When the mob decides truth

The Film Mercury, 1926 (Wikicommons) – When the mob decides truth.

Until recently, it was almost impossible to remove an article from the published scientific literature. You would have to ask each university library for permission to go to the stacks and tear it out from a bound volume. Your request would almost certainly be denied.

All of that has changed with online publishing. Now, you only need permission from the publishing company, and removal is just a click away. The ease of online removal can lead to abuse, as noted back in 2005:

Before the advent of electronic journals, it was very hard for publishers to purge articles from their journals. At best, they could publish a later retraction. [...]

Now, however, with publishers controlling their own digital archives, and print copies no longer being produced, it has proven to be entirely too easy for some publishers to purge these archives of unwanted articles, much to the dismay of those who, like me, fear for the long-term integrity and trustworthiness of the published record of science and our intellectual heritage. In addition, if such materials can be removed, it often means they can be modified after publication as well.

Elsevier, for example, has removed about 30 articles so far from its ScienceDirect journal article archive, just since the year 2000, for various reasons. [...] The fear that many of us have is that individuals, corporate entities, and even governments, including ours, will begin to use such techniques to control the published record for political purposes or in order to cover up embarrassing information. (Davidson 2005)

That fear has come true with the removal of a paper by J. Phillippe Rushton and Donald Templer from the psychology journal Personality and Individual Differences. Rushton is known for his belief that cognitive ability varies not only between individuals but also between human populations. That was not, however, the subject of the removed paper. The subject was body coloration, specifically the fact that darker animals tend to be larger, more polygynous, and more aggressive. This correlation seems to hold true not only between species but also within species.

I believe such a correlation exists, but it’s not a simple one of cause and effect (see my last post). In any case, my opinion doesn’t matter. What matters is the right of all researchers to present their findings and interpretations in the scientific literature. If errors are made, others will point them out. That’s how the system works. 

Unfortunately, that’s not how some people want the system to work. Rushton had enemies, and they now see an opportunity to destroy his legacy, much of it being papers he published in Elsevier journals. I suspect they identified the above paper as the easiest target for removal, a kind of “test case.” It’s not about human cognition and is viewed with skepticism even by Rushton’s defenders, who seem to have fallen back to a defense line around his IQ work. Pauvres naïfs.

Demands for removal began a year ago, but it was really the events of the last month that made the journal give in.

My email exchange

Initially, I wasn't sure who authorized the removal. Was it Elsevier, i.e., the publisher? Or was it the current editor of Personality and Individual Differences? I emailed the latter, Don Saklofske, partly to protest this decision and partly to confirm he had been responsible. The following is my email exchange with him and with Elsevier:

Dear Dr. Saklofske:

I am writing with regard to your decision to remove the 2012 article by J. Philippe Rushton and Donald Templer from your journal.  This is an unusual move and breaks with longstanding practice. Once an article has passed peer review and been published, it remains in the scientific literature even if subsequently proven wrong. There have been a few cases of articles being withdrawn shortly after publication, but there have been no cases, until now, of an article being removed eight years later.

My personal judgment of this article is like that of many articles I read. I agree with parts of it and disagree with others. It is true that darker-colored animals tend to be larger and more aggressive, this being true not only between species but also within species. We can disagree about the causes, but the correlation is real and has been confirmed by other researchers.

I could argue this point at greater length, but I shouldn't have to. None of us has the right to sit in judgment on an article that is already established in the scientific literature. If one disagrees with an article, one is always free to write down one's criticisms and submit them for publication to the journal in question, but no one has the right to "unpublish" an existing article, however much one disagrees with it.

I urge you to reconsider your decision. You have created a dangerous precedent.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Frost

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Hello Peter... thank you for your email.  Indeed this was a difficult and challenging investigation and resulting decision that began last year but for which the controversy had been ongoing even before I became editor of PAID.  I am forwarding your letter to Catriona Fennell, Director of Publishing Services at Elsevier, who would have a much greater knowledge of the timelines on retracted articles following publication.

Sincerely

don

D.H. Saklofske, Ph.D

Editor: PAID

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Don,

Perhaps I am mistaken. Was this your decision or was it Elsevier's? In other words, who actually made the decision and who will take responsibility for it?

