Digging up graves of genocide victims

We were talking about genocide in the social psychology part of our Introduction to Psychology class. The NY Times has an article on Cambodian villagers who live near mass grave sites from the Khmer Rouge genocide in the 1970s. They have discovered that these graves contain some jewelry, and are unearthing the remains trying to get some money for food and staples.

Ghosts Wail as Cambodians Plunder Killing Field Graves – New York Times:

Nearly 20,000 killing fields, holding anywhere from a few bodies to hundreds, served as burial grounds for Khmer Rouge victims as well as execution sites.

Like many of the victims, Ms. Srey Net said, the people here died from accidents, exhaustion and starvation as well as fevers, malaria and an epidemic of diarrhea. Many of them were sent to a small, crude clinic nearby from which she said few emerged alive.

“Whenever a patient died, they would ring a gong or blow a whistle,” she said. “Even in the middle of the night, I had to run up there to help carry away the bodies.”

Last week she was among the graves again, whacking at the ground with a hoe, unearthing what may have been some of the same bodies she had buried years ago. And then, finding no gold, she reverted to her former role, retrieving and reburying some of the bones.

“I felt pity for them, that’s why I collected the bones,” she said. “They were scattered all over the place.”

20Cambodia.600

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Romantically Desiring Everyone? You’ll Be Romantically Undesirable!

An interesting article in Psychological Science illustrated the negative effect of being romantically desperate on your chances of being desired. The study used 156 undergraduates in a speed dating scenario, where they had several 4-minute speed dates, after each of which they completed a questionnaire of how much they desired their speed dating partner.

If a subject desired all of his or her partners, there was a strong negative correlation (r = -.41) between that desire and the desire expressed by the subject’s partners toward him or her. In other words, those who scored high on desire for lots of their speed dating partners scored low on desire expressed by the partners.

If a subject desired a particular speed dating partner uniquely, there was a small but significant correlation (r = .14) between that partner’s desire toward the subject. There was a larger correlation (r = .20) with the “chemistry” felt between the partners.

One might suppose men might be less sensitive to women’s romantic desperation, but there were no sex differences. The study also controlled for attractiveness, so the result can’t “be explained by objectively unattractive people liking everyone and being disliked” (Eastwick, Finkel, Mochon, & Ariely, 2007, p. 318).

So—don’t be a desperate dater!

Eastwick, P. W., Finkel, E. J., Mochon, D., & Ariely, D. (2007). Selective versus unselective romantic desire. Psychological Science, 18(4), 317-319.

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Obituary for Leonard Eron in the NY Times

The NY Times has an obituary for Leonard Eron, who ran a longitudinal study looking at television violence’s effects on children and their adult behaviors. The obit includes a brief description of the study. It provides confirmation of Bandura’s Social Learning Theory.

Leonard Eron, 87, Is Dead; Researcher on TV’s Tie to Violent Conduct – New York Times:

the researchers found a correlation between the viewing of violent television shows in youth and the expression of violence in adulthood, in terms of criminal records and other measurements.

“Television has great teaching potential,” Dr. Eron told The New York Times in 1993. “It’s just been teaching the wrong things.”

Dr. Eron and his collaborators also identified violent parents as another important factor in the development of overly aggressive children, and found that a long-term association between early exposure to violence, whichever the source, and aggression in later life held true for both sexes.

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Petra Boynton on Sex Research

The excellent psychology blog, Mind Hacks, has a very interesting interview with a psychologist and sex researcher, Petra Boynton. I link frequently to her blog. Here, she talks about one thing I always try to emphasize in my teaching — behavior in a historical-cultural context.

Knowing your history. You can’t study anything in social science without understanding historical and cultural issues. This is particularly the case in the study of sex where there’s a trend towards reductionism – just studying hormones, the brain or behaviour. To really understand sex you need to understand history, culture, global differences and sex as an holistic issue rather than just one issue. Otherwise it just doesn’t make sense.

