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A number of very eminent and highly creative individuals are often claimed to have been born prematurely, and the idea that widely recognised scientific geniuses such as Newton, Kepler, and Darwin were preterm has become a cultural meme through the popular press, and through popular and academic science books. This potentially raises very important questions, related to the nature and origin of creativity and innovation, as it has been suggested that prematurity and genius may be linked. Here, we review suggested links between prematurity and genius, in terms of psychological traits associated with genius, and compare the percentage of top geniuses in Murray’s Human Accomplishment who are claimed to have been born prematurely to that of Western populations in general. Although a significant number of those in Murray’s sample have been asserted to be preterm, we found that none of them could be said with certainty to have been so, refuting the hypothesis that there is a clear connection between prematurity and scientific genius.

Research has consistently found that there are sex differences in self-reported personality traits. Studies have also found that there are intercultural variations in the magnitude of these sex-based personality differences, with these differences being the most pronounced in prosperous, gender-egalitarian Western societies. In this study, we contribute to this body of research by exploring sex-related personality differences on the HEXACO personality inventory in a large student sample in Saudi Arabia. Consistent with previous research, we find that sex differences in personality are of rather small magnitude, in line with the Socioecological Complexity Hypothesis whereby personality differentiation is found to be more pronounced the more complex a society is. We also report substantial sex differences in response styles, with acquiescent responding and evidence of “careless responding“ higher in males than in females

Introduction Gender dysphoria (GD) is associated with several psychiatric conditions, but the causal links are not known. We note that some of these conditions are associated with physiological masculinisation. Methods Here, we explore this association through a series of systematic reviews, using Google Scholar, on original studies that test the relationship between GD and at least one correlate of androgens, namely autism spectrum disorder, left-handedness, 2D:4D ratio, being male and male heterosexuality. Results Individuals with GD tend to exhibit scores that reflect heightened levels of androgens and masculinity compared with non-GD individuals. We further show that these same androgen indices are also associated with other identity disorders (or dysphoriae). Conclusions Autism is associated with masculinisation, and we argue that GD may reflect autism spectrum disorder traits that indirectly lead to anxiety and to one questioning one’s sense of self. We note that this is consistent with Blanchard’s transsexualism typology, which successfully integrates a wide range of empirical findings.

Research is increasingly finding that stereotypes about the average intelligence or personality of different groups, when actually tested, have a substantial degree of empirical accuracy. This has been explored with regard to more incendiary stereotypes — such as about races and nationalities — but in no great detail with regard to different religious groups. In this study, we draw upon the Midlife in the United States study (MIDUS) to discern the most important values held by atheists and agnostics. We compare these to stereotypes about atheists and agnostics in terms of personality or interests. We find that the stereotypes are accurate to a strong degree. Item ambiguity and other problems with the instrument may have impacted the results, leading to suggestions on how to overcome these problems in future research.

Patterns of adoption behaviour are starkly asymmetric across populations. To better understand this phenomenon we conducted a systematic review of transracial adoption and adoption in general. We f ...

Kevin MacDonald (1998) has argued that a series of twentieth century ideologies which have challenged European traditions should be understood as part of a Jewish evolutionary strategy to promote Jewish interests in the West, as evidenced by Jewish leadership of and disproportionate involvement in these movements. Cofnas Human Nature 29, 134–156 (Cofnas 2018a) has critiqued this model and countered that the evidence can be more parsimoniously explained by the high average intelligence and urban location of Jews in Western countries. This, he avers, should be the ‘default hypothesis.’ In this response, I argue that it is MacDonald’s model that is the more plausible hypothesis due to evidence that people tend to act in their ethnic group interest and that group selectedness among Jews is particularly strong, meaning that they are particularly likely to do so.

There are elevated levels of non-heterosexual orientation and pedophilia among male religious celibates, such as Catholic priests and certain shamans. Based on cross-cultural empirical studies, it is argued that the most likely explanation is that male homosexuality is associated not only with elevated religiousness, but also with pathologies which themselves predict hyper-religiosity and intense religious experiences. This is supported by evidence of elevated religiousness among homosexual males, elevated Neuroticism among Catholic priests, and evidence of schizophrenia among shamans. The discussion also observes an erotic dimension to intense religiousness, which may aid the maintenance of celibacy. Finally, it is suggested that these findings may partially explain how male homosexuality may have been an adaptive trait: a group with an associated optimum level of fervent, celibate religious devotees would have a higher average level of religiosity and be more successful in terms of group selection.

Industrialisation leads to relaxed selection and thus the accumulation of fitness-damaging genetic mutations. We argue that religion is a selected trait that would be highly sensitive to mutational ...

Frost and Harpending, Evolutionary Psychology, 13 (2015), have argued that the increasing use of capital punishment across the Middle Ages in Europe altered the genotype, helping to create a less violent and generally more law-abiding population. Developing this insight, we hypothesise that the same system of violent punishments would also have helped to genotypically create a more religious society by indirectly selecting for religiousness, through the execution of men who had not yet sired any offspring. We estimate the selection differential for religiousness based on genetic correlation data for conceivably related traits, and compare that to the actual increase in religiosity across the Middle Ages. We further explore other mechanisms by which religiousness was being selected for in Medieval England, and conclude that executions most likely contributed substantially to the increase in religiosity, but that other selection pressures also played a role.

