tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post6313515954208702859..comments2024-03-22T15:55:34.030-04:00Comments on Evo and Proud: The novelty effect: a factor in mate choicePeter Frosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04303172060029254340noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-65399265467889155082015-01-31T23:23:37.385-05:002015-01-31T23:23:37.385-05:00Nice article.
In defense of beards: Beards can a...Nice article. <br /><br />In defense of beards: Beards can also hide aspects of the face that may be considered less attractive. <br /><br />I'd say haircuts in general fit into this category. <br /><br />Imagine walking around a suburb where everyone had bright blonde hair. Yikes that would be scary. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-41010906922958936262014-04-26T06:05:32.923-04:002014-04-26T06:05:32.923-04:00A young woman at work has dyed her hair blue. She&...A young woman at work has dyed her hair blue. She's good-looking to begin with, but the number of awestruck men keen to talk to her, once forming a short accidental queue (this is in England), is always funny to see.Iannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-74553700766986127722014-04-23T09:12:50.377-04:002014-04-23T09:12:50.377-04:00Bones and Behaviours and Sirtyon,
I agree. The no...Bones and Behaviours and Sirtyon,<br /><br />I agree. The novelty effect seems to be a general psychological response and is not limited to mate choice. I don't think it's a mental algorithm to avoid inbreeding.<br /><br />Ben,<br /><br />You seem to be arguing on two levels:<br /><br />1. How did compliance with moral norms evolve?<br /><br />2. Is moral compliance a specific behavior or is it part of a more general psychological response? (e.g., future time orientation)<br /><br />For #1, I suspect that compliance with moral norms evolved through increased empathy for non-kin and through increased ability to detect and enforce prevailing normative behavior. In other words, the concern we feel for immediate family has been transferred to all members of the social group. Parallel to this, there has been an increase in the tendency to detect and enforce normative behavior within the social group.<br /><br />It is possible that #2 is correct, but the Swedish twin study seems to indicate otherwise. Sociopaths can plan ahead. People like Jeffrey Dahmer were not retarded; they simply felt no empathy for their victims. There are plenty of intelligent, future-oriented sociopaths.<br /><br />Sean,<br /><br />The combination of blonde hair with dark skin is physiologically possible, but rare. It probably conflicts with a mental algorithm that evaluates facial contrast (light skin + dark frame) positively.Peter Fros_noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-38157490099792230632014-04-21T11:50:43.851-04:002014-04-21T11:50:43.851-04:00There are two possible mechanisms to explain this ...There are two possible mechanisms to explain this effect:<br /><br />a) Neurological sensory bias induced by sexual selection. Variation maintained by mutation in a polygenic trait subject to optimizing selection, where population heterozygosity is increased by novel phenotypes. Frequency-dependent mate choice can contribute to the maintenance of this variation. This preference for rare patterns could be a source of negative frequency-dependent selection that may contribute to maintaining the polymorphism in hair/eyes coloration, etc. <br /><br />Extreme genetic similarity between mates can result in low reproductive success but that moderate genetic similarity can be beneficial. Indeed, extreme assortative mating among humans should be limited by mechanisms of inbreeding avoidance, as well as an opposing preference for some genetic diversity (e.g., for increased allelic diversity); and a tendency to reduce outbreeding depression.<br /><br />Therefore, humans might seek an optimal but delicate balance between outbreeding (novelty) and inbreeding (koinophilia) and we should expect sexual choice to be expressed towards stimuli whose similarities to individuals within a population displaying a predominance of common features, are not too obvious.<br /><br /><br />B) Fluency may mediate the effect of novelty/rarity. Therefore novelty could be processed fluently (i.e. with greater speed and efficiency). Maybe people classify novelty patterns faster and recruit fewer neural resources to perceive novel patterns.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-72827474486357059372014-04-20T13:40:34.187-04:002014-04-20T13:40:34.187-04:00The novelty effect factor in mate choice would int...The novelty effect factor in mate choice would interfere with species recognition. Hence <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25443-why-we-get-autism-but-our-neanderthal-cousins-didnt.html#.U1PVz_ldXMZ" rel="nofollow">introgression</a>.<br /><br />Some features can amplify or attenuate others. Dark hair frames white facial skin better than blonde. I wonder about blonde hair becoming common, not as novelty, but because it framed faces with dark skin. Could white skin have caused blonde hair to become less common?Seannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-80204259282436221632014-04-20T13:26:30.211-04:002014-04-20T13:26:30.211-04:00Sorry to go back to the previous post, but I gave ...Sorry to go back to the previous post, but I gave it some further thought. As I said before, before we can look for the inheritability of a complex behavior, in this particular case the compliance to moral norms, we should define the mechanism responsible for the behavior.<br />I thought about 3 mechanisms:<br /><br />1)Compliance to moral norms could be the contingent result of a cognitive faculty to 'imagine the future consequences of our acts in short and long term' or said otherwise, a propensity to think ahead constantly.<br />Thinking ahead too much, as we all know, can inhibit impulsive and fast reactions, perhaps increasing a 'wait and see' behavior that could be the root of an apparent compliance with the norm, and the opposite looking like foolish, selfish or stupid and indeed. Non-compliance is not due by malice here. <br />Well, 'selfish and stupid' like 'laying your eggs in some other bird's nest'. A female bird 'thinking ahead' doing so, should think that her eggs are going to be eliminated by the rightful nest owners...until it actually worked and the owners didn't throw her eggs. This behavior could then be fixed in the form of 'parasitic behavior'. By extension in humans, non-compliance to moral norm could degenerate in a form of social parasitism.<br />All of this taking source originally in an inability to think ahead, which could be a cognitive capability not shared equally by everybody (slight retardation) or all human 'groups'.<br />If that was true, then you should see a lot more of these parasitic individuals (who do not comply to moral standards) among retarded individuals or wherever people are incapable of such cognitive projection in the future. i.e., more violence and criminality. <br /><br />2) It could be the result of a gene/culture neoteny: with longer parental investment and longer childhood compliance to education that could persist in adulthood in the form of compliance to the moral norms.<br />Here the issue becomes the inheritability of a neotenic behavior., but the end-result could be the same as in 1). People deprived of this trait would fall into a quasi-parasitic and later criminal behavior. These individuals may also display less neotenic facial cues. <br /><br />3) A direct encoding in the brain of a 'compliant' behavior, inherited as an instinct via epigenetic, or via traditional genetic, but again with the same end-result for those who do not inherit the trait. Here however, the individuals do not lack the capability to think ahead, but they nonetheless don't follow the rules.<br />It looks like a lot of white collar criminals and crooked politicians falls in that category: they know they gonna get caught, but they cheat anyways.<br />In this case however, it is fit to look for hereditary background in family with known criminal members.<br />It is possible that women transmit the trait of 'non-compliance' but do not express it themselves. Studies in criminology have looked at these issues. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetics_of_aggression <br /><br /> Ben10noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-72145381106773651272014-04-19T13:43:47.919-04:002014-04-19T13:43:47.919-04:00Since home interior colours are unrelated to mate ...Since home interior colours are unrelated to mate choice, is it possible that the novelty effect on mate choice is a spandrel? Given the novelty effect on bird song, maybe it is related to the evolution of speech.<br /><br />But regarding variable visual signals of sexiness, I have two words: Philomachus pugnax.Bones and Behaviourshttp://w11.zetaboards.com/bonesandbehavioursnoreply@blogger.com