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Influences in Personality Development: Genetics, home environment, and other environments

In our discussion in Introduction to Psychology this week of personality, we talked about the (relatively) strong influence of genetics in personality, along with the various theories explaining personality development. The assumption of genetic influence studies is that the “environment” which affects children is largely the home environment. For example, when we look at identical twins separated at birth and raised in different families, we are implicitly (or perhaps explicitly) assuming the differing families are largely responsible for the differences in the twins’ behavior.

Courtesy of the ever-excellent Mind Hacks, I am pointed toward an article in Prospect Magazine by author Judith Rich Harris, whose new book, No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality, challenges the idea that home environment is the most significant environmental part of personality development.

Essays: ‘Why home doesn’t matter’ by Judith Rich Harris | Prospect Magazine May 2007 issue 134:

The error is the assumption that what a child learns in his home environment is automatically carried along with him to other settings. This assumption is built into most theories of personality development. For example, there are researchers who believe that a child’s attachment to his mother in infancy sets the pattern for all his later relationships. If his mother gave him all the love and attention he desired, he’ll do well in life because he has learnt to trust people.

But babies don’t work that way. A baby is wise enough to understand, almost from birth, that people differ. The fact that his mother treats him well doesn’t lead him to expect that his sister or the babysitter will also do so. How other people will act towards him is something he will have to find out for himself, person by person. Researchers have discovered that the babies of mothers suffering from postnatal depression tend to act in a sombre, subdued fashion in the presence of their mothers. But around other familiar caregivers, these babies act quite normally—much more lively and cheerful. Just because Mummy is depressed doesn’t mean everyone is depressed. Just because Mummy lets me get away with murder doesn’t mean I can act that way in school.

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Email communication’s effects on the receiver

PsyBlog has a couple interesting posts on email. In my syllabi, I wanr my students that email is notorious for miscommunicating intention, emotion, and motivation — even intelligence! PsyBlog looked at a study of email communication’s effects on the receiver. It aligns well with our discussion of individual differences (personality traits) in class this week:

using correct capitalisation and emoticons tended to make a better impression on readers. The reader’s personality also influenced how emoticons and capitalisation were perceived. Readers high in both extroversion and emotional stability were likely to rate sender’s emails as more likeable if they had correct capitalisation. As for emoticons, readers higher in emotional stability were likely to rate sender’s emails more likeable if they used emoticons.

The opposite was also true. This meant that for the introverted and emotionally unstable, correct capitalisation tended not to affect the sender’s likeability, perhaps even lowering it. Similarly, emoticons had little effect on the emotionally unstable.

Link to this article in PsyBlog.

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Catching up on Human Sexuality posting

I’ve been away from reading for a while, and getting back to the weblogs I read usually. Here are some interesting things from the web pertaining to Human Sexuality.

Petra Boynton’s blog covers the relationship between whether one-night stands are a good idea or not.

New research from a book called ‘The Rough Guide to the Brain’ claims that having sex early on in a relationship releases hormones that could lead to increased trust and intimacy. Which has been interpreted by some areas of the media as a green light for one night stands.

Unfortunately we can’t tell from just being told about hormone production whether this theory holds water. In order to truly test this we’d need to follow up in a long term study a group of people who don’t have sex on the first date and those who do and see who’s still together some time later.

Her blog also covers a British study about why women seek late (second trimester) abortions.

FigLeaf’s Real Adult Sex blog covers a “new” face of prostitution… The educated, adult, well-connected escort service, ala Pamela Martin and Associates, which is ready to spill its address book of Washington politicos.
A window into contemporary prostitution, in Society and Politics, on Figleaf’s Real Adult Sex:

two years of college, day job, well into adulthood, car and phone; and its benefits: security monitoring, only reputable neighborhoods and hotels, right to refuse calls, “technical” support. Note further there were up to 15,000 client phone numbers in Palfrey’s records so it’s not like she or her employees were hurting for work.

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