Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Apropos of the last post, here’s a 32-minute video of psychologist Jonathan Haidt lecturing as part of the William F. Buckley program at—of all places—Yale University, where the Halloween Costume Fracas just occurred. (Haidt also went to Yale as an undergraduate.)
He’s playing two opposing roles: as representatives of both “Coddling University” and “Strengthening University”, characterizing the discussion we’ve been having about “student psychological safety” versus “free speech.”
This is a clever way to make one’s points, for it’s clear which side Haidt is on, although some (including me) might find the talk a bit heavy-handed. Still, given the political climate among students at universities like Yale, I think it’s pretty brave of Haidt to give a talk like this.
As always, readers’ opinions are welcomed in the comments.
Two days ago I posted about the Halloween-costume fracas at Yale University, describing how a married couple who were “housemasters” (heads of one of the intra-university colleges) were vilified by students after the woman, Erika Christakis, wrote a thoughtful and temperate email questioning the policing of Halloween costumes. Students not only wrote petitions decrying Christakis’s email, but called for the resignation of her and her husband Nicholas. Nicholas himself was verbally assaulted by students when he went out on the quad to discuss issues with them.
I stand by my criticism of the students’ call for the Christakises resignation, and feel that the treatment of this couple was execrable. However, I’ve learned that there may be a lot more to the students’ anger than simply emails about Halloween costumes, at least if you trust the post of Aaron Lewis, a senior at Yale writing at his website at Medium.com. In his own report, “What’s really going on at Yale?“, Lewis describes a history of racism at Yale, which has, over the years, fueled the anger of black and minority students. These include swastikas drawn on a college dorm last year, and a report, which I remember from January, of a black graduate student being treated shamefully by University police after being mistaken for a burglary suspect.
Lewis claims, and I think this is true, that Yale’s President Peter Salovey has been slow to react to this situation despite the fact that Jonathan Holloway, Yale’s first black Dean of Students, reacted more quickly and met for hours with students.
I wanted to bring this up because the situation may be more complicated than it looks. As I said, there was no call for the students to go after the Christakises, no matter how marginalized they feel. But their explosion of anger might reflect more than just a few emails from University administrators. I do want to note, though, that Lewis’s own report emphasizes not just racism, but students feeling “psychologically unsafe”. He describes one incident that has garnered a lot of press:
Many people (especially women of color) said they feel physically and psychologically unsafe here. Just last weekend, several women said they were turned away from a social event at SAE because it was for “white girls only.” Some people have tried to turn this into a debate about what exactly happened at the door of SAE on Halloween. But that’s not the point. For students of color, the incident is a symbol of the kind of racism that they deal with far too often on this campus.
That incident, which is reprehensible if it happened, is actually subject to some dispute, at least according to the Daily Beast. (However, widespread racism of the ΣAE fraternity at other schools is not.) But Lewis claims that the truth of this report is irrelevant, for it’s a “symbol of racism.” That it might be—if it did happen. But in this narrative, let’s not say that the truth doesn’t matter. As for students feeling physically and psychologically unsafe, well, if they feel physically unsafe because of threats or a climate of harassment, that’s a serious issue that should be recitified. But feeling psychologically unsafe is a completely different issue. “Psychological safety” is rapidly becoming a euphemism on American campuses for “Not having one’s ideas challenged.”
Lewis ends by emphasizing not just racism, but the “safety” issue again:
I hope it’s obvious now that Yale students are concerned about far more than just an email or a frat party. In the petty debates about these two specific incidents, people have lost sight of the larger issue: systemic racism on campus. There’s absolutely no reason why we can’t acknowledge both the value of free speech and the reality of the prejudice that students of color face every day. It saddens me that this has gotten to the point where people feel like they have to take sides. We should all strive for a future where, at the very least, people feel physically safe and confident in their own humanity. Let’s focus on the goals we share, not the unproductive debates that divide us.
