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Chad A. Mirkin, Northwestern University, George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. Photo by Bill Arsenault. 

DNA Blueprints Guide The Construction Of Specific Human Structures

Chad Mirkin discusses using DNA to build a three-dimensional structure out of gold, likening the process to building a house. Starting with basic materials such as bricks, wood, siding, stone and shingles, a construction team can build many different types of houses out of the same building blocks.
 
The article includes an audio recording of the full interview. Photo courtesy of the UCSD School of Medicine.
Life's Highway: Cars Have A Personality? Print E-mail
Living - Society
TS-Si News Service   
Monday, 01 December 2008 15:00
Car With PersonalityTallahassee, FL, USA. Cars have personality? A new study led by a Florida State University (FSU) researcher confirms, through complex statistical analysis, that many people see human facial features in the front end of automobiles and ascribe various personality traits to cars.
 
This is a very modern experience driven by our prehistoric psyches. Researchers, product designers and, of course, filmmakers have long toyed with the idea that cars have faces, but this study is the first to investigate the phenomenon systematically. The study appears in the journal Human Nature.
 
Choosing Color Symbols

In America and many other industrialized countries, there is a current and general acceptance of pink as symbolic for females.
 
However, before the 1930's some male commentators in America associated the color with boys. Pink was most commonly seen as a derivation of red, signifying power and strength. They reserved blue for girls. 
 
Critics regard this as an example of male-imposed cultural standards that run counter to the natural inclinations of women. 
 
Some feminists criticize past associations of pink with girls (along with dresses and skirts) as pre-feminist, symbolizing of oppression. Contemporary women in the industrialized societies tend to advocate personal choice and reclaim the older styles of female expression.
 
 
The Manchester Guardian published popular reactions to the research by Anya Hulbert that linked sex differences and color preferences. The Guardian entries emphasized cultural norms and color choice (nurture) over innate color preference (nature).
 
Zoe Williams has a column that questions the rationale for Hulbert's research in the first place. Williams argues that an emphasis on "nature" over "nurture" has parallels with the misuse of science to achieve rascist ends.
 
In this case, Williams says "This concentration on innate biological difference between (let's be frank) oppressor and oppressed is so discredited in the racial arena, it's functionally an academic taboo. How did we never manage to discredit the same impulse in the business of gender?"
 
Stop this idiocy now. Humanity has nothing to gain from research into whether females prefer the colour pink. Zoe Williams. The Guardian (Wednesday August 22, 2007).
 
Kirit Gordhandas argues in a letter to the Guardian that association of blue to boys and pink to girls is an arbitrary result of sometimes contradictory historical developments. Gordhandas says that "... returning Christian crusaders brought with them the tradition they had seen of baby boys dressed in blue and baby girls dressed in pink."
 
When blue was pink. Kirit Gordhandas. The Guardian, Letters (Wednesday August 22, 2007).
"The study confirmed with some rigor what many people have already felt — that cars seem to have consistent personality traits associated with them, and that this is similar to the way people perceive facial expressions," said Dennis Slice, an associate professor in the FSU Department of Scientific Computing (SC).
 
"The most unique aspect of the study was that we were able to quantitatively link the perception of cars to aspects of their physical structure in a way that allows us to generate a car that would project, say, aggression, anger or masculinity or the opposite traits."
 
… perhaps there is a hidden road warrior in all of us …As a guest professor at the University of Vienna, Slice collaborated with doctoral student Sonja Windhager, the study's lead author, and several colleagues to explore the link between perception and the geometry of a car front and its parts. The researchers asked 40 people to view high-resolution, 3-D computer reconstructions and printed images of 38 actual 2004-06 car models, representing 26 manufacturers from Ford to Mercedes.
 
One-third (32.5 percent) of those participating in the experiment associated a human or an animal face with at least 90 percent of the cars. Generally, the headlights were marked as eyes; the nose tended to be the grill or emblem; the additional air intake slots, the mouth. Each participant in the experiment also was asked to rate each model on 19 traits, including dominance, maturity, gender and friendliness, and if they liked the car.
 
