Anthropology
A new paper gives psycholgists a unique glimpse at how humans develop an ability to use tools in childhood while nonhuman primates--such as capuchin monkeys and chimpanzees--remain only occasional tool users.
Dorothy Fragaszy, a psychology professor at the University of Georgia, created two studies to look at how non-human primates and human children differ in completing simple spatial reasoning tasks.
Much like a game of Operation, human children ages 2, 3 and 4 and adult nonhuman primates were asked to fit a stick, a cross and a tomahawk into a matching cutout space on a tray.…
If your partner has sex with someone else, it is considered infidelity - even if no emotions are involved. But it is also considered infidelity when your significant other develops a close personal relationship with someone else, even if there is no sex or physical intimacy involved.
A recent Norwegian study shows that men and women react differently to various types of infidelity. Whereas men are most jealous of sexual infidelity, so-called emotional infidelity is what makes women the most jealous. Evolutionary psychology may help explain why this may be.
Significant gender differences
"Men…
People tend to associate the ability to think creatively with stereotypical masculine qualities, according to a paper in Psychological Science, which suggests that the work and achievements of men tend to be evaluated as more creative than similar work and achievements produced by women.
Research suggests that when people think about "creative thinkers" they tend to think of characteristics typically ascribed to men but not women, including qualities like risk-taking, adventurousness, and self-reliance. Lead author Devon Proudfoot of the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and…
A proof-of-concept study finds that it is possible to identify an individual's ancestral background based on his or her fingerprint characteristics - a discovery with significant applications for law enforcement and anthropological research.
"This is the first study to look at this issue at this level of detail, and the findings are extremely promising," says Ann Ross, a professor of anthropology at North Carolina State University and senior author of a paper describing the work. "But more work needs to be done. We need to look at a much larger sample size and evaluate individuals from more…
A Catholic, a Jesuit and a scientist walk into a bar. What do they have to talk about? And just how do those conversations go?
This scenario is no joking matter. Conflict as well as collaboration have characterized the historical relations between these three parties since the founding of the Society of Jesus, nearly 500 years ago. How do these three interact today in an era of “War on Science” that tends to politicize so many scientific issues?
With a pope at the helm of the Roman Catholic Church who is at once the first Jesuit to hold the post, a man of science (as many commentators have…
Patrick Nunn, a professor of geography at University of the Sunshine Coast, and collaborator Nick Reid, a University of New England linguist, believe aborigines in Australia have records of Australia's coastline going back 7,000 years - obviously unheard of in any other culture.
Their evidence they must be accurate? The stories are all consistent with one another.
Psychologists know that you can't send a sentence around a room and have it be accurate so the team contends that because the stories are similar, they must be true. “It’s important to note that it’s not just one story that…
It was a humid, sticky 32°C when I made a quick trip to the grocery store in shorts and a tank top earlier this week. Despite the heat, however, the store clearly wanted me to think it was the fall season – and for us Americans, that means pumpkin spice.
Weaving in and out of each aisle, I was inundated with row upon row of pumpkin spice M&Ms, pumpkin spice yogurt, pumpkin spice Oreos, pumpkin spice cereal, pumpkin spice beer, pumpkin spice cookies, pumpkin spice bagels, pumpkin spice Pop-Tarts, pumpkin spice popcorn, pumpkin spice hummus, pumpkin spice creamer for my pumpkin spice…
Evidence from the tropical lowlands of Central America reveals how Maya activity more than 2,000 years ago not only contributed to the decline of their environment but continues to influence today's environmental conditions, according to researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.
Synthesizing old and new data, researchers were the first to show the full extent of the "Mayacene" as a microcosm of the early anthropocene -- a period when human activity began greatly affecting environmental conditions.
"Most popular sources talk about the anthropocene and human impacts on climate since the…
Since the 1980s, flagship comic-book superhero movie franchises – from DC’s Superman to Marvel’s Iron Man – have seen some major movie studio investments and, more often than not, blockbuster returns.
But significant changes in the superhero mythos in our culture indicate that their future seems bleak.
Universal Studios leads the year’s movie profits without a single superhero movie. Meanwhile, the latest Fantastic Four reboot has failed terribly.
Their twilight may be upon us. The nature of the audience, the evolution of superheroes from flawless icons to more complex characters, and the…
By Joel Shurkin, Inside Science - Once upon a time, there lived a people we call the Natufians. They were among the first to quit their nomadic ways and settle on land where they grew crops, lived in complex settlements, put up stone buildings, domesticated dogs, and might have invented cemeteries before their society disappeared into the mists of history.
Israeli researchers now think they also may have developed a unique telegraph system to let everyone know when a catered funeral was underway and were among the first people to put up grave markers.
Natufian archaeological sites are common…