Claims of endemic racism at Yale are serious, and should be investigated by the University. The administration needs to respond quickly, and if there are violations of the law or personal harassment, the University should take action. But I’m dubious about statement like this: “There’s absolutely no reason why we can’t acknowledge both the value of free speech and the reality of the prejudice that students of color face every day.” Such statements are often used to suppress truly free speech: the speech that others find offensive but that’s not illegal. After all, some debates, including the one about Halloween costumes, are valuable and productive, and trying to suppress any debate is inimical to the mission of a great university like Yale.
In about half an hour I’ll put up a video by Jonathan Haidt that underscores the dichtomy between free speech and “safe spaces” that is plaguing American universities.
I feel music coming on this week; but I suspect it will be an eclectic mix. Here’s a classic song from the 1940s.
“Why don’t you do right?” started life as a song called “Weed-smoker’s dream,” recorded in 1936 by the Harlem Hamfats (not from Harlem, but Chicago; you can hear the original version here). It then was rewritten to its present form in 1941 by Hamfats member Joseph McCoy. You can hear that blues-y version, recorded by Lil Green, here. It clearly influenced Peggy Lee’s later cover.
As Wikipedia notes:
The song has its roots in blues music and originally dealt with a marijuana smoker reminiscing about lost financial opportunities. As it was rewritten, it takes on the perspective of the female partner, who chastises her man for his irresponsible ways and admonishes him to:
Why don’t you do right, like some other men do?
Get out of here and get me some money too.
But the most famous version was recorded by Peggy Lee fronting Benny Goodman’s band in 1942 (original recording here). The live version shown below is from the 1943 wartime movie “Stage Door Canteen“, which I must watch (the whole movie, full of musicians, is on YouTube). Lee’s vocals are about as blues-y and sultry as they come, and Benny Goodman, does a superb solo. Who would have thought that a Jewish boy from Chicago would become the best jazz clarinetist ever?
You might remember that this song was also sung by Jessica Rabbit, a performance that poleaxed the private eye Bob Hoskins in the movie “Who Killed Roger Rabbit?” (go here to see that version).
Today’s series of pictures was sent by Lou Jost, a biologist living in Ecuador, but the photos were taken by his colleagues. It’s a sad tale, but it’d natural selection, Jake, and the photos are superb.
Lou’s notes:
These aren’t my pictures, they are pictures taken by people I invited to photograph our baby eagle…so perhaps it is still sort of “Readers’ Wildlife” photos?
Back in May one of our reserve caretakers, Fausto Recalde, discovered a nest of the endangered Black-and-chestnut Eagle (Spizaetus isidori), a giant eagle capable of carrying off monkeys. This was one of only a handful of nests ever found of this species, which lives in a narrow band along the middle slopes of the northern Andes. (Jerry has previously posted my video of a fledged juvenile in our Cerro Candelaria Reserve.)
The nest was in its very early stages, either incubation or recently hatched (the guards couldn’t see a chick), so we could watch the whole process unfold. Our guards took some photos but were limited by their equipment. Then Mark Wilson, a naturalist working on a book about the giant eagles of the world, heard about this nest and one other nest in Ecuador. He didn’t have good material on this eagle, so he rushed down to photograph the nests for his book. With his permission, here are some of his shots from the two nests. [JAC: captions are below the photographs.]
A young black-and-chestnut eagle exercises in the nest.A black-and-chestnut eagle chick dismantles prey that its parent just delivered to the nest.An adult male black-and-chestnut eagle and its chick share a moment in the nest in Ecuador.An adult female black-and-chestnut eagle brings fresh greenery to the nest and then briefly stares at the photo blind on a nearby hillside.
An adult black-and-chestnut eagle delvers prey to its chick in the nest.
Mark and our guards found that the eagles fed their chick not on monkeys or squirrels or other mammals, as I had expected, but almost exclusively on guans (Chamaepetes, and probably also Aburria and Penelope), which are large turkey-like birds of the forest canopy and midstory.
Shortly after Mark left, our bird started tentatively to explore the branches of the nest tree, as seen in these photos taken by our guard Santiago Recalde. It also became more assertive, and the adults now kept a respectful distance while it fed. I suppose in eagle years it was now the equivalent of a rebellious human teenager.
