Three articles this month and all of them are related in some way to the study of human nature. The first article touches on an explanation of why depression occurs from the perspective of evolutionary psychology. The second one demonstrates that humans really are that irrational when it comes to making economic decisions. The last one is on how caffeine might hold the key to curing Alzheimer’s disease.
The first article is from The Economist and covers a theory by Randolph Nesse of the University of Michigan. Dr. Nesse thinks that depression can be thought of as being analogous to physical pain. Just as pain serves to dissuade us from doing things that cause us physical harm, so depression serves to dissuade us from doing things that cause us mental harm. By this, he means specifically the pursuit of unreachable goals. Since pursuing goals that are ultimately unreachable wastes precious time and energy, he theorizes that depression exists as a mechanism to inhibit doing so.
One separate experiment seems to support this theory. Carsten Wrosch of Concordia University in Montreal and Gregory Miller of the University of British Columbia have published a recent study that they did on teenage girls who reported symptoms of depression. Over the course of 19 months, they asked the girls about their goals while tracking their depressive symptoms. They found that not only did experiencing mild depressive symptoms help the girls to disengage from unattainable goals but that those who did manage to disengage were less likely to suffer more serious forms of depression.
Of course, this goes directly against the old-fashioned teaching of “If you fail at first, try, try again”. But to me, it does make sense as a plausible explanation of why depression is commonly considered a more widespread phenomenon in our time. As our world has become smaller and more connected, the stratifying heights of success are more visible for all to see and aspire towards. Unfortunately, it is a statistically immutable truth that only the rarest few will actually achieve that level of success, leading most to disappointment and misery. To be truly happy, it seems, one must be content with what one is comfortably capable of.
The second article, which appeared in Ars Technica, covers a study that takes the familiar Ultimatum Game from game theory and adds a cruel twist to it. In the basic version of the game, one of the two participants are given a stack of money and has to decide how to share it with the other one. This second person must decide whether to accept the proposed sharing plan or reject it. If it is accepted, then the money is split as proposed. If it is rejected, neither get any of the money. The outcome of this is usually that proposals that are perceived as being fair, i.e. close to 50/50 are accepted, but that unfair proposals are rejected in order to punish the unfair proposer even at the cost of personal loss.
The first variation is called the Impunity Game. In this version, the second participant still has to approve or reject the proposal, but the decision affects only whether or not he receives the money. The proposer gets his share of the money regardless. Rationally, the second participant should accept any offer as long as he gets some of the money. Nevertheless, the study found that offers of a 80/20 split still got rejected 40 percent of the time (admittedly down from the 70 percent of the original game). The only plausible explanation for this behavior is that the second participant hopes perhaps to inflict some guilt on the proposer for making an unfair offer.
To eliminate that possibility, the researchers changed the rules again so that the second participant makes his decision privately. Essentially, the first participant decides on a percentage split, takes his share of the money, and then leaves immediately. The second participant must then decide whether or not to accept the remaining money (if any) by himself. Surprisingly, roughly the same percentage of people still chose to reject the offer and walk away from the money. The researchers interpret this to mean that these decisions are driven mainly by an emotional sense of what is fair and what isn’t rather calmly thinking through the scenario rationally. Our sense of fairness it seems, is an instinctive and emotional response and not one amenable to being changed through reason.
I must admit to some hesitation to include the last article because we’ve all been overwhelmed by conflicting studies purporting the health benefits or risks of one familiar substance or another. Still, this one claiming that caffeine can reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s disease seems like the real deal as it makes specific, easily tested claims with well defined caveats. The article which appeared on Science Daily covers a paper whose lead author is Gary Arendash of the University of South Florida.
His team based their experiment on earlier findings that mice which were specifically bred to develop Alzheimer’s could be prevented from experiencing memory impairment problems if they were given caffeine beginning from early adulthood. Their new experiments confirmed that administering caffeine to such mice actually does reduce the abnormal build up of the beta amyloid protein that is associated with the disease. Tests also indicated that the treated mice had memory skills that were effectively identical to mice without the disease, while the Alzheimer’s mice who were given only plain water continued to develop memory problems.
To me, what is even more promising is that the team found that the caffeine helps memory only in the mice that had specifically been bred to develop Alzheimer’s. Healthy mice that were given caffeine showed no changes. In other words, there’s no indication that caffeine is a miracle substance that memory generally. This reassures me that the finding is legitimate and could lead to a real treatment for the disease. Of course, best of all is that caffeine is already a familiar and well tested substance that is safe for use for most people, so there will less risks of unexpected complications and side effects.