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| Religion Forum Index » Jehovah's Witnesses Forum » Evolution Why did American pick Obama... |
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| Tekkaman... |
 Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2009 1:47 am |
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http://kalkion.com/news/evolution-why-did-americans-choose-obama/672
Why did Barack Obama win the US election and did the fact he is over
six feet tall influence the voters? The authors of a paper published
in Current Biology this month argue that due to ‘a hangover from our
evolutionary past’ factors like age, sex, height and weight play a
major part in the determining our choice of leaders.
Professor Mark van Vugt, an Associate Member of the Institute for
Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford
and an author of the paper, said: ‘Traits like height, age, gender,
masculinity/femininity, and weight all appear to matter when we vote
for our leaders. These are likely hangovers from our evolutionary past
– ancestral leadership prototypes that are context-dependent.
'When we face particular threats, like war, these elicit particular
prototypes, such as the need for a masculine leader. Therefore,
leaders who match these ancestral prototypes have a better chance of
being elected.’
The article says that although human societies continue to rely
heavily on political, economic, military, professional and religious
leaders to function effectively, there is a consistently high rate of
leadership failure. Nearly three quarters of business failures in
corporate America are due to managerial incompetence, the study points
out.
It asks whether new approaches might be useful in understanding when
and why human leadership succeeds and fails – including Nature’s own
lessons on what works best in different contexts.
Author Dr Andrew King, from the Zoological Society of London, said:
‘Evolution has fashioned principles governing leadership and
followership over many millions of years. We need to ground the
complex, even mystical, social phenomenon of leadership in science.
Through empirical observation, theoretical models, neuroscience,
experimental psychology, and genetics, we can explore the development
and adaptive functions of leadership and followership.
'This analysis of data, combined with an evolutionary perspective on
leadership, might highlight potential mismatches so we can see how
evolved mechanisms of leadership are possibly out of kilter with our
relatively novel social environment.’
Author Dr Dominic Johnson, from the Department of Politics and
International Relations at the University of Edinburgh, said: ‘The
role of leadership has often been overlooked in the natural sciences –
especially its important but under-explored role in the evolution of
cooperation, yet it is arguably one of the most important themes in
the social sciences. There are converging ideas and developments in
both the natural and social sciences that suggest that leadership and
followership share common properties across humans and other animals,
and these point to evolutionary origins.
'By identifying such origins and examining which aspects are shared
with other animals offers us better ways of understanding, predicting
and improving leadership today.’ |
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| Dänk 1010011010... |
| Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2009 2:04 am |
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Guest
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On Oct 23, 1:47 pm, Tekkaman <jabriol2... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
Quote: http://kalkion.com/news/evolution-why-did-americans-choose-obama/672
Why did Barack Obama win the US election and did the fact he is over
six feet tall influence the voters? The authors of a paper published
in Current Biology this month argue that due to ‘a hangover from our
evolutionary past’ factors like age, sex, height and weight play a
major part in the determining our choice of leaders.
It has been known for some time that appearance is everything, which
is why most male politicians wear toupees and platform shoes, but
Obama's popularity goes beyond this.
Obama is so wildly popular because he has a hypnotic effect that
brainwashes people into believing he's telling them what they want to
hear, when he isn't saying anything at all. As a result, Obama can be
everything to everyone, without actually going on record as having
made any specific promises to any specific group that might be used
against him later.
Quote: 'By identifying such origins and examining which aspects are shared
with other animals offers us better ways of understanding, predicting
and improving leadership today.’
This sounds like psychological bullshit. Studying why people vote for
the candidate with the prettiest hair will not improve leadership at
all. The only practical use for such information is to control
people, by finding out which shallow cosmetic features people will
vote for. |
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