Sincerely,

Peter Frost

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Hello Peter...  decisions related to corrigendums, letters of concern/warning, and retractions 'rests with the editor'!   I along with a panel of PAID Sr. Associate Editors comprised the signatories who reviewed the 'evidence' resulting in the decision to retract the Rushton and Templer article.

This was NOT Elsevier's decision; their office was consulted and advised of our investigation and actions only because they are the owners and publishers of the journal and it was important that I then understand their position on such matters re. legal and ethical guidelines. However I also thought you were also raising the point of 'time between publication to retraction' and this might be better known by the publisher of PAID and many other journals across varying disciplines. Should I have misunderstood, I apologize and withdraw my previous request to Elsevier.

Lastly,  retraction of journal articles  is not so uncommon (e.g. see Brainard and You; www.sciencemag.org › news › 2018/10 ›) and while the time from publication to retraction is usually less than 8 years, we began our examination of this paper last year (2019) following increased concerns from the scientific community, and two years after my appointment as editor.

Thank you for sharing your comments and viewpoint.

don

D.H. Saklofske, Ph.D

Editor: PAID

cc.  Elsevier: Catriona Fennell and Gail Rodney

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Dear Dr Frost,

Thank you for your comments, we appreciate that there are a variety of views on how the literature should be corrected.

Since 2009, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines (updated in 2019) have recommended retraction for cases where misconduct has taken place, but also in cases of error:

"Journal editors should consider retracting a publication if:

• they have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error)"

https://publicationethics.org/files/u661/Retractions_COPE_gline_final_3_Sept_09__2_.pdf

Elsevier journals endorse these guidelines from COPE and put them into practice, as do most major publishing houses.  Analysis by Retraction Watch, who have compiled a database of >18,000 retractions, found that at least 40% of retractions were due to error rather than to fraud:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/what-massive-database-retracted-papers-reveals-about-science-publishing-s-death-penalty

However, it is likely that retractions due to misconduct receive more amount of attention in the media and community.

It is not particularly unusual for older papers to be retracted, please see below some examples of retractions from Elsevier journals several years after publication, in one case a 1985 paper being retracted in 2013. More data is available, also from other publishing houses, from the Retraction Watch database: http://retractiondatabase.org/

Sincerely yours,

Catriona Fennell

Director Publishing Services

STM Journals

Elsevier

Radarweg 29, 1043NX Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2006.08.009

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.antiviral.2011.11.018

https://doi.org/10.1053/apmr.2002.27376

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbrc.2007.07.170

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biotechadv.2009.04.028

https://doi.org/10.1016/S8756-3282(98)00185-9

https://doi.org/10.1016/S8756-3282(98)00134-3

https://doi.org/10.1016/S8756-3282(01)00645-7

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compscitech.2006.05.001

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0011-2275(03)00095-X

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2006.10.056

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2011.07.022

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2011.04.009

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2011.02.018

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2010.12.025

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2010.12.006

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2007.12.004

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2005.05.010

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpharm.2006.11.033

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijrefrig.2010.07.017

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinane.2004.08.009

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jconrel.2005.10.014

https://doi.org/10.1038/jid.2018.140

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnoncrysol.2011.08.022

https://doi.org/10.1254/jphs.10264FP

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jplph.2009.02.001

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jstrokecerebrovasdis.2009.04.006

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jstrokecerebrovasdis.2009.10.007

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1052-3057(98)80022-0

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lfs.2007.11.006

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lfs.2007.04.009

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matchemphys.2004.04.023

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1097-2765(03)00276-4

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molcel.2004.06.043

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.10.483

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.337

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmatsci.2004.04.001

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.snb.2008.09.011

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.snb.2008.09.028

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spmi.2009.09.003

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.triboint.2009.06.013

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wear.2009.06.034  

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Dear Catriona Fennell,

I looked through the examples of retractions you provided. All of them concern papers in engineering or the medical sciences. Most of them were retracted because the same material had been published elsewhere, either by the same author (duplication) or by another author (plagiarism). There were a few other reasons:

- Paper retracted at author's request

- Fabrication or falsification of data

- Inability to confirm authorship of the paper and inability to interrogate the data presented in the paper

None of these examples resembles the retraction of the paper by J. Philippe Rushton and Donald Templer. That paper was in the social sciences, and there was no duplication or plagiarism involved. Nor do any of the other reasons apply. The reason seems to be more ideological. Am I right?

