Science shows why we can't tell Clark Kent is Superman

How many times have you watched a Superman film or TV show and found yourself almost screaming, "Clark Kent is Superman you dolt!"  Or have you actually screamed this, shocking everyone around you in the theater?

I guess it's because we're in on the joke, whereas, at least according to this research, donning a pair of glasses can be an effective disguise.  Add a hat and a dorky expression, and Superman becomes Clark Kent and no body is the wiser.

Here's the report.

Now go try it.  Put a costume of some sort on over your Superman duds and see for yourself.

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Scientists show that 'Superman' disguise could actually work

Researchers at the University of York have shown that small alterations to a person's appearance, such as wearing glasses, can significantly hinder positive facial identification.  The research has the potential to contribute to future policies concerning photo identification, such as drivers' licences or passports, where an individual has to be matched correctly to their image in order to inform important security decisions.

Psychologists showed participants a number of faces in various 'natural' poses, similar to images seen on Facebook or other social media sites, and asked them to decide whether each pair of images showed the same person or not. Images were shown in three categories -- pairs of faces that wore glasses, images where neither wore glasses, or only one image wore glasses.

In cases where both of the faces wore glasses or where neither wore glasses, accuracy was around 80 per cent. However, when only one of the two faces wore glasses, performance was approximately 6 per cent lower, a statistically significant decrease.

Dr Robin Kramer, from the University of York's Department of Psychology, said: "The question of whether the inhabitants of Metropolis could be realistically deceived by Superman's simple disguise has been rumbling since the comic books first arrived on the stands, but the question becomes a serious one when applied to real-world security issues.

"When a security guard checks a passport photo against the person standing in front of them, they do not have the luxury of familiarity with that face, as Lois does with Superman/Clark Kent. This is something we wanted to investigate further, because we know from previous studies that people are relatively poor at matching faces in various guises when the person is unfamiliar to them.

"We also know from prior work that it is easier to match passport-style photos together when the facial expressions and poses are the same. Here, we investigated unfamiliar face matching, showing participants two unconstrained faces of strangers, with and without glasses, and asked whether the images are the same person or two different people."

The results suggest that people generally find it difficult to correctly match unfamiliar and uncontrolled face images, but they are significantly worse when glasses are worn by only one of the faces.

Co-author, Dr Kay Ritchie, from the University of York's Department of Psychology, added: "In real terms, glasses would not prevent Lois recognising that Clark is in fact Superman as she is familiar with him. For those who do not know him, however, this task is much more difficult, and our results show that glasses do disrupt our ability to recognise the same unfamiliar person from photo-to-photo.

"We hope that this research can be used by legal authorities to help inform future policies on identification for security purposes, particularly in the UK where individuals who normally wear glasses are required to remove them for their identification cards."

The research, Disguising Superman: How glasses affect unfamiliar face matching, is published in Applied Cognitive Psychology.

Story Source:

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of York. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

Robin S. S. Kramer, Kay L. Ritchie. Disguising Superman: How Glasses Affect Unfamiliar Face Matching. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2016

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Psychopathic individuals have trouble detecting threats.

Credit: © Marek / Fotolia 

For many decades fear has been put forth as a hallmark feature of psycho-

pathy, the impairments in which would lead to bold risk-taking behavior.

Psychopaths feel fear but see no danger

Researchers from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Radboud University Nijmegen found proof that psychopathic individuals can feel fear, but have trouble in the automatic detection and responsivity to threat. For many decades fear has been put forth as a hallmark feature of psychopathy, the impairments in which would lead to bold risk-taking behavior. Sylco Hoppenbrouwers (VU Amsterdam), Erik Bulten and Inti Brazil (Radboud University) reviewed theoretical and empirical brain and behavioral data pertaining to fear and psychopathy and found that psychopathic individuals have trouble detecting threats. 

There was however little evidence that the conscious experience of fear was affected, indicating that the experience of fear may not be completely impaired in psychopathy. It's the first study to provide empirical evidence that the automatic and conscious processes can be independently affected within one psychiatric disorder. The results are published in Psychological Bulletin.

In their systematic review and meta-analysis, Hoppenbrouwers, Bulten and Brazil reviewed the available evidence for the potential existence of the relationship between fear and psychopathy in adult individuals. Importantly, their definition of fear was based on state of the art knowledge of the neurobiological and cognitive underpinnings of this emotion. They used this knowledge to generate a model that separates brain mechanisms involved in automatic detection and responding to threats from those involved in the conscious experience of fear as an emotion. Using this model as reference, they first performed a conceptual analysis of the work of earlier theorists, going back to as early as 1806. They found that only one theorist incorporated the construct of fear into an etiological model of psychopathy.