We compare the results of the Standard Progressive Matrices on two samples from Khartoum, one from 1999 (N 6877) and the other from 2010 (N 5659), both aged between 9 and 25. We show that in 7 out of 12 age groups there has been a significant Negative Flynn Effect over this period. Among those aged 9 to 18 - directly comparable as they are population samples - we found a significant aggregate loss of 2.13 IQ points between 1999 and 2010 comparing these two groups. The sample, in part, is elite and we note that a cessation of the Flynn Effect has also been reported in an elite Brazilian sample; another developing country. We examine a number of factors which may be behind our finding, in particular changes in the Sudanese education system, changes in the Khartoum population, and dysgenic fertility in Sudan.

For over a century, social scientists have predicted declines in religious beliefs and their replacement with more scientific/naturalistic outlooks, a prediction known as the secularization hypothesis. However, skepticism surrounding this hypothesis has been expressed by some researchers in recent decades. After reviewing the pertinent evidence and arguments, we examined some aspects of the secularization hypothesis from what is termed a biologically informed perspective. Based on large samples of college students in Malaysia and the USA, religiosity, religious affiliation, and parental fertility were measured using self-reports. Three religiosity indicators were factor analyzed, resulting in an index for religiosity. Results reveal that average parental fertility varied considerably according to religious groups, with Muslims being the most religious and the most fertile and Jews and Buddhists being the least. Within most religious groupings, religiosity was positively associated with parental fertility. While cross-sectional in nature, when our results are combined with evidence that both religiosity and fertility are substantially heritable traits, findings are consistent with view that earlier trends toward secularization (due to science education surrounding advancements in science) are currently being counter-balanced by genetic and reproductive forces. We also propose that the inverse association between intelligence and religiosity, and the inverse correlation between intelligence and fertility lead to predictions of a decline in secularism in the foreseeable future. A contra-secularization hypothesis is proposed and defended in the discussion. It states that secularism is likely to undergo a decline throughout the remainder of the twenty-first century, including Europe and other industrial societies.

There are national differences in scientific activity that are not well accounted for by economic and intellectual factors alone. We examine the novel hypothesis that androgen levels may also play ...

Lynn argues that sex differences in intelligence and drive (underpinned by testosterone) help to explain sex differences in high achievement. This comment proposes that this view can be developed by looking at Baron-Cohen’s concept of the ‘male brain’, which in its extreme manifestations presents as autism-spectrum disorders. It shows that this personality type — specifically a moderately strongly male brain combined with the outlier high IQ also more common among men — is associated with genius, and so the highest levels of achievement, and is partly a reflection of elevated testosterone. Thus an optimally high level of testosterone, also associated with faster life history strategy, is behind both elevated male drive and a greater ability to innovate, systematize and make important breakthroughs, leading to the highest levels of professional achievement. The comment shows that the ‘male brain’ is independent of intelligence and that even the highest echelons of the ‘oldest profession’ are male dominated, as the male brain model would predict.

We present three models which attempt to explain the robust negative association between religion and intelligence: the Irrationality of Religion Model, the Cultural Mediation Hypothesis, and the Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis. We highlight problems with each of them and propose that the negative religion-IQ nexus can be understood through substantially revising the Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis. We argue that religion should be regarded as an evolved domain or instinct. Intelligence, by contrast, involves rising above our instincts. It follows that an inclination toward the non-instinctive will thus be an aspect of intelligence because it will help us to solve problems. Thus, intelligence will involve being attracted to evolutionary mismatch, to that which we would not be instinctively evolved to be attracted to. It is this, we argue, that is behind the negative religion-intelligence nexus. We respond to potential criticisms of our model and we examine how this model can be further tested.

We conducted a review of factors associated with individual and group level differences in positive ethnocentrism (PE) and negative ethnocentrism (NE). We inter-correlated datasets on national diff ...

Male and female Finns who contracted cross-national marriages had spouses from very different countries. We tested the possibility that this might reflect sexual selection, with nationality being a ...

Corporal punishment of children is common across human history, and the specific practice of striking the buttocks, known as spanking, seems to have developed independently across a number of separate cultures. This pattern suggests adaptive value, posing a paradox in view of the many reviews stating that spanking has purely negative outcomes on future mental health, and the recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics that it be outlawed. We purport to resolve this paradox by separating this particular type of corporal punishment from less controlled lashing out in anger, and we reanalyze these reviews in terms of psychological and physical health outcomes. We find that spanking is associated with positive mental health outcomes when (1) performed by calm parents in a (2) ritualized, structured fashion and combined with (3) other disciplinary techniques within (4) a loving relationship with the child, typically (5) as part of the practice of moral, collective religiosity, and when (6) controlling for confounding variables. In that spanking is noticeably practiced by conservative religious cultural groups, we hypothesize that it can be a fitness-promoting form of behaviour in line with religiousness being an example of a group-fitness-promoting adaptation.