Sincerely,

Peter Frost

Conclusion

There were no further replies from Catriona Fennell or Don Saklofske. Perhaps they consider the case closed. They did prove me wrong on one point: several longstanding articles have already been removed from the scientific literature. The record is a paper published in 1999 and removed in 2019. Removal was justified on the following grounds:

Despite contact with Futase Hospital and Kurume University in place of the co-authors, who could not be located, the Journal was unable to confirm whether ethical approval had been granted for this study and has been unable to confirm the authorship of this paper. The Journal was also unable to interrogate the data presented in this paper as no records have remained of this study. This constitutes a violation of our publishing policies and publishing ethics standards.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S8756328298001859?via%3Dihub

After twenty years it’s often difficult to locate the authors of a paper, especially if they are grad students. Their academic affiliation has changed or they may have left academia entirely. Even if they can be located, they may no longer have the raw data to support their findings. My PhD data files are on floppy disks. How can I read them today? And would they still be readable?

So if you dislike a scientific paper, and if its authors are no longer available, you can get rid of it by making a plausible accusation. Who is going to prove you wrong? This is another kind of abuse alongside the political and ideological one. "Science" increasingly belongs to established researchers with secure positions and access to legal assistance. Yet, historically, most innovative research has been done by individuals working alone with little institutional support. Charles Darwin was a country squire with no academic affiliation. Albert Einstein published major papers while working at a patent office. Intellectual breakthroughs tend to be made by outsiders.

Outsiders are losing their place in the academic community, especially ideological outsiders. This may be one reason why scientific and technological progress is slowing down. Indeed, such progress may sow the seeds of its destruction by creating better ways to manage information. And people.

But there’s another reason why outsiders are being squeezed out of academia. During the late 20th century, Christianity could no longer control what people said and believed, but it was still strong enough to keep other belief systems from taking over and imposing their controls. That happy interregnum is over. We’re moving into an intellectual environment where insiders are no longer interested in finding truth. They want to decide truth. To that end, they want to decide who gets published and who remains published. If you fall out of favor, they may delete all of your publications, and you will cease to exist as an intellectual entity. You’ll be unpersoned.

A few words to the journal editor

Don Saklofske,

You have created a precedent, and we’ll see more of these “removals.” I suspect you realize the gravity of your decision but feel you had no choice. Such a decision must be especially difficult for you, an evolutionary psychologist who has worked on genetic determination of cognition, impulsiveness, and empathy. Your research interests, however, have to be weighed against the treatment you’ve seen meted out to certain academics, including some at your university. Why share their fate?

So you had no choice. Anyway, someone else would have done the same thing sooner or later.

And, anyway, J. Philippe Rushton was a racist, like those Confederate generals whose statues have been torn down and taken away.

Apparently, Rushton is like a lot of people nowadays, such as Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Sir John A. Macdonald. Of course, you’re not like those people either. Your name is further down the list, and it’s not a statue that will disappear when your time comes.

So remember: the more you give in now, the more you’ll have to give in later. At best, you’re buying yourself time, and not as much as you think.

References

Davidson, L.A. (2005). The End of Print: Digitization and Its Consequence-Revolutionary Changes in Scholarly and Social Communication and in Scientific Research. International Journal of Toxicology 24(1): 25-34

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1080/10915810590921351

Rushton, J. P., and D.I. Templer. (2012). Do pigmentation and the melanocortin system modulate aggression and sexuality in humans as they do in other animals? Personality and Individual Differences 53(1): 4-8

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886912000840 

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 high-trust cultures. If everyone is empathic toward each other, there is no need to waste energy on self-protection or on double-checking every single transaction. Just as importantly, you can make transactions that would otherwise be uneconomical.

Empathy, however, has to be reciprocated. Otherwise, it will divert your limited resources to people who will never reciprocate and who will, in fact, bleed you dry.  

The adaptiveness of empathy therefore depends on the cultural environment. Some cultures will favor it but not others. Does it follow, then, that some human populations have become more empathic than others? Can this mental trait undergo gene-culture coevolution?

