - W.E.A. van Beek). African Americans are more than twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's. They also more often have an allele that increases the risk...
View ArticleClik here to view.
IQ of biracial children and adults
First snow in Minnesota(c. 1895), Robert Koehler. Biracial children have IQ scores halfway between those of white children and black children, even when they are conceived by white single mothers and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Autumn in China
Pink Autumn, by Victor Wang (2017) (Wikipedia). China’s demographic crisis is much worse than what official statistics let on.With its population ageing as a result of longer lifespans and a dwindling...
View ArticleClik here to view.
They really are smart ... and other surprises
Rachela - Maurycy Gottlieb (1856-1879) (Wikicommons). Ashkenazi Jews have a higher incidence of genetic variants associated with high educational attainment.Intelligence varies from one individual to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Original Industrial Revolution
Cro-Magnon woman (Wikicommons) – At northern latitudes, women had fewer opportunities for food gathering, so they were free to specialize in new and more cognitively demanding tasks, like garment...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why did brain size decrease after the Ice Age?
Nubians (Wikipedia). After the last ice age, brain size decreased in Europeans and East Asians. In western Europeans, this trend continued until some time before 1800. No decrease is observable in a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Golden Age of Intelligence?
Busts of Greek philosophers (Wikicommons, Matt Neale). Did the Ancient Greeks have the highest mean IQ of any human population then and since?Francis Galton argued that average intelligence had been...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Stumbling into the future
China's TFR before and after introduction of the one-child policy (Chaparro and Kulkarni 2015). Did that policy really change anything?The European world has entered "demographic autumn"—on the one...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why that stereotype and not the other?
Nubian Pyramids (Wikicommons - Petr Adam Dohnalek). In classical antiquity, contacts with black Africans were largely with Nubians, a people who already enjoyed a high level of material culture. A...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Classical antiquity was a low point of human intelligence
Aristotle discovered adaptation by natural selection long before Darwin, yet despite his fame this theory remained ignored throughout antiquity. (Wikicommons)Gabriel Andrade and Maria Campo Redondo...
View ArticleClik here to view.
South Korea's experiment
Mid-term exams at a South Korean middle school (Wikicommons - Samuel Orchard)South Korea opened up to mail-order brides a quarter of a century ago. Most are from Southeast Asia (Philippines, Vietnam,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
South Korea at the crossroads
By mid-century, immigrant workers will be almost as numerous as native-born workers (AINZ 2016)Readers took exception to a population forecast in my last post: children of mixed parentage will make up...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Japanese alternative
Japan is robotizing not only manufacturing but also the service sector (Wikicommons - Michael Ocampo)In my last two posts I argued that South Korea has embraced not only ultra-low fertility but also...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why podophilia?
Repos dans les récoltes– William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905)What is it about women's feet? They are the part of a woman’s body that men most often fetishize. A study on the frequencies of different...
View Article