John Glad, who died on 4th December 2015 in Washington, DC, produced a series of seminal works in the field of Russian studies. Glad even acted as an interpreter for both Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. However, he also sat on the editorial board of the Mankind Quarterly and produced two significant books on the subject of eugenics.Glad became interested in this controversial topic in 1975. He attended a reception for genetics researchers at the University of Iowa to find out more about it and was astonished that the assembled scholars seemed ignorant of it or at least feigned ignorance of it, when speaking in the presence of colleagues. In 1979, by then at the University of Maryland, Glad was summoned to his Dean's office for an inquisition about his views on race. It was irrelevant, Glad recalled, that he was part of a scheme that took African-American children around museums. Word had simply 'got round' despite his never having published on the subject. As Glad put it, 'An ideological coup d'etat had taken place both in popular culture and in academia since my undergraduate days, and the new rulers were ferreting out even potential dissenters. In effect, ideology was dictating the resolution of scientific questions' (Glad, 2011).Consequently, Glad resolved to research the topic of eugenics himself. The first product of this research, Future Human Evolution (2006), argues that civilization has severely relaxed natural selection meaning that the future of humanity will not be the descendants of those who have survived the rigors of natural selection. It will be those whose ancestors had the most children. And they had them in a context in which there is almost no selection against genetic illness and in which, because large families tend to be by accident, fertility is predicted by low intelligence. Glad argued that the welfare state only augmented this problem but, to his credit, he did not oppose social welfare. He rather suggested that "at the very least, it would behoove us to increase family-planning services to the poor" (p. 56). Situating eugenics as part of a broader environmental movement, Glad prosecuted his case in an extremely readable style, noting that the elite are in denial about the true meaning of Darwin's theory: that humans are animals. They accept that other organisms can evolve in a few generations, but not humans. Other organisms have genetic sub-species, but not humans.Glad's book carefully dealt with thorny philosophical questions: What kind of society do we want? Do we want one that is intelligent, altruistic, law-abiding and healthy? If we do, he argued, we have to artificially create it through medical and government intervention, the assumption being that a society can only be as "good" as the people who create it. The book looked at the history of eugenics, discussed the ethical and philosophical issues involved, argued that the Nazis were primarily racialists who were not interested in universal eugenics, and suggested that eventually we should move beyond humanity to a 'machine brain.' Future Human Evolution has been translated into 12 languages at the time of writing, including Urdu and Hebrew. Glad's related book, Jewish Eugenics (2011), which was dedicated to victims of the Holocaust, arose from his observation of the high status of Jews in Washington, DC. The book analyzes the significant Jewish participation in the eugenics movement of the early 20th century. It also takes note of the eugenic aspects of Jewish customs throughout history and examines their consequences in terms of the heights of Jewish achievement in much of recent history.Though fascinated by Jewish and Russian culture, John Glad was actually neither of these. Glad was born in Gary, Indiana (a steel mill town and birthplace of the Jackson 5) on 31st December 1941. His family were immigrants from Croatia where the word 'glad' means 'hunger.' As such, he would later introduce himself to Russian colleagues as 'Ivan Hunger. …

1. IntroductionIn this article we examine the theory presented in Lynn (2002) that there are racial differences in psychopathic personality, conceptualized as a continuously distributed trait, such that high values of the trait are present in sub-Saharan Africans (blacks in the United States) and Native Americans, intermediate values in Hispanics, lower values in whites and the lowest values in East Asians. The theory was supported by data showing that these racial differences are present in a number of expressions of psychopathic personality, including drug use, child abuse, marital infidelity and crime. In the present article we test this theory by presenting data for cheating in sports.The central feature of psychopathic personality is a weak or absent moral sense. The condition was identified by Pritchard (1837) who termed it 'moral imbecility.' The term psychopathic personality was first proposed by Kraepelin (1915) to designate those who are deficient in moral sense but whose intellectual ability is not impaired. A classical study was presented by Cleckley (1941), which described the essential characteristics of psychopathic personality as general poverty of affect (emotion), defective insight, absence of nervousness, lack of remorse or shame, superficial charm, pathological lying, egocentricity, inability to love, failure to establish close or intimate relationships, irresponsibility, impulsive antisocial acts, failure to learn from experience, reckless behavior under the influence of alcohol, and a lack of long term goals. In 1984, the American Psychiatric Association dropped the term 'psychopathic personality' in favor of 'anti-social personality disorder' and in 1994, the American Psychiatric Association (1994) issued a revised Diagnostic Manual in which it listed 11 features of anti-social personality disorder. These are:(1) Inability to sustain consistent work behavior.(2) Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behavior.(3) Irritability and aggressivity, as indicated by frequent physical fights and assaults.(4) Repeated failure to honor financial obligations.(5) Failure to plan ahead and impulsivity.(6) No regard for truth, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or 'conning' others.(7) Recklessness regarding one's own or others' personal safety, as indicated by driving while intoxicated or recurrent speeding.(8) Inability to function as a responsible parent.(9) Failure to sustain a monogamous relationship for more than one year.(10) Lack of remorse.(11) Presence of conduct disorder in childhood.A prominent feature of psychopathic personality is cheating, which is used as one of the criteria adopted by Hare (2003) in his scale to assess psychopathic personality. Even those who do not specifically adopt it accept that rule-breaking is a measure of psychopathic personality and this clearly crosses over with cheating, when the rules are broken for some kind of gain. We must emphasize that psychopathic personality is a continuously variable trait that manifests itself in various degrees in "normal" individuals of all races. Only those at the extreme end of the distribution are diagnosed as having antisocial personality disorder. In the present article we examine racial differences in cheating in sport as a test of the theory that there are racial differences in psychopathic personality.2. MethodWe examine the incidence of cheating by blacks and whites in high level American football (NFL), basketball (NBA), and in English Premier League football (soccer). We consider data on two kinds of cheating, namely the use of performance enhancing drugs and breaking the rules of the game. These three sports are examined because they are racially diverse and a great deal of information is available about them online. We conducted a visual and biographical analysis of each of the sportsmen in the games to identify their race. …