It can, if three pre-conditions are met:

1. The trait varies in adaptiveness from one culture to another.

2. The trait is genetically heritable.

3. The trait can easily evolve out of pre-existing traits, i.e., only a few genetic changes are needed.

Evolutionary psychologists will argue that modern humans have not existed long enough to evolve new mental adaptations, particularly since their expansion out of Africa and into new natural and cultural environments. There has only been fine-tuning of existing adaptations (Tooby, Cosmides, and Barkow 1992). This argument is debatable:

Even if 40 or 50 thousand years were too short a time for the evolutionary development of a truly new and highly complex mental adaptation, which is by no means certain, it is certainly long enough for some groups to lose such an adaptation, for some groups to develop a highly exaggerated version of an adaptation, or for changes in the triggers or timing of that adaptation to evolve. That is what we see in domesticated dogs, for example, who have entirely lost certain key behavioral adaptations of wolves such as paternal investment. Other wolf behaviors have been exaggerated or distorted. (Harpending and Cochran 2002)

Empathy can thus differ between human populations if the differences arise from simple changes to an existing mechanism.

So does empathy meet the above preconditions?

Differences in adaptiveness

All cultures have rules of one sort or another. These rules are enforced by external sanctions (shaming by the community, especially by family members) and internal sanctions (feelings of guilt). Most cultures rely primarily on shaming. Some cultures, particularly in Europe, rely much more on feelings of guilt. Guilt is a subset of empathy. As the wrongdoer, you transfer to yourself the feelings of the person you have wronged. You feel the pain you have inflicted, and you will now mentally punish yourself.

The anthropologist Ruth Benedict described the differences between shame and guilt:

True shame cultures rely on external sanctions for good behavior, not, as true guilt cultures do, on an internalized conviction of sin. Shame is a reaction to other people's criticism. A man is shamed either by being openly ridiculed and rejected or by fantasying to himself that he has been made ridiculous. In either case, it is a potent sanction. But it requires an audience or at least a man's fantasy of an audience. Guilt does not. In a nation where honor means living up to one's own picture of oneself, a man may suffer from guilt though no man knows of his misdeed and a man's feeling of guilt may actually be relieved by confessing his sin. (Benedict 1946, p. 223)

Shame seems to be evolutionarily older than guilt. Sigmund Freud speculated that feelings of guilt arose as a mechanism to punish misbehavior in larger communities where paternal authority is insufficient: 

When an attempt is made to widen the community, the same conflict is continued in forms which are dependent on the past; and it is strengthened and results in a further intensification of the sense of guilt. [...]. What began in relation to the father is completed in relation to the group. If civilization is a necessary course of development from the family to humanity as a whole, then [...] there is inextricably bound up with it an increase of the sense of guilt, which will perhaps reach heights that the individual finds hard to tolerate. (Freud 1962, pp. 79-80)

East Asians might seem to be an exception to this evolutionary trend. They generally live in large communities where paternal authority is insufficient to enforce social rules. This problem seems to have been resolved through a stronger sense of social duty, rather than a greater propensity for empathy and guilt.

We see this in a study of young Chinese adults. The participants could see things from another person's perspective and understand how that person felt, but they did not seem to internalize those feelings and experience them vicariously. They were motivated to obey social rules by a sense of duty, rather than by empathy and feelings of guilt: "taking the views of others is an essential duty, and the lack of consideration to others' perspectives is generally regarded as a lack of virtue in the Chinese culture" (Siu and Shek 2005).

Heritability

First, we should keep in mind that empathy is not a unitary construct. It has different components:

Pro-social behavior: willingness to help others

Cognitive empathy:  capacity to understand how others feel

Affective or emotional empathy: involuntary transference of another person's feelings to yourself, i.e., feeling that person's pain or joy.

The last component is usually what we mean by empathy. Nonetheless, a person can be low in affective empathy while being high in cognitive empathy; this is in fact the hallmark of the sociopath, i.e., a person who understands how others feel and knows how to exploit those feelings for personal gain. Of the three kinds of empathy, pro-social behavior seems the most divergent and shares the least mental circuitry with the other two. Cognitive and affective empathy share circuits that specialize in representing another person's thoughts and intensions; affective empathy seems to be an additional step where these representations are relayed to brain regions that produce the corresponding emotional responses (Carr et al. 2003; Krishnan et al. 2016).

