“After a period of hundreds of thousands of years, evolving under different climatic conditions, encountering different challenges such as the Ice Ages, suffering different epidemics, subjected to different catastrophes and good fortune, all races magically ended up equal.”

“All creation, including plant and animal life, is subject to the laws of heredity. Every organ of the human species is likewise governed by the laws of heredity. The human brain stands alone as the only object of creation whose functioning is unaffected by heredity and is controlled strictly by environment.”

Brain imaging reveals why we remain optimistic in the face of reality
For some people, the glass is always half full. Even when a football fan's team has lost ten matches in a row, he might still be convinced his team can reverse its run of bad luck. So why, in the face of clear evidence to suggest to the contrary, do some people remain so optimistic about the future?

In a study published today in Nature Neuroscience, researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL (University College London) show that people who are very optimistic about the outcome of events tend to learn only from information that reinforces their rose-tinted view of the world. This is related to 'faulty' function of their frontal lobes.

People's predictions of the future are often unrealistically optimistic. A problem that has puzzled scientists for decades is why human optimism is so pervasive, when reality continuously confronts us with information that challenges these biased beliefs.

"Seeing the glass as half full rather than half empty can be a positive thing – it can lower stress and anxiety and be good for our health and well-being," explains Dr Tali Sharot. "But it can also mean that we are less likely to take precautionary action, such as practising safe sex or saving for retirement. So why don't we learn from cautionary information?"

In this new study, Dr Sharot and Professor Ray Dolan from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, together with Christoph Korn from the Berlin School of Mind and Brain have shown that our failure to alter optimistic predictions when presented with conflicting information is due to errors in how we process the information in our brains.

Nineteen volunteers were presented with a series of negative life events, such as car theft or Parkinson's disease, whilst lying in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner, which measures activity in the brain. They were asked to estimate the probability that this event would happen to them in the future. After a short pause, the volunteers were told the average probability of this event to occur. In total, the participants saw eighty such events.

After the scanning sessions, the participants were asked once again to estimate the probability of each event occurring to them. They were also asked to fill in a questionnaire measuring their level of optimism.

The researchers found that people did, in fact, update their estimates based on the information given, but only if the information was better than expected. For example if they had predicted that their likelihood of suffering from cancer was 40%, but the average likelihood was 30%, they might adjust their estimate to 32%. If the information was worse than expected – for example, if they had estimated 10% – then they tended to adjust their estimate much less, as if ignoring the data.

The results of the brain scans suggested why this might be the case. All participants showed increased activity in the frontal lobes of the brain when the information given was better than expected, this activity actively processed the information to recalculate an estimate. However, when the information was worse than estimated, the more optimistic a participant was (according to the personality questionnaire), the less efficiently activity in these frontal regions coded for it, suggesting they were disregarding the evidence presented to them.

Dr Sharot adds: "Our study suggests that we pick and choose the information that we listen to. The more optimistic we are, the less likely we are to be influenced by negative information about the future. This can have benefits for our mental health, but there are obvious downsides. Many experts believe the financial crisis in 2008 was precipitated by analysts overestimating the performance of their assets even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary."

'Understanding the brain' is one of the Wellcome Trust's key strategic challenges. At the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, clinicians and scientists study higher cognitive function to understand how thought and perception arise from brain activity, and how such processes break down in neurological and psychiatric disease.

Commenting on the study, Dr John Williams, Head of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the Wellcome Trust, said: "Being optimistic must clearly have some benefits, but is it always helpful and why do some people have a less rosy outlook on life? Understanding how some people always manage to remain optimistic could provide useful insights into happens when our brains do not function properly."

So, Wes, are you suggesting that those who dogmatically-adhere to the worship of the Growth Fairy and the benefits of the free markets of unbridled capitalism are kidding themselves - and that they're in for the biggest shocks when the GFC really hits!?

Or, are you trying to suggest that negative right whingers are superior because they are inherently fearful and pessimistic!?

Hint: you can't argue this both ways!

LOL, Wes...in that case, I'd suggest you take your sense of superiority and...er...do with it what you will...

I don't know of anyone who thinks environment is solely responsible for affecting the brain. Genetics & environment both play a role in determining personality, for example.

of course they both play a part, but how do you reconcile that with the notion that different races do not have different common behavioural traits?  If genetics play a part in determining behaviour, those sharing similar genes will exhibit similar behavioural patterns.  This would account for the greater occurrence of violent crime by those of african descent compared to those of european or asian decsent, but leftists deny this exists, despite the mountain of evidence from all over the world.

... wrote on Oct 11^th, 2011 at 2:07pm:


The problem is separating what causes what. Genetics often can predispose certain type of characteristics, say aggression. This by no means that people don't have the ability to influence their behaviour even if they have aggressive tendencies.

In order to be relatively certain that genetics was the primary driver for aggression in people of African descent you would need to eliminate or minimise the other variables from the environment / culture.

The global nature of the racial pattern in crime is shown in data collated from INTERPOL using the 1984 and 1986 yearbooks. After analyzing information on nearly 100 countries, I reported, in the 1990 issue of the Canadian Journal of Criminology, that African and Caribbean countries had double the rate of violent crime (an aggregate of murder, rape, and serious assault) than did European countries, and three times more than did countries in the Pacific Rim. Averaging over the three crimes and two time periods, the figures per 100,000 population were, respectively, 142, 74, and 43.

I have corroborated these results using the most recent INTERPOL yearbook (1990). The rates of murder, rape, and serious assault per 100,000 population reported for 23 predominantly African countries, 41 Caucasian countries, and 12 Asian countries were: for murder, 13, 5, and 3; for rape, 17, 6, and 3; and for serious assault, 213, 63, and 27. Summing the crimes gave figures per 100,000, respectively, of 243, 74, and 33. The gradient remained robust over contrasts of racially homogeneous countries in northeast Asia, central Europe, and sub-Saharan Africa, or of racially mixed but predominantly black or white/Amerindian countries in the Caribbean and Central america.  In short, a stubborn pattern exists worldwide that requires explanation.

From football thugs clashing on the terraces to soldiers killing each other on the front line, most conflict can be blamed on the male sex drive, a study suggests.

The review of psychological research concludes that men evolved to be aggressive towards ‘outsiders’, a tendency at the root of inter-tribal violence.

It emerged through natural selection as a result of competition for mates, territory and status, and is seen in conflicts between nations as well as clashes involving rival gangs, football fans or religious groups, say the researchers.

In contrast, they add, women evolved to resolve conflicts peacefully. They are said to have been programmed by natural selection to ‘tend and befriend’ to protect their children.

Professor Mark van Vugt, of Oxford University’s Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, said: ‘A solution to conflict . . . remains elusive.

‘One reason might be the difficulty we have in changing our mindset, which has evolved over thousands of years.’

The findings, which support the ‘male warrior hypothesis’, are published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

The psychologists claim that in all cultures and throughout history, men have sought to get their way by initiating violence.

They prefer group-based hierarchies and are identified more strongly with their own groups than women.

At a basic level, such ‘tribal’ aggression helped men in a group to obtain more females, increasing their chances of reproduction.

‘We see similar behaviour in chimpanzees,’ said Prof van Vugt. ‘For example, the males continuously monitor the borders of their territory.

‘If a female from another group comes along, she may be persuaded to emigrate to his group. When a male strays too far, however, he is likely to be brutally beaten and possibly killed.’