The Long Crusade: Profiles in Education Reform, 1967-2014 Raymond Wolters Washington Summit Publishers 2015, 612 pagesIn this well-written and carefully referenced book, University of Delaware historian Raymond Wolters takes us on a fascinating historical journey through the increasingly desperate attempts of American education reformers to explain the black-white gap in educational achievement and find ways to close it. In order to do this, he adopts the original approach of presenting detailed biographies of America's main twentieth century educationalists and analyses of their views. These allow us to understand how their viewpoints developed.Wolters tells us at the outset that at the time that USA schools were legally desegregated -following the landmark 1954 case in Topeka, Kansas, Brown v. the Board of Education - the average black student's test scores were 85% of the average white student's test scores. Wolters documents all the failed attempts to do something about this, all of them predicated on the 'Doctrine of Zero Group Differences' and thus the assumption that whatever the cause of the achievement gap it must be remediable. The gap has to be a product of environmental factors because the alternative is simply unthinkable. Along the way, we meet a series of interesting, if naive, academics who have tried to solve the problem, wading into a minefield along the way.Much of the background and early crusade is given to us through the biography of the pro-integration educationalist Jonathan Kozol. Wolters explains that the desegregation of schools had meant only that there should be no racial discrimination in selecting the student. This was instituted and, as a consequence, most children attended their local school. However, because neighborhoods tended to be racially segregated, this meant that by the 1960s, schools were overwhelmingly racially homogeneous. And the black-white difference in school achievement remained robust. It was assumed this was because black schools had worse facilities and worse teachers.In 1966, Johns Hopkins University sociologist James Coleman conducted an extensive report into the racial disparity in education. He found that 80% of white pupils were in schools that were at least 90% white while 65% of black pupils were in schools that were at least 90% black. He also found that the facilities and teacher standards at black and white schools were pretty much the same. Finding that the black-white achievement gap had not changed, he needed to find an environmental explanation and after poring over the statistics he found that blacks who attended majority white schools scored very slightly higher than other blacks. Accordingly, he argued that being in a more 'middle class' (i.e. white) school stimulated the less able pupils meaning that more integrated schools would close the racial gap. Kozol leapt on this and argued that integrated schools should be introduced and this became government policy. By the late 1960s, courts were reinterpreting the Brown ruling to mean that desegregation meant a racial balance at schools. And so began the bussing of black students to white schools. But the achievement gap still did not change.Coleman, who is presented as a kind of 'tragic hero' of environmentalism, then realized his fundamental error. The blacks who had been attending white schools in 1965 either lived in largely white areas (in the North) or were from relatively prosperous black Southern families. They were not representative of blacks and being at a white school probably had nothing to do with their relatively high academic ability. Bussing also had the consequence of "white flight", which Coleman documented in 1975 showing that a 5% increase in black pupils caused 10% of white pupils to leave. Coleman also conceded that once the black proportion of the school population increased even slightly, 'the characteristics of the lower class room' would quickly take over, meaning it was 'understandable' that white parents withdrew their children. …

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.