The latest review of the literature concluded that all three components of empathy have moderate to high heritability (Chakrabarti and Baron-Cohen 2013). Since then, an adult twin study has estimated the heritability of affective empathy at 52-57% and that of cognitive empathy at 27%. The rest of the variance was largely due to non-shared environment (Melchers et al. 2016). 

These findings are in line with those of a longitudinal twin study of children from 7 to 12 years of age. Genetic influences accounted for most of the variance in callousness/unemotionality, and environmental influences were entirely non-shared (Henry et al. 2018). Other studies have shown that the capacity for affective empathy remains stable as a child develops, while cognitive empathy progressively increases (Decety et al. 2017):

Finally, men and women seem to differ in affective empathy but not in cognitive empathy: “females do indeed appear to be more empathic than males [but] [t]hey do not appear to be more adept at assessing another person's affective, cognitive, or spatial perspective” (Hoffman 1977). This sex difference has been confirmed by recent studies, notably a British study (Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright 2004), a largely Argentinean study (Baez et al. 2017), an Italian twin study (Toccaceli et al. 2018), and a Chinese study (Liu et al. 2018). The size of the sex difference varied, however, being slight in the British and Argentinean studies, large but not significant in the Italian study, and significant in the Chinese study. 

Evolution in Homo sapiens

Affective empathy seems to be universal in our species. Differences do exist, however, between individuals, and these differences are distributed along a Bell curve in a human population (Baron-Cohen 2011; McGregor 2018). Any distinction between “normal people” and “sociopaths” is therefore arbitrary. There is simply a continuum of decreasing capacity for affective empathy.

Affective empathy also differs between men and women, and this sex difference seems, in turn, to differ from one population to another. This last point suggests an evolutionary pathway. Affective empathy may have initially evolved in ancestral humans as a means to facilitate the mother-child relationship. "Guilt cultures" then favored extension of affective empathy to a wider range of social interactions, as well as increased expression in men. One consequence would be a smaller sex difference in this mental trait.

How do guilt cultures ensure that affective empathy is reciprocated? They seem to resolve this problem by defining themselves much more as moral communities than as communities of related individuals. Adherence to social rules defines community membership, and these rules are perceived as being universal and absolute, as opposed to the situational morality of communities defined solely by kinship. Guilt cultures are also highly ideological. Community members monitor not only outward behavior for compliance but also inward thoughts—and this monitoring can target not just the thoughts of other members but also one’s own. Non-compliance can lead to a member being branded as morally worthless and expelled from the community (Frost 2017).

The current evidence is suggestive but not conclusive. As Baez et al. (2017) point out, most of our evidence on sex differences in empathy comes from self-report, i.e., questionnaires that men and women fill out. Many studies also fail to distinguish between cognitive empathy (understanding what others feel) and affective empathy (feeling what others feel). To measure affective empathy objectively, especially when comparing people from different cultural backgrounds, it would be best to use brain fMRIs (Krishnan et al. 2016).

To be cont'd

References

Baez, S., Flichtentrei, D., Prats, M., Mastandueno, R., García, A.M., Cetkovich, M., et al. (2017). Men, women...who cares? A population-based study on sex differences and gender roles in empathy and moral cognition. PLoS ONE 12(6): e0179336. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179336

Baron-Cohen, S. (2011). The Empathy Bell Curve. Phi Kappa Phi Forum; Baton Rouge 91(1): 10-12.

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/anonymous?id=GALE%7CA267422895&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=15385914&p=AONE&sw=w

Baron-Cohen, S. and S. Wheelwright. (2004).The Empathy Quotient: An investigation of adults with Asperger Syndrome or high functioning autism, and normal sex differences. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 34: 163-175.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.655.1049&rep=rep1&type=pdf 

Benedict, R. (1946 [2005]). The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. Patterns of Japanese Culture, First Mariner Books.

