Tag: epigenetics

Our Social Nature

Our Social Nature: The Evolution of Cooperation

November 3, 2020November 4, 2020Our Social Nature

Social behavior has an evolutionary advantage. We’re now seeing new ways that social behavior has evolutionary impact, too. Behavior and biology interplay in the evolution of cooperation....

Our Social Nature

Your ZIP Code and Your Genetic Code: Epigenetics and the Social Compact

March 17, 2020March 17, 2020Our Social Nature

We are social creatures, down to our genes. We live together because it’s an advantage for us, individually and collectively....

Our Social Goods
Our Social Nature

Getting Into Social Debt–And Getting Out

August 6, 2019October 1, 2019Our Social Goods, Our Social Nature

In Silicon Valley, companies discuss and worry about their “technical debt.” That’s the friction caused by the accumulation of bad design choices, expedient compromises, avoided decisions, and postponed work....

Our Social Nature

Can we inherit trauma? It's an interesting question that might be moot.

New York Times Doubts We Can Inherit Trauma

February 19, 2019April 19, 2019Our Social Nature

Does trauma change our genetic makeup, and can our children inherit that change?...

Our Social Nature

Our Social Nature and Health: Resistance to Viruses

December 6, 2016May 15, 2019Our Social Nature

During flu season it’s good to remember that we’re social animals. Our social standing directly impacts our well-being; inequality and health are linked. The relationship between status and health showed up clearly in the Whitehall studies in the U.K. The first study tracked the health of men in the British civil service over a...

Our Social Nature

Harvard Research Across 75 Years Shows Our Social Nature

April 2, 2016July 12, 2019Our Social Nature

The Harvard Study of Adult Development is a very long longitudinal study. For 75 years, the study has gathered data on two cohorts: 268 men who were sophomores at Harvard in 1938, and 456 boys who lived in low-income neighborhoods in Boston at the same time. A main focus of the study is alcohol...

Our Social Nature

Childhood Stress Effects Later Generations: New Epigenetic Evidence

March 19, 2015May 18, 2019Our Social Nature

New research published in a Scientific American article shows that descendants of Holocaust survivors have altered stress hormones. This parallels research mentioned in a previous blog post about how the effects of famine ripple through subsequent generations....

Social intervention can impact genes

January 2, 2014January 2, 2014Our Social Nature

In a previous post, I discussed how a Swedish study showed the affect of feast or famine on successive generations. A grandfather’s hard childhood can alter a grandchild’s genetic makeup, leaving the child susceptible to problems like obesity or depression. I speculated that this phenomena was a biological rationale for public services: improving lives...

Our Social Goods
Our Social Nature

Our Social Nature Impacts Our Genetic Inheritance

July 23, 2013January 2, 2021Our Social Goods, Our Social Nature

I’m not a scientist by training or profession, but I am fascinated by what science can tell us about our social nature. In the past few years, new discoveries and techniques in genetics and data mining have revealed new levels of our interdependence, levels that can impact our genetic inheritance in a single generation...