Does Your Family Make You Smarter? Nature, Nurture and Human Autonomy James R. Flynn Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2016, 258 pagesJim Flynn's new book, Does Your Family Make You Smarter?, makes a single and very important contribution to the public understanding of intelligence by giving us a new way of evaluating the extent to which environment impacts IQ. For this reason alone, the book is certainly worth reading.Flynn points out that studies of identical twins have previously shown that intelligence is roughly 0.8 heritable, meaning that 80% of the variance in how intelligent we are is a function of genes. However, intelligence only reaches this level of heritability among adult samples. It is much lower among child samples. Children are typically slightly more or less intelligent than their parents, though due to unlikely genetic combinations there can be very significant differences. When you are a child, your parents are controlling your environment, and it therefore reflects their innate intellectual capacity rather than yours. This can have the effect of either strongly boosting your intelligence (if your parents are much smarter than you) by pushing it to its phenotypic limit, or (if they are much less intelligent than you) retarding your intelligence by raising you in an intellectually un-stimulating environment which will push your IQ down to its phenotypic minimum.Flynn shows - in an always lucid and enjoyable written style - that as we leave the environment of our parents, we start to create our own environment which reflects our own innate intelligence and it is at this point that the heritability of intelligence rises to 0.8. Less intelligent children raised in a highly stimulating environment, left to their own devices, will start to give up regular reading of books, the watching of documentaries and other such pursuits that their intelligent parents may have encouraged. Smarter people will start to meet more and more people like them and spend more and more time having intelligent conversations, rather than discussing football with their parents. And so their IQ - their intelligence compared to others of their age - will rise, while that of the less intelligent will start to fall. This is why, Flynn notes, a moderately bright child of very intelligent parents will show a great deal of promise, which will never be fulfilled.To demonstrate the importance of your family environment in determining your adult intelligence, Flynn presents us with what he calls the 'Age-Table Method,' which is the book's main innovation. Until now, it has been argued that 'family effects' - the impact (positive or negative) of your family background on your IQ - wears off by about the age of 18, as this is when you are generally fairly autonomous. Flynn looks, on various IQ tests, at the correlation between IQ scores at different ages and shows that, in fact, the influence of your family is far more pervasive than previously thought. The new method allows him to persuasively argue that family effects last until about the age of 30. This makes intuitive, as well as now empirical, sense. …

The Persistence of Polygamy: Fundamentalist Mormon Polygamy from 1890 to the Present Newell G. Bringhurst and Craig L. Foster (Eds). Independence, Missouri. John Whitmer Books 2015, 629 pages.Polygamy is a fascinating topic for evolutionary anthropologists and psychologists alike because it is practiced by most primitive societies, meaning it was practiced in our own history. In these societies, females sexually select for the status of the males and thus the qualities that determine high status in such societies: physical health and, perhaps to a lesser extent, intelligence and certain personality traits. They do this because such a male provides them with healthier and more successful offspring and because the high status male will be able to invest in them and their offspring. In such societies, the headman might have 5 wives and many illegitimate children while around 40% of males will father no children at all. Indeed, Lynn (2011) has noted the persistence of polygyny among the British upper class right into Early Modern times, as it was effectively acceptable for them to father bastard children by mistresses.This volume is, therefore, significant because it explores, in painstaking detail, the only European-origin group which continues to practice polygamy in modern, Western society: the polygamous sects that have broken away from the mainline Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) in the USA. It is the third in a series of Persistence of Polygamy essay collections, with the same editors. The first looked at Joseph Smith and the origins of the practice (Bringhurst & Foster, 2010), while the second explored the practice in the early history of the church (Bringhurst & Foster, 2013).In the Introduction, the editors provide a readable history of the practice from 1890 onwards, when the official Mormon church banned it. It is appreciated that this is the third volume in a broader history of polygamy in the Mormon church, but it might have been useful to provide a little more background for the non-specialist on Mormon polygamy and the church in general. Joseph Smith, the first Mormon prophet, declared that all Mormons should be polygamous and himself had around 40 wives. The subject of intense persecution, the Mormons fled to Utah and established it as a state, but the persecution continued and the Mormon prophet in 1890 (a new prophet succeeds on the death of the last one, as with popes) banned polygamy. This led, eventually, to more fundamentalist Mormons deciding that the mainline church was disingenuous and establishing their own sects. One schism is known as the Apostolic United Brethren and is based in Utah. This split from the even more conservative, Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) in the 1980s. This has established itself in Hildale-Colorado City on the Utah-Arizona border. It was in the news in 2008 as its dictatorial and puritanical prophet, Warren Jeffs, was jailed in Texas for child abuse. He remains in prison and is still regarded as the sect's prophet.Other chapters give various enlightening insights into the history of Mormon polygamy. Barbara Jones Brown explores how, in the 1880s, various Mormons fled to Mexico in order to avoid persecution by the US government and set up colonies there. …

Regional differences in IQ are reported for Finland showing that average IQs are highest in the south, containing the capital city of Helsinki. It is proposed that the selective migration of those with higher IQs to Helsinki has been the major factor responsible for the higher average IQ in the south. Regional IQs are positively correlated with the percentage of the population with tertiary education, mean income, and average male and female life expectancy; and negatively with the percentage of the population with average income less than 60% of the national median, the percentage of unemployment, and the rate of infant mortality.

Why is social bias and its depressing effects on low-status or low-performing groups exaggerated? We show that the higher intelligence of academics has at best a very weak effect on reducing their bias, facilitates superficially justifying their biases, and may make them better at understanding the benefits of social conformity in general and competitive altruism specifically. We foresee a surge in research examining these mechanisms and recommend, meanwhile, reviving and better observing scientific ideals.

