NationStates Jolt Archive

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7133079.stm
Generosity 'may be in the genes'

Some people may be genetically destined to have a generous personality, Israeli research has suggested.

A total of 203 people took part in an online task in which they could either keep or give away money.

Gene tests revealed those who had certain variants of a gene called AVPR1a were on average nearly 50% more likely to give money away.

The study, by The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, appears online in the journal Genes, Brain and Behavior.

Lead researcher Dr Ariel Knafo said: "The experiment provided the first evidence, to my knowledge, for a relationship between DNA variability and real human altruism."

The gene AVPR1a plays a key role in allowing a hormone called arginine vasopressin to act on brain cells.

Vasopressin, in turn, has been implicated in social bonding.

The researchers found greater altruism in players in which a key section of the gene, called its promoter, was longer.

The promoter is the region that determines how active a gene is. In this case a longer promoter makes the gene more active.

Long history

The researchers point out that a version of AVPR1a also exists in voles, where it also promotes social bonding.

This, they say, suggests that altruism has a long rooted genetic history.

Dr George Fieldman, a lecturer in psychology at Buckinghamshire New University, said carrying genes which promoted altruism and social bonding made evolutionary sense.

He said the success of altruism as a strategy was based on the idea that a good deed was likely to be reciprocated.

However, the odds of that happening among strangers were lower than among people who were known to each other. Therefore, the impulse to bond socially, and make new friends, was important.

He said: "Because society is becoming increasingly complicated, it is probably more important to be altruistic and co-operative than it was in our ancestral history."

Ignoring the final sentence, which smacks of a researcher never leaving campus, this is fairly useful little piece of information.

Do you think people can be genetically skewed towards a more collectivist view of life?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7133079.stm


Ignoring the final sentence, which smacks of a researcher never leaving campus, this is fairly useful little piece of information.

Do you think people can be genetically skewed towards a more collectivist view of life?

I'd say yes, to a degree. But, really, social conditioning is a much more important determinant, I'd say. I have no empirical data or analysis to back this up, just anecdotes and intuition, much as I hate to say it.

And, really, the last sentence makes sense. I'd say it's fairly obvious the social geography of society has become exponentially more complicated than it used to, and more subtle, too.

Did the researchers control for other factors that might parallel heredity, like learned family tradition, regional customs, and socioeconomic class?

And, really, the last sentence makes sense. I'd say it's fairly obvious the social geography of society has become exponentially more complicated than it used to, and more subtle, too.
Back in 3500 BC if you weren't nice to people you are the first one to go without dinner.

In 2007 AD if you're not nice to people they call you names and you never see them again.

Of course it's important to not be an arsehole to people you spend a lot of time with or depend upon. But the vast majority of human beings don't fit into either category, and giving them my lunch money isn't going to make my life any easier.

My jeans have holes in the pockets what does that make me? :p

also the research may be slightly skewed as it was done in Israel...

My jeans have holes in the pockets what does that make me? :p

also the research may be slightly skewed as it was done in Israel...

Why would Israel skew the results? Japan, yes, but Israel?

Generosity isn't hereditary; it's just that generous people are more likely to raise generous children.

Yes. And in everyone's. We're all influenced, to one degree or another, by natural inclination.

Why would Israel skew the results? Japan, yes, but Israel?

where is a thread on generosity without the Jews?!

Generosity isn't hereditary; it's just that generous people are more likely to raise generous children.

http://www.thehiltonfiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/free-paris-hilton.JPG

Back in 3500 BC if you weren't nice to people you are the first one to go without dinner.

In 2007 AD if you're not nice to people they call you names and you never see them again.

Of course it's important to not be an arsehole to people you spend a lot of time with or depend upon. But the vast majority of human beings don't fit into either category, and giving them my lunch money isn't going to make my life any easier.

Well, if you break it down to people you know and people you don't (friends/non-friends) but that's a ridiculously limited scope of society. People have work friends, school friends, friend-friends (dunno what else to call them), family friends, etc. And all those groups generally merit different treatment and different modes of interaction. You have "friends" who are your occupational superiors but perhaps only in a de facto manner. Then you begin to differentiate acquaintances from actual friends and it becomes even more complicated. In 3500 BC generally the person you worked for was your superior in a social, employment, political and familiar hierarchical mode, not just one or the other. In the modern day someone can be your social superior but perhaps work beneath you at the work place and maybe hold more sway with your family than you.

And that's just for your average person, whether their conscious of this or not. If you start to analyze this for, say, a politician, you approach brain exploding convolution!

So now we get to take a pill instead of a visit from three spirits?

I used to have a generous streak, but I gave it away. :)

I used to have a generous streak, but I gave it away. :)

Mordred?

203 people!!!

Well that proves it then.

203 people!!!

Well that proves it then.

Perhaps it's not as large a group as would be useful, but please don't bring up that ridiculous "tiny groups are not statistically valid" argument.

Perhaps it's not as large a group as would be useful, but please don't bring up that ridiculous "tiny groups are not statistically valid" argument.

Hey, now...I may have never taken a polling class and only basic statistics but I can pull rhetoric out of my ass because my intuitive knee-jerk reactions says it is so and thus...I'm right and for an accurate statistic you must poll every single human being on Earth!

Perhaps it's not as large a group as would be useful, but please don't bring up that ridiculous "tiny groups are not statistically valid" argument.

I have never heard a counterargument to it though :confused:

Perhaps it's not as large a group as would be useful, but please don't bring up that ridiculous "tiny groups are not statistically valid" argument.

I recognize that not all "tiny" groups are not statistically invalid. But absent further explication, this one clearly is.

In any case, it's not a ridiculous argument to question group size.

I have never heard a counterargument to it though :confused:

A relatively small, yet representative sample, can actually yield significant results. In other words, it is not just the size of the sample, per se, but rather its composition that plays a part in how accurately it describes the entire population.

But there is no evidence that they put the kind of safeguards required to ensure that the small sample in this case actually represented the population as a whole. Moreover, there is still always a minimum sample size for it to be accurate to within a certain degree of confidence. Given that this is only 203 people out of six billion, you can be fairly certain that it is crap.

The question is, of course, how many people have that variation?

Mordred?

:confused:

:confused:

"If charity means giving
I give it to you...."

I have never heard a counterargument to it though :confused:
That's because it would be a little complicated.

Basically there are a bunch of formulae which depend heavily on things like the spread of the data and the size of the sample, and which then tell you how likely it is that the results you get from the sample accurately reflect the results you would get from surveying the entire population. These formulae are based on probability theory, so it should always be kept in mind that no statistician will ever say "yes, this is 100% accurate" - they will say "the likelihood that my result is significantly* different to that of an entire census is less than 5%".

So if you have a desired probability level, and you have some information about the spread of the data (say, from a previous sampling process), you can play around with the formulae to get an ideal sample size. Depending on your practical resources, you then set up a survey that covers enough people to deliver a level of significance which you consider reasonable as a researcher.

Of course, these studies use more advanced statistical techniques, but the significance tests and their association with sample size use the same principles regardless.

*"Significance" being another complex sort of term that is probably not worth getting into right now. But if you want, go ahead and wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance) it.

EDIT: Lacadaemon is right though. My explanation depends on the assumption of a randomly drawn sample that is therefore representative of the population as a whole (and a few other assumptions, but those can be tested for once you have the data). The real killer in sampling is the high chance of drawing a biased sample - say by relying on internet users as test subjects who may not be representative of society as a whole.