Fear isn't absent in psychopathic individuals
The evidence for impairments in brain areas involved in the experience of fear was less consistent than is often assumed, indicating that the experience of fear may not be completely impaired in psychopathy. The researchers then conclusively showed that psychopathic individuals have trouble in the automatic detection and responsivity to threat but may in fact feel fear, providing direct empirical support for the claim that the conscious experience of fear may not be impaired in these individuals. An additional meta-analysis examining the five other basic emotions found that there may also be impairments in the experience of happiness and anger, but the lack of consistency in the current literature precluded the generation of strong claims.

New model also applies to mood and anxiety disorders
The research by Hoppenbrouwers, Bulten and Brazil is the first to provide empirical evidence that the automatic and conscious processes can be separated. Furthermore, the proposed model not only applies to psychopathy, but can also be used to further increase conceptual precision and generate new hypotheses for research on mood and anxiety disorders. Inti Brazil: "While psychopathic individuals may suffer from a dysfunctional threat system, people with posttraumatic stress disorder may have a hyperactive threat system, which later leads to them feeling fearful." Sylco Hoppenbrouwers agrees: "As a consequence of our research, some very influential theories that assign prominent roles to fearlessness in the aetiology of psychopathy will need to be reconsidered and made consistent with current neuroscientific evidence. Such re-evaluations of key concepts will lead to increased precision in research and clinical practice which should ultimately pave the way toward more targeted and more effective treatment interventions."

Story Source: Materials provided by Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Sylco S. Hoppenbrouwers, Berend H. Bulten, Inti A. Brazil. Parsing fear: A reassessment of the evidence for fear deficits in psychopathy.. Psychological Bulletin, 2016

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Facial cues influence how social exclusion is judged

Credit: Images: mirellawalker.com  

People who look cold and incompetent receive less support in situations

of social exclusion than those who look warm and incompetent.

Fair or unfair? Facial cues influence

how social exclusion is judged

People are often excluded from social groups. As researchers from the University of Basel report in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, whether un-involved observers find this acceptable or not may depend on the facial appearances of those excluded. The exclusion of cold and incompetent looking people is more likely to be accepted.

Social exclusion -- be it at school, work or among friends -- is usually a painful experience for those affected. This behavior also often has a considerable effect on third-party observers: Bullying and ostracism with the aim to hurt the victims are seen as particularly unfair and morally unacceptable. However, in some cases, social exclusion is also perceived as justified. Groups are, for example, more likely to ostracize people who cause trouble or arguments in order to restore the harmony in their group.

Quick moral judgment
Whether un-involved observers view social exclusion as morally justified or not can be very important for the victim as a possible intervention depends on that judgment. Making such a moral judgment, however, is often difficult and time consuming, which is why observers revert to relatively superficial indicators for guidance. One such indicator is the face of the excluded person.

In several studies, the team of psychologists from the University of Basel presented different male faces to a total of 480 participants. The facial characteristics had previously been altered using a recently developed method for facial manipulation. The portraits were manipulated to appear warm or cold and competent or incompetent. The participants looked at each portrait for two seconds before spontaneously deciding how acceptable they thought it was for a group to exclude this person.

More protection for warm and incompetent looking people
In all studies, participants found it more acceptable to socially exclude people whose faces looked cold and incompetent. However, exclusion was found least acceptable when those excluded looked warm and incompetent. A possible explanation for this could be that these people are often perceived as especially in need of protection and therefore excluding them from a group would be particularly cruel, says lead researcher Dr. Selma Rudert from the Center of Social Psychology at the University of Basel.

Earlier studies have shown that humans have very clear-cut ideas of what a warm or cold person looks like. However, there is no evidence for any relation between facial features and personality traits. In other words: Although appearances are deceptive, individuals let them guide their judgment. The perceived warmth and competence in a person's face play an especially important role in this judgment.

Objectivity would be important
"Our results suggest that the first impression a person makes can also influence moral judgments that would actually call for objectivity," explains Rudert. These impressions can have far-reaching consequences for how people behave in social exclusion situations: "It is conceivable that a cold and incompetent looking victim of exclusion would get less support or, in the worst case, bystanders may even actively join the ostracizing group -- all based on one glance at the face of the victim."

Story Source:  Materials provided by Universität Basel.   "Fair or unfair? Facial cues influence how social exclusion is judged." ScienceDaily, 29 August 2016

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The more we know, the easier we are to deceive

Dr Ciara Greene, University College Dublin

This confirms the reason academics, scientists and reputable journalists don't print things without thoroughly confirming their sources. At least two sources for a piece of information before posting anything. When I see anything posted with only a single source, I discount it until I have a chance to confirm the story from other independent sources.

I'm not alone in this, and this research clarifies why this is such an important practice.

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The more we know, the easier we are to deceive

Knowing a lot about a subject means you are more likely to have false memories about it. That is the paradoxical conclusion of research presented by Dr Ciara Greene from University College Dublin to the annual conference of the British Psychological Society's Cognitive Psychology Section in Barcelona.

