The following is an article from the Annals of Improbable Research.
Research about, or said to be about, evolution
compiled by Katherine Lee, Improbable Research staff
Human Face Recognition of Machines (Autos)
Detail from the study “‘Cars Have Their Own Faces’: Cross-Cultural Ratings of Car Shapes in Biological (Stereotypical) Terms.”
“‘Cars Have Their Own Faces’: Cross-Cultural Ratings of Car Shapes in Biological (Stereotypical) Terms,” Sonja Windhager, Fred L. Bookstein, Karl Grammera, Elisabeth Oberzaucher, Hasen Said, Dennis E. Slice, Truls Thorstensen, Katrin Schaefer, Evolution and Human Behavior, vol. 33 , 2012, pp. 109–120. (Thanks to Ig Nobel Prize winners Richard Wassersug and Chitteranjan Andrade for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at University of Vienna, Austria, bEFS Unternehmensberatung GmbH, Vienna, Austria, University of Washington, USA, University of Addis Ababa, Museum of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Ethiopia, and Florida State University, USA, explain:
It was recently shown that Austrians associate car front geometry with traits in a way that could be related to face shape geometry mapping to those same overall suites of traits.... Adult subjects in two countries (Austria and Ethiopia, n=129) were asked to rate person characteristics of 46 standardized front views of automobiles on various trait scales…. Car shapes for perceived maturity, maleness and dominance were highly similar in both countries, with patterns comparable to shape changes during facial growth in humans: Relative sizes of the forehead and windshield decrease with age/growth, eyes and headlights both become more slit-like, noses and grilles bigger, lips and air-intakes are wider. Austrian participants further attributed various degrees of some interpersonal attitudes and emotions, whereas neither Austrians nor Ethiopians congruently ascribed personalities.
The Descent of Cookbooks
“The Nonequilibrium Nature of Culinary Evolution,” Osame Kinouchi, Rosa W. Diez-Garcia, Adriano J. Holanda, Pedro Zambianchi and Antonio C. Roque, February 2008. (Thanks to Claudio Angelo for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil and other institutions, report:
Here we study the statistics of ingredients and recipes taken from Brazilian, British, French, and Medieval cookbooks. We find universal distributions with scale invariant behavior. We propose a copy-mutate process to model culinary evolution that fits very well our empirical data. We find a cultural “founder effect” produced by the nonequilibrium dynamics of the model. Both the invariant and idiosyncratic aspects of culture are accounted by our model, which may have applications in other kinds of evolutionary processes.
Down at Her, Up at Him
Detail from the study “A New Viewpoint on the Evolution of Sexually Dimorphic Human Faces.”
“A New Viewpoint on the Evolution of Sexually Dimorphic Human Faces,” Darren Burke, Danielle Sulikowski, Evolutionary Psychology, vol. 8, no. 4, 2010, pp. 573-85. The authors, at, respectively, University of Newcastle, Ourimbah, Australia, and Macquarie University, Sydney, explain:
Human faces show marked sexual shape dimorphism, and this affects their attractiveness. Humans also show marked height dimorphism, which means that men typically view women’s faces from slightly above and women typically view men’s faces from slightly below. We tested the idea that this perspective difference may be the evolutionary origin of the face shape dimorphism by having males and females rate the masculinity/ femininity and attractiveness of male and female faces that had been manipulated in pitch (forward or backward tilt), simulating viewing the face from slightly above or below. As predicted, tilting female faces upwards decreased their perceived femininity and attractiveness, whereas tilting them downwards increased their perceived femininity and attractiveness. Male faces tilted up were judged to be more masculine, and tilted down judged to be less masculine. This suggests that sexual selection may have embodied this viewpoint difference into the actual facial proportions of men and women.
Women’s Intolerance of Sexy Peers
Detail from the study “Intolerance of Sexy Peers: Intrasexual Competition Among Women.”
“Intolerance of Sexy Peers: Intrasexual Competition Among Women,” Tracy Vaillancourt and Aanchal Sharma, Aggressive Behavior, vol. 37, no. 6, November 2011, pp. 569-77. (Thanks to Eduardo Mendez for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at the University of Ottawa and at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, report:
Intrasexual competition among males of different species, including humans, is well documented. Among females, far less is known. Recent nonexperimental studies suggest that women are intolerant of attractive females and use indirect aggression to derogate potential rivals. In Study 1, an experimental design was used to test the evolutionary based hypothesis that women would be intolerant of sexy women and would censure those who seem to make sex too readily available. Results provide strong empirical support for intrasexual competition among women. Using independent raters, blind to condition, we found that almost all women were rated as reacting negatively (“bitchy”) to an attractive female confederate when she was dressed in a sexually provocative manner. In contrast, when she was dressed conservatively, the same confederate was barely noticed by the participants. In Study 2, an experimental design was used to assess whether the sexy female confederate from Study 1 was viewed as a sexual rival by women. Results indicated that as hypothesized, women did not want to introduce her to their boyfriend, allow him to spend time alone with her, or be friends with her.
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This article is republished with permission from the March-April 2014 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research.
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