Primates on Facebook

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What is the cost of emotion, time and energy do you spend in your social networks “grooming”?

From Feb 26th 2009 | SAN FRANCISCO | The Economist print edition

Even online, the neocortex is the limit That Facebook, Twitter and other online social networks will increase the size of human social groups is an obvious hypothesis, given that they reduce a lot of the friction and cost involved in keeping in touch with other people. Once you join and gather your “friends” online, you can share in their lives as recorded by photographs, “status updates” and other titbits, and, with your permission, they can share in yours. Additional friends are free, so why not say the more the merrier?

In the wild, grooming is time-consuming and here computerisation certainly helps. But keeping track of who to groom—and why—demands quite a bit of mental computation.

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Primates on Facebook

Alphachimp @ Pop!Tech

Peter Durand from Alphachimp @ Pop!Tech from Poptech on Vimeo. Peter Durand from Alphachimp illustrates Stephen Badylak's lecture on regenerative medicine. From Pop!Tech Blogger Michelle Riggen-Ransom:

If you’re with us in Maine, you’ve probably noticed the colorful illustrations hanging on the walls of the third floor break room. If you’re not, you can take a look at them here.

These illustrations are the work of artist Peter Durand of Alphachimp Studio. Peter has set up an easel on the balcony of the Opera House, where he busily creates illustrations that capture the key elements of each presentation.

Peter let me peek over his shoulder while he illustrated a session. It happened to be Stephen Badylak’s talk on The Edge of Medicine. While images of exploded horse faces and dismembered fingers flashed on the screen, Peter managed to turn Badylak’s fascinating lecture on regenerative medicine into the illustration above. Watch a short video of his process here and see how language becomes visual art.

Coaching the Alpha Male

By Kate Ludeman & Eddie Erlandson | May 1, 2004

The best treatise on taming the successful, chest-beating leader we all love to fear!

clipped from harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu Highly intelligent, confident, and successful, alpha males represent about 70% of all senior executives. Natural leaders, they willingly take on levels of responsibility most rational people would find overwhelming. But many of their quintessential strengths can also make alphas difficult to work with. Their self-confidence can appear domineering. Their high expectations can make them excessively critical. Their unemotional style can keep them from inspiring their teams. That's why alphas need coaching to broaden their interpersonal tool kits while preserving their strengths. Drawing from their experience coaching more than 1,000 senior executives, the authors outline an approach tailored specifically for the alpha. Coaches get the alpha's attention by inundating him with data from 360-degree feedback presented in ways he will find compelling.Such an assessment is a wake-up call for most alphas, providing undeniable proof that their behavior doesn't work nearly as well as they think it does. That paves the way for a genuine commitment to change. To change, the alpha must admit vulnerability, accept accountability not just for his own work but for others', connect with his underlying emotions, learn to motivate through a balance of criticism and validation, and become aware of unproductive behavior patterns. The goal of executive coaching is not simply to treat the alpha as an individual problem, but to improve the entire team dynamic.

The Selfless Gene

by Olivia Judson | October 2007 | Atlantic Monthly

It’s easy to see how evolution can account for the dark streaks in human nature—the violence, treachery, and cruelty. But how does it produce kindness, generosity, and heroism?

(This is a nice call-and-response to Richard Dawkins' 1976 book on adaptation and natural selection, The Selfish Gene.)

clipped from www.theatlantic.com How does a propensity for self-sacrifice evolve? And what about the myriad lesser acts of daily kindness—helping a little old lady across the street, giving up a seat on the subway, returning a wallet that’s been lost? Are these impulses as primal as ferocity, lust, and greed? Or are they just a thin veneer over a savage nature? Answers come from creatures as diverse as amoebas and baboons, but the story starts in the county of Kent, in southern England.

What Chimpanzees Can Teach Us About Economics

(By the way, the experiment described in this article--involving struggles over fruit bars and chocolate--works on three-year-old humans and management consultants, too.)

clipped from www.vanderbilt.edu In a long standing enigma of economics and psychology, humans tend to immediately value an item they’ve just received more than the maximum amount they would have paid to get it to begin with. This tendency, known as the endowment effect, is something some economists consider a fluke, but new research finds that humans aren’t the only ones exhibiting an endowment effect. A new study co-authored by Vanderbilt professor Owen Jones, who is one of the nation’s few professors of both law and biology, uncovered the first evidence that chimpanzees exhibit an endowment effect similar to people. Specifically, the study showed that chimpanzees favor items they just received more than items they normally prefer that they could get through exchange. “Our results support the conclusion that the frequent failure to exchange a less-favored food for a more-preferred food was an active choice and is similar to the endowment effect behavior seen in humans,” said Jones.

Morality: Your Inner Chimp

A fantastic podcast aired on April 28, 2007 and profiled on Chicago's WBEZ This American Life. Listen to more on the Science of Morality.

Turns out, when faced with moral dilemmas, there is a band of chimps in our brains, duking it out. And it requires some alpha chimp arbitration!

clipped from www.wnyc.org Where does our sense of right and wrong come from? We peer inside the brains of people contemplating moral dilemmas, watch chimps at a primate research center share blackberries, observe a playgroup of 3 year-olds fighting over toys, and tour the country's first penitentiary, Eastern State Prison. Also: the story of land grabbing, indentured servitude and slum lording in the fourth grade. Then we'll move from inner chimp to outer. Dr. Frans de Waals lets us watch a chimp fight at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta. And we'll turn our navel-gazing toward the furrier navels of the chimps to learn a little more about this thing called morality: where it comes from, its evolutionary benefit, and why you can't guilt-trip an ape.