There are two things I really like to learn about: parasites and the human mind. And so I was intrigued to learn about some studies that suggest that we defend ourselves from infections not only with an immune system made up of cells and antibodies, but one made up of unconscious behaviors. It’s the topic of my new column about the brain in Discover. Other people can make us sick, and so perhaps we deal with them differently depending on our risk of getting sick. Take this study, from Carlos Navarrete, a psychologist at Michigan State University. He and his colleagues designed an experiment to compare how pregnant women respond to strangers. During the first trimester, both mother and child are particularly vulnerable to infection.
Navarrete and his colleagues had 206 pregnant women read two essays that were written, they were told, by students. One of the essays was by a foreigner who criticized the United States, the other by an American who praised the country. The women then had to rate the essayists for their likability, intelligence, and other qualities. Women in the first trimester were more likely than those in the second or third trimester to give a high score to the American and a low score to the foreigner. The pregnant women’s vulnerability to infection, Navarrete concludes, brought with it a heightened disapproval of foreigners.
You can read the whole thing here.
February 19th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Wow, that’s really interesting research! Thanks for sharing it!
February 20th, 2009 at 8:14 am
I can’t see how the link to disease is made in the Navarrete work, other than by the sort of process we laugh at in creationists.
I agree wholeheartedly with this:
“At this point the evidence remains circumstantial, and the whole concept is still a fairly speculative hypothesis. But it is one worth tracking, because its implications could be huge.”
and I hope they get out of the lab and away from undergrad psychology subjects soon.
February 20th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
The 19th Amendment was and is a national disaster, ditto psychology. Reality is empirical. Masculine greed creates the world, feminine envy does not.
February 21st, 2009 at 7:15 pm
“Pregnancy causes hatred toward foreigners.” See? Thats the problem. Thats why I’m not having kids.
My statistics professor would have the fits if he saw the study.
February 22nd, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Wouldn’t it be more likely that there’s some protective circuitry that’s being triggered? It seems to me that the protective instinct is against perceived physical danger rather than some amorphous invisible threat.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
[...] pesados, Phil Plait de Bad Astronomy y Carl Zimmer (colaborador habitual del New York Times). En el blog de este último he leído sorprendido unos párrafos acerca de una teoría desarrollada por el psicólogo de la [...]
February 24th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
[...] pesados, Phil Plait de Bad Astronomy y Carl Zimmer (colaborador habitual del New York Times). En el blog de este último he leído sorprendido unos párrafos acerca de una teoría desarrollada por el psicólogo de la [...]