Dr Greene and Anthony O'Connell, then a Masters student at University College Cork, asked 489 participants to rank seven topics (football, politics, business, technology, film, science and pop music) from most to least interesting.

They were then asked if they remembered the events described in four news items about the topic they selected as the most interesting and four items about the topic selected as least interesting. In each case, three of the events depicted had really happened and one was fictional.

The results showed that if someone was interested in a topic, this increased the frequency of accurate memories relating to that topic. But it increased the number of false memories too -- 25 per cent of people experienced a false memory in relation to an interesting topic, compared with 10 per cent in relation to a less interesting topic.

And having a high level of knowledge about a topic -- as measured by the number of true memories recorded -- rather than just an interest, increased the frequency of false memories too. People who were more knowledgeable about a subject were nearly twice as likely to remember incidents relating to that topic that never happened.

Dr Greene said: "Increasing scientific and public understanding of the causes of false memory is an important goal, particularly in light of some of the more negative consequences associated with the phenomenon, including faulty eyewitness accounts and the controversies surrounding false memories of traumatic childhood events. I hope that promotion of knowledge about false memories may provide some inoculation against their harmful effects."

Story Source:  Materials provided by British Psychological Society (BPS).  "The more we know, the easier we are to deceive."  ScienceDaily, 25 August 2016. 

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Why prison populations continue to grow even as crime declines

www.plsqld.com

Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines

Study finds more offenders have criminal records

"It is much harder for judges to not give prison sentences to

repeat offenders, so we have more convicted people going to prison."

A new study may help explain why the number of people in prison in the United States continued to rise, even as the crime rate declined significantly. A sociologist found that the US criminal justice system continues to feel the reverberations from the increase in violent crime and imprisonment that occurred from the 1960s to the early 1990s.

The U.S. prison population continued to rise even after the crime rate began declining in the mid-1990s because judges were faced with more repeat offenders, a new study suggests.

Using data from Minnesota, an Ohio State University sociologist found that the U.S. criminal justice system felt the reverberations from the increase in violent crime and imprisonment that occurred from the 1960s to the early 1990s.

"The issue is that the average offender who appears before a judge for sentencing today has a much more extensive criminal record than they did in the past," said Ryan King, author of the study and professor of sociology at Ohio State.

King found that the average offender in Minnesota in 1981 had one prior felony. That increased to two prior felonies in 1991 and 2.5 prior felonies in 2013.

"It is much harder for judges to not give prison sentences to repeat offenders, so we have more convicted people going to prison."

In fact, the study found that 15 percent of convicted offenders received a prison sentence in 1981, which increased to 20 percent in 1995, and reached nearly 30 percent in 2013.

King said that it is important to try to replicate these results in other states. But he believes the findings would be similar in most states, because judges across the country emphasize prior records when sentencing offenders.

The data needed for a study like this is not available for a national sample. So King used 33 years of data that was held by the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission. This included case-level information on each of the approximately 355,000 felony convictions in the state between 1981 and 2013.

This data included the criminal history of the offender, the severity of the crime, the sentencing outcome and several demographic variables.

King found that in 1981, fewer than 40 percent of sentenced offenders had criminal records, but almost 60 percent did in 2001.

"Criminal activity can decrease, but the criminal record only goes up. Judges are dealing with more repeat offenders now," he said.

It's not that judges are treating repeat offenders more harshly now than in the past. In fact, once he controlled for criminal record over time, King found that judges appeared to be getting more lenient, not harsher.

Minnesota has guidelines for judges to consult when they are deciding on prison sentences for specific crimes and circumstances. Sentences that went below the guidelines increased from 18 percent to 23 percent from 2001 to 2013. Sentences that went above the guidelines decreased by about 2 percent in that same time period.

That suggests the problem isn't the length of prison sentences, but who is who is being sent to prison, King said.

"Judges' hands are tied, to some extent. It is hard to show leniency and maintain legitimacy in the public eye when you're dealing with a repeat offender, and judges are seeing more of them than they have in the past," he said.

If the United States wants to reduce the number of people in our prisons, King said these results suggest we need a new approach.

"Instead of focusing mainly on first-time offenders, we need to come up with new ways of dealing with offenders who have just one prior conviction," he said.

"If we could find ways to keep them out of prison, that would have a large impact."

Regardless of what else is done, the number of people in prison should decline if crime rates stay where they are, he said.

"But it is going to be a slow process. Our prison populations are going to go down much slower than they went up."

Story Source: Materials provided by Ohio State University, original written by Jeff Grabmeier."Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines: Study finds more offenders have criminal records."  ScienceDaily.  22 August 2016. 

