Frank Salter on the War on Human Nature, Replacement Level Migration, etc. (June 2014)

http://youtu.be/JxzJ2DDiJI0?t=2m20s

Solving the puzzle of why Finns have the highest IQ, but one of the lowest number of Nobel prizes in Europe

Solving the puzzle of why Finns have the highest IQ, but one of the lowest number of Nobel prizes in Europe
Edward Dutton, Jan te Nijenhuis, Eka Roivainen
Intelligence (Sept - Oct 2014)

Highlights

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Finland does very well in PISA, but has very few Nobel Prize winners.

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Finns have the highest IQ in Europe but the smallest SD.

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Finns have high Conscientiousness and Agreeableness.

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This explains why they do well in education, but not in measures of significant creative achievement.

Abstract

Finland has been noted to perform consistently very well in the international PISA assessments for many years, but it also has a relatively low per capita number of Nobel Prize winners. We draw upon a large body of proxy data and direct evidence, including the first ever use of RTs to calculate the Finnish IQ and the first ever use of the WAIS IV and PISA scores in the same capacity. Based on these data, we hypothesize that Finns perform so consistently well in PISA because they have a higher IQ overall than other European countries and exhibit a specialized slow life history strategy characterized by high Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, and low Psychoticism and Extraversion. Most of these traits predict educational success but all would suppress genius and creativity amongst this population. We connect the present distribution of phenotypic traits amongst the Finnish population with evolutionary change starting in the Pleistocene, accelerating in the Holocene, and continuing into the present day. We argue that this profile explains why Finns are relatively poorly represented in terms of science Nobel laureates.

The Bell Curve Revisited - Charles Murray (March 2014)

Sex differences in the implications of partner physical attractiveness for the trajectory of marital satisfaction.

Sex differences in the implications of partner physical attractiveness for the trajectory of marital satisfaction.
A L Meltzer, J K McNulty, G L Jackson, B R Karney (Mar 2014)

Abstract

Do men value physical attractiveness in a mate more than women? Scientists in numerous disciplines believe that they do, but recent research using speed-dating paradigms suggests that males and females are equally influenced by physical attractiveness when choosing potential mates. Nevertheless, the premise of the current work is that sex differences in the importance of physical attractiveness are most likely to emerge in research on long-term relationships. Accordingly, the current work drew from 4 independent, longitudinal studies to examine sex differences in the implications of partner physical attractiveness for trajectories of marital satisfaction. In all 4 studies, both partners’ physical attractiveness was objectively rated at baseline, and both partners reported their marital satisfaction up to 8 times over the first 4 years of marriage. Whereas husbands were more satisfied at the beginning of the marriage and remained more satisfied over the next 4 years to the extent that they had an attractive wife, wives were no more or less satisfied initially or over the next 4 years to the extent that they had an attractive husband. Most importantly, a direct test indicated that partner physical attractiveness played a larger role in predicting husbands’ satisfaction than predicting wives’ satisfaction. These findings strengthen support for the idea that sex differences in self-reported preferences for physical attractiveness do have implications for long-term relationship outcomes.

Fitness consequences of spousal relatedness in 46 small-scale societies

Fitness consequences of spousal relatedness in 46 small-scale societies
Drew H. Bailey, Kim R. Hill, and Robert S. Walker (April 2014)
biology letters


Abstract

Social norms that regulate reproductive and marital decisions generate impressive cross-cultural variation in the prevalence of kin marriages. In some societies, marriages among kin are the norm and this inbreeding creates intensive kinship networks concentrated within communities. In others, especially forager societies, most marriages are between more genealogically and geographically distant individuals, which generates a larger number of kin and affines of lesser relatedness in more extensive kinship networks spread out over multiple communities. Here, we investigate the fitness consequence of kin marriages across a sample of 46 small-scale societies (12 439 marriages). Results show that some non-forager societies (including horticulturalists, agriculturalists and pastoralists), but not foragers, have intensive kinship societies where fitness outcomes (measured as the number of surviving children in genealogies) peak at commonly high levels of spousal relatedness. By contrast, the extensive kinship systems of foragers have worse fitness outcomes at high levels of spousal relatedness. Overall, societies with greater levels of inbreeding showed a more positive relationship between fitness and spousal relatedness.

[If you need the paper, please inform me.]

Character displacement of Cercopithecini primate visual signals

Character displacement of Cercopithecini primate visual signals
William L. Allen, Martin Stevens, and James P. Higham (June 2014)
Nature Communications


Abstract

Animal visual signals have the potential to act as an isolating barrier to prevent interbreeding of populations through a role in species recognition. Within communities of competing species, species recognition signals are predicted to undergo character displacement, becoming more visually distinctive from each other; however, this pattern has rarely been identified. Using computational face recognition algorithms to model primate face processing, we demonstrate that the face patterns of guenons (tribe: Cercopithecini) have evolved under selection to become more visually distinctive from those of other guenon species with whom they are sympatric. The relationship between the appearances of sympatric species suggests that distinguishing conspecifics from other guenon species has been a major driver of diversification in guenon face appearance. Visual signals that have undergone character displacement may have had an important role in the tribe’s radiation, keeping populations that became geographically separated reproductively isolated on secondary contact.

Spearman's "Fundamental Laws"

(I) ... a person has more or less power to observe what goes on in his own mind.

(II) ... when a person has in mind any two or more ideas (using this word to embrace any items of mental content, whether perceived or thought of), he has more or less power to bring to mind any relations that essentially hold between them.

(III) ... when a person has in mind any idea together with a relation, he has more or less power to bring up into mind the correlative idea.

Source:
The Abilities of Man (1927) (p. 164-166)
Charles Spearman