"In our study, people generally agreed in their ratings,'' Slice said, noting that 96 percent agreed on whether a car was dominant or submissive. "Thus, there must be some kind of consistent message that is being perceived in car fronts." For example,
  • Cars scoring high in the so-called power traits had horizontally elongated hoods, pronounced lower car bodies relative to the windshields and more angular headlights that seemed to suggest a frown.
     
  • Conversely, cars on the other end of the power scale — that is, those perceived as childlike, submissive, female and friendly — had headlights with their upper edge relatively close to the midline and had an upward shift of the car's lateral-most points. ("In this way, the car gives us a big smile," Slice said.)
In a finding that suggests perhaps there is a hidden road warrior in all of us, study participants liked power vehicles best — the most mature, masculine, arrogant and angry-looking ones.
 
Although people do not necessarily buy the kind of car they say they like, Slice said the finding spurs some interesting questions for future studies about pedestrian and driver behavior. For example, do people extend the perception of the car to the person behind the wheel? And does that affect how drivers interact with other cars on the road?
 
In addition, the study provides a check into the rearview mirror of our prehistoric psyches.
 
The researchers theorized that, through biological evolution, our brains have been designed to infer a great deal of information about another person — age, sex, attitudes, personality traits and emotions — from just a glance at their face. The ability to "read" faces in order to identify people, detect possible kin relationships and assess potential danger has been so important to human development that people have adapted a hypersensitivity to detecting facial features even if they are presented in rather abstract ways.
 
As a result, we are tempted to see faces everywhere, even in clouds, stones and, yes, cars.
 
"The fact that we can so easily see faces in inanimate objects may tell us something about the evolutionary environment in which this capacity arose," Slice said. "Seeing too many faces, even in mountains or toast, has little or no penalty, but missing or misinterpreting the face of a predator or attacker could be fatal."
 
Authors[A1] Sonja Windhager, University of Vienna, Ludwig-Boltzmann-Institute for Urban Ethology, Department of Anthropology (Vienna, Austria).

[A2] Dennis E. Slice, University of Vienna, Department of Anthropology (Vienna, Austria).

[A3] Katrin Schaefer, University of Vienna, Department of Anthropology (Vienna, Austria).

[A4] Elisabeth Oberzaucher, University of Vienna, Ludwig-Boltzmann-Institute for Urban Ethology, Department of Anthropology (Vienna, Austria).

[A5] Truls Thorstensen, EFS Unternehmensberatung (Vienna, Austria).

[A6] Karl Grammer, University of Vienna. Ludwig-Boltzmann-Institute for Urban Ethology, Department of Anthropology (Vienna, Austria).
CitationThe Perception of Automotive Designs. Sonja Windhager, Dennis E. Slice, Katrin Schaefer, Elisabeth Oberzaucher, Truls Thorstensen and Karl Grammer. Human Nature 19(4): 331-346. doi: 10.1007 / s12110-008-9047-z. ISSN 1045-6767 (Print); ISSN 1936-4776 (Online).

Abstract

Over evolutionary time, humans have developed a selective sensitivity to features in the human face that convey information on sex, age, emotions, and intentions. This ability might not only be applied to our conspecifics nowadays, but also to other living objects (i.e., animals) and even to artificial structures, such as cars. To investigate this possibility, we asked people to report the characteristics, emotions, personality traits, and attitudes they attribute to car fronts, and we used geometric morphometrics (GM) and multivariate statistical methods to determine and visualize the corresponding shape information. Automotive features and proportions are found to covary with trait perception in a manner similar to that found with human faces. Emerging analogies are discussed. This study should have implications for both our understanding of our prehistoric psyche and its interrelation with the modern world.
 
TS-Si News ServiceThe TS-Si News Service is a collaborative effort by TS-Si.org editors, contributors, and corresponding institutions. The sources can include the cited individuals and organizations, as well as TS-Si.org staff contributions. Articles and news reports do not necessarily convey official positions of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates. We welcome your comments. Use the form below to leave a public comment or send private correspondence via the TS-Si Contact Page. We will not divulge any personal details or place you on a mailing list without your permission.
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Last Updated on Monday, 01 December 2008 08:30