When the guards returned to the nest a week after taking these pictures, they were shocked to discover the baby’s cleaned-off skeleton laying in a pile of feathers at the foot of the nest tree. There were no obvious signs of foul play, though the head had been removed by some animal which broke the skull around the eye sockets. Ruth Muñiz Lopez, an Ecuadorian expert on large eagles, told us that young eagles frequently get into trouble like this on their first flight, losing altitude and then getting trapped beneath the canopy and unable to return to the nest.
Another week has begun as we wend ourselves, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, inexorably towards winter. Sadly, as with summer, all the pie is gone, too, and there will be no more for a year. But in Dobrzyn, I am told, there is fruitcake, and the Furry Princess of Poland is grooming her adorable pink toes.
A: Yoga?
Hili: No, pedicure.
Is it considered a pedicure rather than a manicure when a cat tends its front paws?
As I noted yesterday, I went to Saturday’s annual South Side Pie Challenge, conveniently located only a few blocks from my crib. It’s an event whose proceeds benefit the hungry of surrounding communities; and I was glad to make a donation to that cause, and to my stomach as well. I purchased four slices of pie (only one remains), but I wish I’d tried many more. For every pie I tried was fantastic.
These are pies made at home by Hyde Park residents, who go all out, as you’ll see, to produce a great pie for charity. Below are some photos of one of America’s great contributions to world gastronomy.
The Gates to Paradise:
There were four tables; this one featured cream pies (all pies were $3/slice, or four for $10):
The fruit pies:
Pumpkin and nut pies:
On to the individual pies. This one is “Calico cream pie”, baked by Hyde Park Cats, a local rescue organization:
Baked yogurt pie; isn’t it beautiful?
A red raspberry pie (since it was judged a “finalist”, I bought a piece, and it was superb), flanked by apple crumble pie on the left and peach pie on the right:
Black and red raspberry pie:
Banana cream pie:
I believe this beauty is a pumpkin pie:
Various pecan pies; a good pecan pie is not only uniquely American, but one of the best desserts in the world. A proper pecan pie is not just a veneer of nuts over a pure gelatinous filling, but has the nuts all the way through:
This is a chocolate cream pie with toasted marshmallows and graham crackers, clearly meant to resemble S’mores. I much regret not having tried it:
Another pie I should have bought: pistachio pie! I’ve never had one:
A pear pie—sadly, too few bakers make these—with a beautiful crust. One of the best pies I’ve ever had was a pear and cream-cheese pie made by someone who worked in my lab.
I’m not sure what this one is, but it was gorgeous:
A friend’s daughter (also shown in last year’s posting), serving up two slices. I had the chocolate peanut butter pie at lower right; it’s the one slice I haven’t yet eaten.
UPDATE: According to this link, this paper has been retracted. The reasons given are these:
In our paper, we reported cross-cultural differences in how the religious environment of a child negatively impacted their sharing, their judgments of the actions of others, and how their parents evaluated them. An error in this article, our incorrect inclusion of country of origin as a covariate in many analyses, was pointed out in a correspondence from Shariff, Willard, Muthukrishna, Kramer, and Henrich (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.06.031). When we reanalyzed these data to correct this error, we found that country of origin, rather than religious affiliation, is the primary predictor of several of the outcomes. While our title finding that increased household religiousness predicts less sharing in children remains significant, we feel it necessary to explicitly correct the scientific record, and we are therefore retracting the article. We apologize to the scientific community for any inconvenience caused.
Thanks to Mark for pointing out the retraction.
_______________
I believe I’ve received more emails from readers about this study than about anything else in the last six years. Several dozen readers have directed me to a paper by Jean Decety et al. (Decety is at my university) just published online in Current Biology (reference below; free download).