Carr, L., M. Iacoboni, M-C. Dubeau, J.C. Mazziotta, and G.L. Lenzi. (2003). Neural mechanisms of empathy in humans: A relay from neural systems for imitation to limbic areas. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 100: 5497-5502.

http://theincrediblehumanbrain.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/48239840/empathy%5B1%5D.pdf

Chakrabarti, B. and S. Baron-Cohen. (2013). Understanding the genetics of empathy and the autistic spectrum, in S. Baron-Cohen, H. Tager-Flusberg, M. Lombardo. (eds). Understanding Other Minds: Perspectives from Developmental Social Neuroscience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

http://books.google.ca/books?hl=fr&lr=&id=eTdLAAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA326&ots=fHpygaxaMQ&sig=_sJsVgdoe0hc-fFbzaW3GMEslZU#v=onepage&q&f=false  

Davis, M.H., C. Luce, and S.J. Kraus. (1994). The heritability of characteristics associated with dispositional empathy. Journal of Personality 62: 369-391.

Decety, J., K.L. Meidenbauer, and J.M. Cowell. (2017). The development of cognitive empathy and concern in preschool children: A behavioral neuroscience investigation. Developmental Science 2018;21:e12570. 

https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12570 

Freud, S. (1962[1930]). Civilization and Its Discontents. New York: W.W. Norton

Frost, P. (2017). The Hajnal line and gene-culture coevolution in northwest Europe. Advances in Anthropology 7: 154-174.

http://file.scirp.org/pdf/AA_2017082915090955.pdf

Harpending, H., and G. Cochran. (2002). In our genes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 99(1): 10-12.

https://dx.doi.org/10.1073%2Fpnas.012612799 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC117504/   

Henry, J., G. Dionne, E. Viding, A. Petitclerc, B. Feng, F. Vitaro, M. Brendgen, R.E. Tremblay, and M. Boivin. (2018). A longitudinal twin study of callous-unemotional traits during childhood. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 127(4): 374-384. 

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/abn0000349 

Hoffman, M. L. (1977). Sex differences in empathy and related behaviors. Psychological Bulletin 84(4): 712-722. 

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.84.4.712 

Krishnan, A., C.W. Woo, L.J. Chang, L. Ruzic, X. Gu, M. López-Solà, P.L Jackson, J. Pujol, J. Fan, and T.D. Wager. (2016). Somatic and vicarious pain are represented by dissociable multivariate brain patterns. eLife 2016;5:e15166 

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.15166

Liu, J., X. Qiao, F. Dong, and A. Raine. (2018). The Chinese version of the cognitive, affective, and somatic empathy scale for children: Validation, gender invariance and associated factors. PLoS ONE 13(5): e0195268. 

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0195268

McGregor, J. (2018). The highly empathic. SoRECS – The Society for Research into Empathy, Cruelty & Sociopathy. May

http://www.sorecs.org/blog/

Melchers, M., C. Montag, M. Reuter, F.M. Spinath, and E. Hahn. (2016). How heritable is empathy? Differential effects of measurement and subcomponents. Motivation and Emotion 40(5): 720-730. 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-016-9573-7

Siu, A.M.H. and D.T. L. Shek. (2005). Validation of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index in a Chinese Context. Research on Social Work Practice 15: 118-126.

http://rsw.sagepub.com/content/15/2/118.short  

Toccaceli, V., C. Fagnani, N. Eisenberg, G. Alessandri, A. Vitale and M.A. Stazi. (2018). Adult Empathy: Possible Gender Differences in Gene-Environment Architecture for Cognitive and Emotional Components in a Large Italian Twin Sample. Twin Research and Human Genetics 21(3): 214-226

https://doi.org/10.1017/thg.2018.19  

Tooby J, L. Cosmides, and J. Barkow. (1992). Introduction: Evolutionary Psychology and Conceptual Integration. In J. Barkow, L. Cosmides, and L. Tooby (eds.) The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, pp. 3-16, New York: Oxford Univ. Press; 1992.

Pathogen-stress theory

A Paris suburb, on the eve of the French Revolution. The shift to democracy and individualism began under conditions of high pathogen prevalence and long before modern sanitation (source)

Is stress from parasites a major cause of psychological differences among humans? Yes, if we are to believe a popular theory in evolutionary psychology. According to this theory, when people develop in a parasite-infested environment, they behave in a way that reduces their likelihood of infection. They become less curious, less exploratory, and less open to strangers. The result is a cultural system that is less conducive to learning, openness, and tolerance—in short, what we like to call progressive values.