Global Inequality as a Consequence of Human Diversity: A New Theory Tested by Empirical Evidence Tatu Vanhanen Ulster Institute for Social Research 2014, 171 pages.Why are some nations so much wealthier than others? And why has the difference between the wealth of nations continued to grow until recently despite international aid and other attempts to redistribute wealth? The standard answer among social scientists is that the difference is a result of the exploitation of poorer countries by richer countries or a lack of particular kinds of natural resources, or particular kinds of history or culture, in poorer countries.This book's thesis is as bold as it is controversial: As with any animal, humans evolved into sub-species which vary in intelligence due to differing environmental selection pressures for this characteristic. Even within these sub-species there is genetic variance in intelligence. Intelligence strongly correlates with numerous measures of individual and national success and especially those that measure standard of living. As such, there will always be 'inequality.' It is a biological fact of human existence.In Global Inequality, Vanhanen examines the relationship of six measures of national living standard - GNI per capita, tertiary education, infant mortality, life expectancy, sanitation, and democratization - with average IQ in 178 countries. His conclusion is that around 75% of global variation between nations in these measures is explained by national differences in average intelligence. In discussing his results, Vanhanen looks at each of the nations whose relationship is an outlier on each measure and explains why this is the case. He also defends Richard Lynn's national IQs from the often unreasonable and tendentious criticisms that have been leveled against them.Quite apart from its carefully-argued thesis, Global Inequality has a number of points to recommend it. Often, books written by scientists who propose biological and more specifically genetic theories as explanations for social phenomena tend to summarily dismiss or even ignore the environmentallydeterminist theories which are, often for ideological reasons, advocated by scholars in the social sciences and humanities. This permits humanities scholars to argue that the scientist is 'reductionist' or not familiar with the relevant literature, allowing them to dismiss his scientific work with their own theories. In this regard, Vanhanen's patience is extremely useful. He spends considerable time looking at every significant environmentally-determinist explanation for global inequality, showing that they are question-begging, partial explanations, or do not accord with the available evidence.In fact, in that the book is relatively short, I would have liked to have seen it go much further in this regard; defending the utility of the concept of intelligence and even philosophically or morally justifying studying population differences at all. These avenues tend to be those down which ideologically-driven scholars turn in the face of overwhelming empirical evidence which proves that they are wrong. They may also attempt to argue that concepts such as 'intelligence' or even the desire to have wealth or education are 'very Western.' Accordingly, it would be useful to note the obvious problem with this argument: People everywhere value these things or proxies for them such as access to resources, wisdom or common sense. …

Introduction St Patrick is an ancient saint while Culture Shock is a relatively modern phrase. 'Cultural Shock' was first recorded in 1929 (Gamio 1929) with 'Culture Shock' following in 1931 (Carpenter 1931). So it is unsurprising that in all of the numerous scholarly works on St Patrick (e.g. Thompson 1999, Hayes-Healy 2005, Freeman 2005, Kinane 2008, Newell 2008, O'Loughlin 2010, Rogers 2010), this phrase--most commonly associated with international students and expatriate businessmen--has not been deployed as a means of better understanding St Patrick's life. But modern phrase as it is, it does help us to us understand St Patrick's life. The saint's conversion to Christianity, in many respects (even if broadly), follows the model of culture shock which has become so well-known on management consultancy courses and amongst anthropologists conducting fieldwork with foreign cultures and intercultural communication scholars. What is Culture Shock? Though the phrase is first recorded in a notable source in 1931, it was not until 1954 that the classic 'U-curve' model of culture shock was developed by Canadian anthropologist Kalervo Oberg (1901-1973). In his presentation to the wives of American expatriate businessmen stationed in Brazil, Oberg (1954, 1960) argued that culture was divided into distinct phases. Stage One was xenophilia where one found the new culture endlessly fascinating, Stage Two was characterised by xenophobia and even a kind of emotional breakdown where one became angry about the culture and withdrawn, hopelessly romanticising 'home.' By Stage Three, the sojourner displayed a grudging resignation to their situation and, finally, by Stage Four they had learnt much of the language, understood the culture and understood that it was 'just another way of living', no better or worse than their own culture. There are, however, 'moments of strain,' specific 'culture shocks' based around new things happening. In the 1960s, this was developed into a 'w-curve' to take into account 'reverse culture shock': when expatriates return home they experience a similar pattern of symptoms in relation to their home culture (Gullahorn and Gullahorn 1963). Also, Stage One has been disputed with some scholars arguing that it is effectively bypassed in particularly subjectively difficult environments (Brown and Holloway 2008). Accordingly, they argue, Culture Shock should be reduced to three stages, at least in certain cases. Religion, Conversion and Culture On the surface, at least, the pattern is very similar to that of Christian conversion experience. According to experts in the field such as Lewis Rambo (1993) or Boyer (2001), religious conversion tends to occur at a time of dramatic change in a person's life such as adolescence but also, in general, at times of stress. In its textbook form, there is a dramatic meeting with God which results in great joy. This is followed, often, by 'backsliding' in which the convert recoils in horror from the change (e.g. Austin 1977, Strauss 1979 or Coleman 2003). Gradually, a more mature and measured form of religiosity takes root and finally the convert intellectually accepts, for example, the Church's dogmas as well as emotionally accepting their new identity. Culture Shock operates in a very similar way but the 'culture' rather than God is the central object. The philosopher Roger Scruton (2000) has observed the way that, after the Enlightenment, 'culture' effectively replaces God as the object of worship in Romantic thought, itself a kind of neo-religion which functions in a way similar to the Christianity which it begins to replace. 'Culture' as an awe-inspiring replacement-God is central to Romanticism, Romantic nationalism and what has been termed the 'cultural cult' of Cultural Relativism and Multiculturalism (Sandall 2001). Culture Shock even culminates in accepting an anthropological dogma--that all cultures are equal and equally valuable. …