I think one reason it’s been called to my attention so often is that the authors claim to show something counterintuitive: that children from nonbelieving homes are actually more altruistic than children from religious homes (mostly Christian and Muslim). That goes against the common belief—one often touted by religionists—that religion makes you more altruistic. But because the study plays into what we atheists would like to think, it behooves us to look at it especially carefully. The study has also received lots of press, much of it uncritical.
After having read the paper four times, I think the authors do show that, in a specific laboratory setting, children from homes that are agnostic or atheistic do indeed tend to be more generous on a specific task than children from religious homes. Further, the “religious” children tend to be more punitive and judgmental about such issues, though they’re less generous. Whether this is altruism, and whether it translates into general behavior in society, are issues that remain unresolved.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here are the methods and results:
The authors estimated the “altruism” of 1170 children from cities in six countries: Chicago (US), Toronto (Canada), Amman (Jordan), Cape Town (South Africa), Izmir and Istanbul (Turkey), and Guanzhou (China). Children also took animated computer tests to estimate their “moral sensivitivy”. The authors also surveyed the children’s parents to see what religion the household adhered to and to estimate “children’s sensitivity to injustice.”
The altruism was estimated by having the children play the “Dictator Game“, which in this case was conducted as follows (quotations marks enclose the description from the paper):
“Children’s Dictator Game: This tabletop, modified version of the standard dictator game is designed to assess altruism/generosity in children and was run by trained research assistants. In this task, children were shown a set of 30 stickers and told to choose their 10 favorite. They were then told ‘these stickers are yours to keep.’ Children were instructed that the experimenter did not have the time to play this game with all of the children in the school, so not everyone would be able to receive stickers. Children were finally shown a set of envelopes and informed that they could give some of their stickers to another child who would not be able to play this game by putting them in one envelope and they could put the stickers they wanted to keep in the other envelope. Experimenters turned around during the child’s choice and children were instructed to inform the experimenter when they were finished. Altruism was calculated as the number of stickers shared out of 10.”
In other words, altruism was estimated as the number of stickers that kids gave away that they could have kept for themselves. This is presumably “altruism” because the kids are helping others at a cost to themselves, although of course this isn’t biological altruism, in which one incurs a reproductive cost—a loss in the number of genes one passes on. To ensure that kids weren’t just manifesting bias against outgroups and favoritism toward ingroups, the anonymous recipients were known to the subjects to be children from their same school and ethnic group. The authors say that this procedure, unlike methods of previous studies, is an “ecologically valid depiction of everyday mundane interpersonal harm that occur in schools”, and is a good index of “moral sensitivity.”
The main result, which has everyone excited, is that children from nonreligious homes gave away more stickers than children from the two other main groups surveyed: individuals from Christian or Muslim homes. Here’s the figure showing a highly significant difference between nonbelievers and religionists (I’ll characterize the children that way as shorthand, as we don’t know what they believed themselves), and no difference between Muslims and Christians.
Altruism Is Negatively Influenced by the Religiosity of Children’ Households Children from non-religious households (n = 323) are more altruistic with an anonymous beneficiary than children from religious families (n = 280 Christians; n = 510 Muslims). Bars represent SEs [standard errors of the mean].One issue here is that although the differences are significant, the size of the “altruism effect” isn’t specified. In general, even in the supplemental information, the details and metrics of the paper are not well described—at least as far as I could see. How did they quantify “generosity”? Does the graph above show the number of stickers given away? If that’s the case, then the effect, while significant, is not huge: nonbelieving kids gave away, on average, half a sticker more than did Christian kids and one more sticker than did Muslim kids. How meaningful would that be?
There are two results that will also appeal to us nonbelievers, but have received less interest. One is that, apparently from the computer games, nonbelieving children are less likely than religious children to judge harm to other people as being “mean” and being “deserving of harsher punishment.” In other words, children from nonbelieving homes are less judgmental—something that, we’d suppose—goes along with the stricter morality and the notion of divine punishment that accompanies religiosity. Here’s the plot of “meanness”, showing that such judgments are lower among nonreligious children than either Christian or Muslim children, but are also lower among Christian than among Muslim children:
Figure 3. Children from Religious Households Judge Interpersonal Harm More Severely Than Children from Non-religious Households Bars represent SEs.