As Thornhill et al. (2010) argue:

[…] the predictions of the parasite-stress model are consistent with the marked increase in the liberalization of social values that began to occur in the West in the 1960s and 1970s (e.g., civil rights, women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights, anti-authoritarianism, etc.). In the West, but not outside of it, infectious-disease prevalence was reduced dramatically a generation or two earlier as a result of widespread availability of antibiotics, child vaccination programs, food- and water-safety practices, increased sanitation and vector control.

This theory is used to explain not only cultural differences over time, but also cultural differences over space, i.e., between different human populations:

The parasite-stress model of human sociality provides an evolutionarily informed explanation of why specific human populations inhabiting different parts of the planet (northern Europe versus southern Europe, for instance) are often described by different traits, different values, and different cultural norms.

[…] parasite prevalence also is expected to predict other forms of political liberalism. For example, democratization is accompanied by the liberation of women from the tradition of masculine social control, which manifests in an increase in women’s civil rights and political representation (Inglehart, 2003; Wejnert, 2005; Welzel, 2007). It follows from the parasite-stress model that this form of liberalism should be more pronounced within populations that have a relatively low prevalence of parasites. It is. Across many countries of the world, parasite prevalence correlates negatively with national indicators of gender equality (Thornhill et al., 2010)

Several objections come to mind. Liberalism goes back long before the 1960s. Think of the American and French revolutions. Think of the abolitionists, the chartists, and the suffragettes. These were genuine mass movements that caught the imagination of ordinary people, and not just the elites. Yet they occurred at a time when young men and women routinely died from pathogens under conditions like those of the developing world today. And those conditions persisted well into the 20th century. It really wasn’t until the interwar years that doctors began to cure more people than they killed.

The parasite-stress model has been re-examined by Hackman and Hruschka (2013) with respect to the United States. They confirm that pathogen prevalence correlates with collectivism, strength of family ties, homicide, child maltreatment, and religious commitment. These correlations, however, hold true only for sexually transmitted diseases. Non-STD infections show no correlation with the above behaviors. Moreover, the STD correlation may simply be a side effect of lifestyle choices. As the authors note: “A life history model can explain these ambiguous results by treating STDs as an outcome of faster life history strategies rather than a driver of behavioral adaptations.” Indeed, the data are best explained by two variables: early childbirth and race, i.e., non-Hispanic white American, Hispanic American, or black American:

Our two-component measure [early childbirth and race] showed that across race categories, teenage birth rates are predictive of three-generation households and proportion of the population living alone. We conclude that these findings are inconsistent with the PST [pathogen-stress theory], but fit well with an alternative model based on life history allocations. (Hackman and Hruschka, 2013)

Parasite-stress theory reverses cause and effect. Pathogens are less prevalent in those human populations that have integrated principles of modern hygiene into their lives. Those same populations have also adopted other aspects of behavioral modernity—pacifism, individualism, reduced importance of kinship, etc. More broadly speaking, the construction of freer, more open societies cannot happen without certain psychological predispositions: first, higher anger thresholds and less willingness to use violence as a means to settle personal disputes; second, a time orientation that allocates more resources to the future and fewer to the present. Evidently, if you’re more oriented to the future, you’ll avoid choices that may lead to illness and early death.

This point may seem obvious, yet it’s surprising how unobvious it seems to some people, especially those, like evolutionary psychologists, who should know better. How come? Keep in mind that elite approval is necessary for advancement in society, particularly for academics who work amidst offspring of the elite and who help legitimize the dominant social agenda. To gain acceptance for their own pet ideas, academics unconsciously, or consciously, sign on to the elite's agenda.

As Thornhill et al. (2010) note: “[…] public health initiatives are most likely to have additional consequences for societies (e.g., promotion of civil liberties and egalitarian value systems).” Here, the academic is no longer pretending to be a disinterested observer. The role is more like that of a cheerleader … or worse.

References

Barkow, J.H., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (eds.) (1992). The Adapted Mind. Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hackman, J. and D. Hruschka. (2013). Fast life histories, not pathogens, account for state-level variation in homicide, child maltreatment, and family ties in the U.S., Evolution and Human Behavior, 34, 118-124.