There has been considerable criticism of religious studies as a separate discipline, focusing on the category of religion. This article aims to develop this debate by defending the religion category but nevertheless criticizing religious studies in terms of its practical consequences for scholarship. Working on the view that scholarship aims to criticize accepted knowledge in pursuit of truth and foster a rational atmosphere for discussion, the article will argue that religious studies, as a separate discipline within the restrictions in which it often operates, potentially damages this aim. Solutions will be proposed to the religious studies problem and the article will aim to open-up a debate.

The gods of monotheistic religions, which began amongst pastoralists and defeated exiles, are closer to Big Gods than those associated with ancient city-based polities. The development of Big Gods is contingent upon a need to reduce uncertainty and negative feelings in combination with a relatively high level of prosociality, rather than a need to induce or assess prosociality.

Revolutionary advances of the natural sciences will transform our understanding of the human past. This case study supports that thesis by connecting new data arising from the last decade's scientific work in palaeoclimatology with the history of the Carolingian empire. For medievalists, it may open the door to a potent new set of insights into the total past of European civilization. For climate scientists, this study clarifies an opportunity to observe the impact on human society of scientifically established proxy measures of climatic anomalies and shows that the human evidence for the first millennium of our era is much richer than scientists generally assume. Food production was the foundation of the medieval economy, the generation and distribution of wealth. In the early-medieval world of limited storage and interregional transport, severe climatic anomalies, among other factors, could disrupt food production and supply. Particularly if they caused famines, such disruptions have long attracted historians concerned with demography (mortal ity), politics (rebellions), and, most recently, culture or mentality.1 Direct cor relation between severe climatic anomalies and historical events is often obvious, even if the details prove to be complex. For instance, in the reign of Pippin III, the severe winter of 763-64 provoked famine, and that surely explains the sus pension of the major effort by the king to conquer Aquitaine the following sum mer.2 This paper explores palaeoclimate data recovered from the Greenland Ice

The aim of this article is to examine a specific response of the group Unite Against Racism (UAR) to electoral victories by the British National Party (BNP) in terms of ritual dynamics. We will first discuss the nature of taboo drawing on the work of Douglas. This will be related to Turner's work on liminality and ritual and Edmund Leach's on taboo. The relationship between ritual and taboo will then be examined as will the BNP's policies in comparison to the beliefs of the UAR. Thereafter we will discuss the nature of the UAR's response to BNP victories and how this can be understood as being a ritual in the senses suggested by both Leach and Gilbert Lewis. The degree to which the BNP, or votes for the BNP in certain areas, might be seen to create taboo for UAR members will be discussed in depth. It will be demonstrated that the superficially senseless act of the UAR protesting against democracy makes sense when analysed as ritual.

This paper examines the nature of evangelism amongst an evangelical group at a Dutch university and compares it to a similar group at a British university. In assessing the differences the paper submits that, to a great extent, an explanation can be found in the centrality of ‘Tolerance’ to Dutch cultural life which it suggests leads to an emphasis on Witness Evangelism. The paper examines the history and beliefs of both groups as well as explaining the fieldwork method employed. It explores tolerance in Holland, drawing upon the views of various cultural commentators as well as the views of Dutch evangelical students on this issue. It then examines differences between the two groups with regard to group activity, evangelical activity and the expression of religious and ethical opinions. It is suggested that the desire to be perceived as being tolerant in Holland, and its consequences, are significant in explaining the differences found.

Charlton's (2009) Clever Sillies model argues that high IQ people lack common sense and advocate foolish ideas due to the personality disposition that is associated with high IQ. We argue that the “Clever Silly” model proposed by Charlton has several shortcomings and needs to be nuanced. We suggest that it is useful to distinguish between scholars who advocate clever silly ideas in a context in which they are popular (followers) and those who originate them. The originators are close to the artistic genius type while the followers are the more average academics, especially in non-science subjects. The former has highly original and controversial ideas and take considerable risk for the potential high socioeconomic status pay off involved. The latter is less inclined to take risks and thus strikes the optimum balance, in terms of conformity and non-conformity, in order to showcase their intelligence but gain the benefits of conforming.