Finally, children from nonreligious homes, as estimated by their parents, are less likely to be “empathic and sensitive to the plight of others”. Again, increased altruism goes along with increased judgmentalism. Here’s the plot for “sensitivity to injustice,” showing that, although nonreligious children were the least sensitive, they didn’t differ significantly from Muslim children, while Christian children were significantly more sensitive than both nonreligious and Muslim children:
Figure 4. Parents of Children from Christian Households View Their Children as More Sensitive to Injustices toward Others Bars represent SEs.
What’s the upshot? Well, the authors did show that nonreligious children—again, this is shorthand for the tenor of their household—are more likely than religious children to give away stickers, though I can’t say the effect is huge. Whether this is a comparison of relative “altruism” is more questionable, as we’ll see in a minute.
Also, even if it is an index of altruism, what we see is short-term behavior of young children in a laboratory setting. It’s not clear whether this behavioral difference would carry over into adulthood, or into more real-world situations where one is actually making a real sacrifice by helping someone else. After all, these children are simply giving away stickers that they got without any effort. Does that mean the same thing as donating to charity money that you’ve earned by the sweat of your brow? Or saving a drowning person? Who knows?
The authors make a fairly strong conclusion about what their study means:
Overall, our findings cast light on the cultural input of religion on prosocial behavior and contradict the common-sense and popular assumption that children from religious households are more altruistic and kind toward others. More generally, they call into question whether religion is vital for moral development, supporting the idea that the secularization of moral discourse will not reduce human kindness—in fact, it will do just the opposite.
Will do just the opposite? Well, we don’t know that. And the notion that religion is vital for moral development has already been refuted by the high morality evinced in nonreligious countries like Sweden and Denmark. Sociologist and paleontologist Gregory Paul, who has published on the negative relationship between religiosity and social well-being among various countries, told me this in an email (reproduced with permission):
Whether or not the paper’s methods and immediate results are reasonably sound, the conclusion the authors come to is overdrawn. The paper finishes by firmly saying that secularization of moral discourse will increase human kindness. That’s a reasonable hypothesis, but it is not yet demonstrated science. The paper should have concluded by stating that the results indicate that fears that secularization will degrade altruism are contradicted by the study, and that secularization MAY instead increase ethical behavior. Had I reviewed the paper I would have insisted on that change.
Paul also made a very good point about whether this behavior is “altruistic,” at least among children from religious homes. It’s not clear whether these children already knew about divine reward and punishment (I suspect many of them did, since they were between ages 5 and 12), but is “altruism” among the faithful really altruism? Paul thinks not:
In any case the whole issue of assessing altruism has been problematic in the psychosociological literature. Studies keep claiming that religious people are more “altruistic.” But true altruism can only occcur if the person expects absolutely no reward or evasion of punishment, and really feels they are making a core sacrifice by committing an act of kindness. But of course the major religions are reward/punishment schemes in which members are calculating they are going to get something from a deity if they do something nice to another, so believers are inherently barred from being altruistic as long as they are seeking heaven or the like. Ergo all papers that conclude that the religious are altruistic are errant.
Finally, what about the increased judgmentalism among religious children? It goes along with the notion that religion promotes stricter judgment of right and wrong, but one could also make the case that nonreligious children’s lower sensitivity to injustice is a fault of atheism. But remember—that sensitivity was judged not in objective tests, but via parental assessment. There’s a strong impetus for biased judgment here.
Finally, there’s a bit of irony in this study that didn’t escape the attention of most readers. Here is the paper’s “acknowledgments” section:
I’m not so sure that Templeton, dedicated to using science to buttress God and the “spiritual”, would like this result! And this isn’t the first time that Templeton funded a study that gave results inimical to their goals: another was the famous study of cardiac patients showing that intercessory prayer not only had no palpable curative effect, but could have made things worse! Such is science: it tells us what is real, not what we’d like to hear.
