INQUIRY

INQUIRY • Volume 19, 2015
Republicans who thought about their conflicting goals (e.g.,
wanting to go to the gym more often but also wanting to
spend more time at work) before they estimated the political
attitudes (e.g., gun control attitudes) of members of a rival
party accurately estimated the difference between rival party
members’ attitudes and their own attitudes, whereas participants
assigned to a control condition exaggerated this difference.
Political progress is often undermined by the inability
of partisans to “reach across the aisle” and effectively work
together in finding common ground. This research holds
important implications for understanding how members of
America’s main political parties can develop more veridical
perceptions of the attitudes that they do and do not share
with one another and in turn foster bonds across party lines.
Dissociating Two Forms of Altruism
Jonathan Rosenthal, Neural Science
Sponsor: Professor Jay van Bavel, Psychology
This project examines the nature of human altruism.
Altruism refers to acting with the intention of benefitting
another. However, little research has distinguished the two
forms altruism may take. In an empathic form, a person
may act to please another based on what the other wants:
for example, giving a gift that the recipient wants. In a
paternalistic form, on the other hand, givers may apply their
own standards of what is best for the recipient: for example,
parents buying a teenager an SAT calendar might not make
the teenager happy but reflects what the parents think will
be best for the teenager. An experiment was conducted in
which participants learned about the preferences of others
and then made altruistic choices benefitting the others. The
extent to which people used a recipient’s standards of happiness
or their own standards of what is best was examined.
Additionally, this study tested whether individual differences
in empathy predict the type of choices people make. This
work contributes to understanding human altruism by dissociating
two possible forms altruism can take.
Intentional Cranial Vault Modification and the Biomechanics
of Head Balance
Jessica Rothwell, Anthropology
Sponsor: Professor Susan Antón, Anthropology
Over the course of human evolution, the need to walk on
two legs has influenced the shape of our skeleton, including
the skull. Because it must balance atop a vertically oriented
vertebral column, human skull dimensions have been
modified to minimize forces placed on neck musculature.
Intentional cranial vault modification is a cultural practice
and marker of identity that comes in two main forms,
anteroposterior and circumferential. This practice alters the
shape of the human skull, and thus, how the skull balances.
Three morphologically distinct samples of South American
crania were analyzed metrically in order to quantify changes
to the cranial vault and face induced by intentional vault
modification and to assess how these changes affect the
way in which the skull balances. A MicroScribe 2Dx was
utilized to collect 41 craniometric points, and linear skull
dimensions were extracted from 3D coordinate data. Results
indicate that circumferential deformation has the greatest
impact on how the head balances and produces more strain
on the neck musculature than anteroposterior deformation.
The differential patterns between these two groups suggest
broader implications for making transitive inferences
about the day-to-day lives of these individuals within the
archaeological record.
How Much Babies Move, Where They Go and Why
Joshua Schneider, Psychology
Sponsor: Professor Karen Adolph, Psychology
How do infants explore their environment? Independent
mobility, first crawling and later walking, opens up
new opportunities for learning. Recent work shows that
infants with more walking experience spend more time in
motion and accumulate more walking steps and fewer falls
during free play with caregivers (Adolph et al., 2012). This
project expands on previous work by describing spontaneous
locomotor exploration in 13-, 15- and 19-month-old
infants—how much they move, their methods of locomotion,
accumulated steps, distance traveled, area covered and
locations visited—and by determining the effects of infant’s
age, walking experience and walking skill on the quantity
and type of exploration. Although previous work showed a
robust effect of age and walking experience on spontaneous
infant walking, preliminary results failed to replicate these
effects. Instead, infants showed large individual differences
in total locomotor exploration (crawling and walking steps)
independent of age and walking experience. Additional
analyses are underway to examine the stability and source
of the variation; the distribution of activity will be quantified
in order to determine whether locomotor exploration
occurs in bursts or is sustained throughout the play session.
Understanding individual differences in infant locomotor
activity is fundamental in developing interventions for
children with deficits in motor development.
“Where can I get it?” The Effects of Social Media Branding
and Native Advertising on the Fashion Industry in
the Age of Instagram
Amber Selby Brown, Global Liberal Studies
Sponsor: Professor Matthew Longabucco, Global Liberal
Studies
The rise of social media platforms in fashion has created
a sense of what Sarah Banet-Weiser calls a neo-liberal brand
culture within the Instagram audience. Constant sharing
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