Charles may or may not have been Great but he has long had a great reputation, and we should try not to let this confuse us. The question asked here is simply why this king’s legend began so early and flourished with so few impediments. The conditions at the birth of Charles’s legend were more than just right, they were perfect: a satisfying number of surviving sources that treat him with admiration and awe, few dissenting written records, and a turn of history that typed him against the beleaguered kings and troubled times that followed. My intention here is to briefly reconsider the formation of the Charlemagne legend and suggest another perspective on how it manifested itself.

A king at his peak may be a plenitude,1 but what is he in his decline as the parts begin to fall away? King Lear’s senescence consumed his world, sapping the vigor and perverting the actions of those around him like some gaseous and volatile Jupiter swallowing small orbiting moons. The all too human disaster of his failing strength and judgment spread outward, destabilizing not just a kingdom, but the smaller domestic governments within his reach.

To my ear one of the most beautiful of all Latin words is the onomatopoeic susurrus, whispering, which evokes in me a measure of regret over the loss of so many medieval mutterings and airy thoughts that would, had they survived, have promised (though that too, I realize, is an illusion) to complete us and make what we do whole. Or is history like the courtroom where hearsay should be dismissed as untestable evidence by responsible weighers of fact?

On Christmas day 800 Charlemagne, dressed in a majestic Greek garment, processed solemnly into St-Peter’s in Rome. One can almost hear, twelve hundred years later, the rustle of his long tunic, see his pointed Roman shoes, and smell the incense that burned that day as he was crowned emperor. Amid all the pomp and ceremony of that high moment, few people probably stopped to study Charlemagne’s mustache. I would like to think that had I been there that is just what I would have done.

To study the historical sky or, rather, the sky in history may not be an entirely empty exercise, not if that sky spoke to the past and its actors, not if it became a focal point for their historical attention, and not if it was invested with meanings that weighed heavily on the earth-bound. This exploratory study moves from a consideration of Charlemagne and his stars to the divinatory and historical meaning of stars in the Carolingian age, and finally ends by examining the place of kings in the stars and as stars.

On the cold and freshly cut edge of a new millennium Otto III, that most precocious of Ottoman emperors, opened Charlemagne’s tomb, refreshed his Carolingian predecessors body with oil, and clothed it in white vestments. Before closing the sarcophagus, he wrapped the corpse in a purple cloth decorated with elephants.1 Otto knew what we, who have been too influenced by Einhard’s confining categories, have forgotten: that Charlemagne was also king of the beasts. He was “the lion who reigns over all living creatures and wild beasts.”2 When encountering hyperbolic praise, as we do in Alcuin’s animal boast, we should try not to hurry past the obvious: here that Charlemagne’s power was thought to extend over both the human and animal worlds. Otto’s elephantine winding-sheet said the same, if more softly.

It has been widely noted that formerly taboo sexual swearing is an increasing part of contemporary popular culture, especially among the young. It has equally been observed that evangelical Christians (or at least evangelical Christian students) tend to swear in an idiosyncratic way (e.g., Bramadat 2000), though this has not been looked at in depth. This article will examine the ways in which two evangelical student groups use swearing as part of their “witness evangelism.” Drawing upon fieldwork, as well as research by Douglas (1966), McEnery (2006), Reiss (2000) and Stark (1996), it will argue that the groups” use of swearing leads to successful evangelism because it gives the group a sense of status in broader society—but also clear boundaries in relation to that society— while maintaining the cultural heritage of those that the groups are attempting to evangelise. Moreover, it will suggest that it helps to create social bonds, within certain parameters, and provides a means of talking about and expressing Christianity and thus “witnessing.”

This article will examine the Big Brother television series through the prism of the anthropology of religion. It will examine the ways in which Big Brother is comparable to a pilgrimage on the one hand and a tribal initiation ceremony on the other. In this regard, Victor Turner’s research on these subjects, and related criticisms, will be discussed in detail. It will argue that one possible reason for the popularity of Big Brother is that it is a modern liminal phase in which contestants undergo suffering to attain the status of celebrity. This, it will argue, is pertinent because modern society prizes celebrity so highly. Thus, it will argue that the Big Brother programme appeals not only to voyeurism but to a kind of religious or tribal structure–that those who endure suffering have their status raised.

This article will examine the use of contemporary fashions as a means by which evangelical students express a sense of differentiation from other students. It will draw upon detailed participant observation. It will use this data to criticise Turner’s understanding of liminality. The article will demonstrate that university is a liminal phase and that Oxford University is more liminal than Leiden University. It will argue that, drawing upon the groups assessed, liminality is better defined as a loosening of structure on one level and a reassertion of structure on another. In looking at fashions among evangelical students, it will argue that the more liminal a university is, the more structured and differentiated its main evangelical group appears to be. Moreover, the article aims to provide useful research into fashion among evangelical students.