Thornhill, R., C.L. Fincher, D.R. Murray, and M. Schaller. (2010).  Zoonotic and Non-Zoonotic Diseases in Relation to Human Personality and Societal Values: Support for the Parasite-Stress Model, Evolutionary Psychology, 8, 151-169.

http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/EP08151169.pdf

 

Looking back and ahead

Was the scientific revolution (1540-1700) due to an increase in trade and the discovery of the New World? Or were there just more people around who could understand and appreciate new ideas? (source)

The past year has seen the deaths of two scholars who tackled the thorny issue of IQ and race, first Philippe Rushton (October 2) and then Arthur Jensen (October 22). The coming year may see more departures. Most of the remaining HBD scholars are retired or getting on in years.

Some see this as proof of the issue’s irrelevance. Rushton and Jensen were too old to understand that “race” and “intelligence” are outdated concepts. In reality, they were old because they had earned tenure before the campaign against “racist academics” had gotten into full swing … back in the 1980s.

I use quotation marks because that campaign cast a very wide net. It targeted anyone who might believe in race differences, or heritable differences of any sort. A good example would be John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, who founded evolutionary psychology in the 1980s and have authored publications that are now required reading in undergrad psychology. Yet they had to wander in the wilderness for years before getting secure academic positions. Their sin? They believed that many human behaviors have a sizeable heritable component, although they repeatedly denied the existence of any heritable differences among human populations. But that wasn’t good enough. They had taken the first step in a chain of reasoning that could lead God knows where. They weren’t guilty of something they actually thought. They were guilty of something they might end up thinking.

The climate in academia today, especially in the social sciences, eerily resembles that of Eastern Europe a half-century ago. In private, many academics make fun of the idea that every aspect of human behavior is “socially constructed.” In public, they say nothing. Even the ones with tenure are terrified to speak out. It just isn’t worth it. Even if your position is secure, you’ll still see funding and publishing opportunities disappear, and your acquaintances will treat you as a horrible person. At best, you’ll be considered an oddball.

With little new blood entering the pipeline, and with its leading scholars growing old and dying off, the HBD community seems destined to disappear within academia and the larger community of intellectuals. Game over.

I’m less pessimistic. Individuals may die, but ideas don’t die so easily, especially if they make sense. The HBD idea may lose certain aspects and gain new ones, but the idea itself will be much more tenacious. And the false academic consensus can be shattered with a bit of effort. All it takes is a few people who can make their case calmly and lucidly. The basic facts are already in and beyond dispute.

We know, for instance, that at least 7% of the human genome has changed over the past 40,000 years, with most of the change being squeezed into the last 10,000. In fact, human genetic evolution speeded up by over a hundred-fold about 10,000 years ago (Hawks et al., 2007). By then, however, humans had spread over the earth’s entire surface from the equator to the Arctic Circle. They weren’t adapting to new physical environments. They were adapting to new cultural and behavioral environments. They were adapting to differences in diet, in mating systems, in family and communal structure, in notions of morality, in forms of language, in systems of writing, in modes of subsistence, in means of production, in networks of exchange, and so on. This genetic evolution involved changes to digestion, metabolism, and … mental processing.

Another fact. By 10,000 years ago, modern humans were no longer a small founder group. They were already splitting up into different geographic populations. So the acceleration of human genetic evolution did not affect all humans the same way. Yes, we are different, and the differences aren’t skin deep.

Undoubtedly, these differences are statistical, and many weakly so. But even a statistical difference can affect the way a society develops. I once believed that the scientific revolution of the 16th century onward was due to the increase in trade and the discovery of the New World. I’ve now come to the conclusion that it was driven by an increase in the smart fraction of northwestern European societies, and this increase was in turn driven by the demographic processes described by Clark (2007). That revolution didn’t happen just because new ideas were being discovered (actually, many of them had been around for some time). It happened because more people could now understand those ideas and appreciate their significance.

But enough digression. You can bury a person but not an idea.

References

Anon. (2012). Unit 12 – The Scientific Revolution, MrGrayHistory

http://mrgrayhistory.wikispaces.com/UNIT+12+-+THE+SCIENTIFIC+REVOLUTION

Clark, G. (2007). A Farewell to Alms. A Brief Economic History of the World, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford.

Hawks, J., E.T. Wang, G.M. Cochran, H.C. Harpending, and R.K. Moyzis. (2007). Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 104, 20753-20758.