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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">Judging from the following item, our perceptual system
seems preprogrammed to stop, pause, and rivet on sights that promise sex or
threaten violence.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Makes
sense.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Sex makes sure that when we
die our genes go marching on.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>Avoiding violence makes sure our body and mind live to see another
day.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Gawking at violence from a
distance hopefully helps us learn how to avoid it—or overcome it-- in the
future.</FONT></P>
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face="Times New Roman"> </FONT></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Now
the question is this.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Is this
fixation on violence and sex a product of Western Culture.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Or is it universal in humans?<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>If it’s universal in humans, does it
also show up in lab rats, pigeons, and anolis lizards?<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In other words, does it go back to a
common ancestor of birds, mammals, and lizards?</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><o:p><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> </FONT></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman">At
what age does this phenomenon appear in humans?<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>When are babies able to perceive sex and
violence?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>When do these two become
emotionally potent to kids?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>Howard</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">Retrieved <SPAN style="mso-no-proof: yes">August 13,
2005</SPAN>, from the World Wide Web <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7845
NewScientist.com Erotic images can turn you blind <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>* 18:09 12 August 2005 * NewScientist.com
news service * Gaia Vince <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Researchers have finally found evidence
for what good Catholic boys have known all along – <B
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">erotic images make you go blind. The effect
is temporary and lasts just a moment</B>, but the research has added to
road-safety campaigners’ calls to ban sexy billboard-advertising near busy
roads, in the hope of preventing accidents. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The new study by US psychologists found
that <B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">people shown erotic or gory images
frequently fail to process images they see immediately afterwards</B>. And the
researchers say <B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">some personality types
appear to be affected more than others</B> by the phenomenon,<B
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"> known as “emotion-induced blindness”</B>.
<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>David Zald, from
<st1:place><st1:PlaceName>Vanderbilt</st1:PlaceName>
<st1:PlaceType>University</st1:PlaceType></st1:place> in
<st1:place><st1:City>Nashville</st1:City>,
<st1:State>Tennessee</st1:State></st1:place>, and Marvin Chun and colleagues
from <st1:place><st1:PlaceName>Yale</st1:PlaceName>
<st1:PlaceType>University</st1:PlaceType></st1:place> in
<st1:State><st1:place>Connecticut</st1:place></st1:State>, <B
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">showed hundreds of images to volunteers and
asked them to pick a specific image from the rapid sequence. Most of the images
were landscape or architectural scenes, but the psychologists included a few
emotionally charged images, portraying violent or sexually provocative scenes.
<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The closer these emotionally
charged images occurred prior to the target image, the more frequently people
failed to spot the target image</B>, the researchers found. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>“We observed that people failed to detect
visual images that appeared one-fifth of a second after emotional images,
whereas they can detect those images with little problem after neutral images,”
Zald says. Primitive brain <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>“We
think there is essentially a bottleneck for information processing and if a
certain type of stimulus captures attention, it can jam up the bottleneck so
subsequent information can’t get through,” Zald explains. “It appears to happen
involuntarily. The stimulus captures attention and once allocated to that
particular stimulus, no other stimuli can get through” for several tenths of a
second. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>He believes that a
primitive part of the brain, known as the amygdala, may play a part. That region
is involved in evaluating sensory input according to its emotional relevance and
has an autonomic role, influencing heart rate and sweating. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>“It is possible that emotionally-charged
stimuli produce preferential rapid routing of the impulse that bypasses the
slower cortical route via the amygdala," Zald told New Scientist. "Patients with
amygdala lesions pick out the target image without reacting to violent images,
although they show normal blindness reactions when sexual images are introduced,
which suggests another mechanism may also be involved.” Harm avoiders <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The researchers think emotion-induced
blindness could lead to drivers simply not seeing another car or pedestrian if
they have just witnessed an emotionally charged scene, such as an accident or
sexually explicit billboard. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The
effect could exacerbate the more obvious problem of drivers simply being
distracted by large, arresting images. "It's the responsibility of drivers to
ensure that when they are behind the wheel they keep their eyes on the job in
hand," says a spokeswoman from Brake, a
<st1:country-region><st1:place>UK</st1:place></st1:country-region> road safety
organisation. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And some people are
more vulnerable than others. The study assessed participants using a personality
questionnaire, rating them according to their level of “harm avoidance”. Those
scoring highly were more fearful, careful and cautious; those scoring low were
more carefree and more comfortable in difficult or dangerous situations. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The researchers found that those with low
harm avoidance scores were better able to stay focused on a target image than
those with high harm avoidance scores. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>“People who are more harm avoidant may
not be detecting negative stimuli more than other people, but they have a
greater difficulty suppressing that information,” Zald suggests. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The Brake spokeswoman says companies
should think about the consequences of placing emotionally charged billboards at
dangerous road junctions: “We should be concerned if drivers are experiencing
split-second breaks in concentration, which could result in an accident or death
on the roads.” <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Journal reference:
Psychonomic Bulletin and Review (August 2005 issue) Related Articles <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>* Early blindness frees brain-power for
hearing * http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524845.200 * 29 January
2005 * Porn panic over eroto-toxins *
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18424750.800 * 27 November 2004 *
Women's better emotional recall explained *
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2576 * 22 July 2002 <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Weblinks <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>* David Zald,
<st1:PlaceName>Vanderbilt</st1:PlaceName> University *
http://www.psy.vanderbilt.edu/faculty/zalddh/zaldhomepage.htm * Marvin Chun,
<st1:PlaceName>Yale</st1:PlaceName> University *
http://www.yale.edu/psychology/FacInfo/Chun.html *
<st1:place><st1:City>Brake</st1:City>,
<st1:country-region>UK</st1:country-region></st1:place> road safety organisation
* http://www.brake.org.uk/ * Psychonomic Bulletin and Review *
http://www.psychonomic.org/PBR/ <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Close this window Printed on Sat Aug 13
<st1:time Hour="17" Minute="53">05:53:57</st1:time> BST 2005 </FONT></P></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10">----------<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>Author of The Lucifer Principle: A
Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution
of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century<BR>Recent Visiting
Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty
Member, The Graduate
Institute<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<BR>Founder:
International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution
Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango
Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the
Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political
Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human
Ethology; advisory board member: Institute for Accelerating Change ; executive
editor -- New Paradigm book series.<BR>For information on The International
Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from
<BR>The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History,
see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The
Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see
www.howardbloom.net<BR></FONT></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>