Will a rat return a favour? Do handbags make you less generous? Is Harry Potter a Democratic Party stooge? We’ve delved into the far reaches of academic endeavor to answer questions you never knew you wondered about, and bring fresh news on what social science has uncovered this month. Fuelling bad tinder dates with peer-reviewed anecdotes since 2016.
Ever wonder if Harry Potter fandom makes you more likely to vote Trump? Neither. But fear not, the best and brightest minds at the University of Pennsylvania are onto it. In a study titled “Harry Potter and the Deathly Donald”, Professor Diana C Mutz (the university’s chair of political and communications studies) evaluated the reading habits and political proclivities of 1142 participants. Even when adjusted for age, gender, education level and evangelical self identification, the results were clear:
Each Harry Potter book that a person had read lowered their evaluation of Donald Trump by roughly 2- 3 points. Mutz writes, “Although the size of this effect may seem small, to put it in perspective, it is on par with the impact of party identification on attitudes toward gays and Muslims. When one considers that a given respondent may have read as many as seven Harry Potter books, then the total impact on evaluations of Trump could be as much as 18 units lower.”
Mutz speculates that the books may be influencing readers through their themes of anti-authoritarianism, tolerance of difference (mudbloods ahoy), and opposition to punitive policies. She concludes: “It may simply be too difficult for Harry Potter readers to ignore the similarities between Trump and the power-hungry Voldemort.”
Long-standing labourite JK Rowling will no doubt be pleased.
Donald Trump on the campaign trail. Photo: AFP/Rhona Wise
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Those of us struggling to get friends to cough up for last week’s Nando’s order may be pleased to discover even rats consider it important to properly repay a favour.
Swiss behavioural ecologists Vassilissa Dolivo and Michael Taborsky have been beavering away to discover whether rats have a healthy sense of reciprocity. As it turns out, rodents tend to give as good as they get.
In their experiment, 20 trained Norwegian rats were tasked with pulling levers to transport treats (banana and carrot, incidentally) to give their partner in an adjacent cage. Then they switched. The rats who had received more highly-coveted banana from their fellow rodents were more active in then helping that rat access their food. If they were given less, or offered the less-tasty carrots, they were less inclined to help out their cage-mates.
There’s no doubt some ‘do unto others’ wisdom to draw from this. But instead, hold in your mind for a moment the mental image of Dolivo and Taborsky, and their hours of work training their norwegian rats to operate an banana-supplying pulley system.
This specimen possibly preparing to repay a rodent friend who previously bought a trolley-full of groceries Photo: 123rf
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Providing yet more fuel for a proletarian overthrow, research out of Paris has found mere proximity to luxury handbags was enough to make people less generous.
Researchers at the Universities of Southern Brittany and Paris Descartes took to the streets of Paris to test shoppers’ likelihood of offering assistance to a person in distress - in this case, a woman in a leg brace who dropped the contents of her handbag.
In their first study, among clients of a luxury store 35 percent of participants gave help - whereas 77.5 percent gave help in the (non-lux) control condition.
The researchers repeated similar experiments in a number of areas and neighbourhoods, also testing whether people on streets with more luxury-goods advertising were more or less likely to help than those in areas with lower-end ads.
Don't let the smile decieve you; this woman's capacity for empathy is evaporating as we speak Photo: 123rf
Their results were consistent:
“Materialistic reminders may have increased self-enhancement and competitive values, which in turn would decrease trusting and benevolent behavior, and a sense of being concerned about and connected to other people,” they conclude. “Materialism and conspicuous consumption may also be intrinsically linked with narcissism and selfishness.”
Down with the one percent!
Note - it’s worth noting the study’s sample sizes are relatively small, and the authors concluded more research was necessary - so hold off burning the local Louis Vuitton outlet until then.