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Ramen noodles supplanting cigarettes as currency among prisoners

Nissin - Raoh Japanese Instant Ramen Noodles Soy Sauce Taste 

Ramen noodles supplanting cigarettes

as currency among prisoners

Ramen noodles are supplanting the once popular cigarettes as a form of currency among state prisoners, but not in response to bans on tobacco products within prison systems, finds a new study.  Instead, study author Michael Gibson-Light, a doctoral candidate in the University of Arizona School of Sociology, found that inmates are trying to figure out ways to better feed themselves as certain prison services are being defunded.

The rise of ramen as currency in prison signals "punitive frugality," indicating that the burden and cost of care is shifting away from prison systems and onto prisoners and their support networks, said Gibson-Light).

"Punitive frugality is not a formal prison policy, but rather an observable trend in prison administration practice in institutions throughout the country," Gibson-Light said.

"Throughout the nation, we can observe prison cost-cutting and cost-shifting as well as changes in the informal economic practices of inmates," he said. "Services are cut back and many costs are passed on to inmates in an effort to respond to calls to remain both tough on crime and cost effective."

The research Gibson-Light will present is part of a larger project investigating the lives of inmate laborers in a male state prison in the U.S. Sunbelt. During his 12-month investigation from May 2015 to May 2016, Gibson-Light conducted interviews with nearly 60 inmates and prison staff members, and also observed prisoners involved in work. Ultimately, he began to study monetary practices among inmates, and how such men were responding to declining services.

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons reported that states spent about $48.5 billion on corrections in 2010, marking a 5.6 percent decline compared with 2009, and that -- dating back to 1982 -- per capita state corrections expenditures have not kept pace with the number of inmates.

"Prison staff members as well as members of the inmate population provided narratives of the history of changes in prison food -- the past few decades have seen steady decreases in the quality and quantity of inmate food," Gibson-Light said.

"Prisoners are so unhappy with the quality and quantity of prison food that they receive that they have begun relying on ramen noodles -- a cheap, durable food product -- as a form of money in the underground economy," he said. "Because it is cheap, tasty, and rich in calories, ramen has become so valuable that it is used to exchange for other goods."

Those other goods include other food items, clothing, hygiene products, and even services, such as laundry and bunk cleaning, Gibson-Light said. Others use ramen noodles as bargaining chips in gambling when playing card games or participating in football pools, he said.

And ramen noodles are not merely replacing cigarettes. Gibson-Light said the same is happening with noodles replacing stamps and envelopes as forms of in-demand currency.

Gibson-Light believes it is important to highlight the clear connection between prison practices and the daily lives of inmates and their support networks.  Although Gibson-Light's findings are related to his study at one prison, he points to other investigations indicating that the trend toward using ramen noodles for exchanges is evident in prisons that have not banned tobacco use.

"What we are seeing is a collective response -- across inmate populations and security levels, across prison cliques and racial groups, and even across states -- to changes and cutbacks in prison food services," he said.

Gibson-Light called for a deeper study of prison food services, and what implications the decline in support could mean for the quality of care for prisoners.

"The form of money is not something that changes often or easily, even in the prison underground economy; it takes a major issue or shock to initiate such a change," he said. "The use of cigarettes as money in U.S. prisons happened in American Civil War military prisons and likely far earlier. The fact that this practice has suddenly changed has potentially serious implications."

Story Source:  Materials provided by American Sociological Association. "Ramen noodles supplanting cigarettes as currency among prisoners."  ScienceDaily, 22 August 2016.

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The more television you watch, the more you believe myths.

The conclusions of this Austrian study helps explain why some people see the world as frightening and filled with dangers.  As the study points out, they "overestimate the probability of being the victim of crime."

While this study did not address this, it raises the question that the more a person watches television, the more likely they are to stereotype different cultures, races, and societal issues.  For example, does watching reality police shows lead to the impression that a certain minority group is responsible for the majority of crime?  Do the images portrayed on television create either positive or negative stereotypes of different groups?

For example, does the way media focuses on problems in a racially segregated ghetto lead one to believe that all members of that racial group lead exactly that lifestyle in exactly those circumstances.  This could explain why a political candidate in a current election race seemed to express the view that all African-Americans live in dire conditions despite evidence from many other sources showing this is not the case.  Many do, but all do not.

Here's the study, with a link to the report in the attribution.

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Watching a lot of TV makes you

more susceptible to everyday myths

People who watch a lot of television are more likely to be susceptible to everyday myths -- irrespective of their age, education or gender. This is the basic finding of a media study conducted at MedUni Vienna's Center for Public Health and led by Benedikt Till and Thomas Niederkrotenthaler. In the recent study, 322 people were asked about their television viewing habits and also whether they believed that the death penalty still applies in Austria and how many people are on death row. 11.6% of those questioned erroneously believed that the death penalty still exists -- the more TV they watched, the higher the probability that they believed this.

In fact: the death penalty was completely abolished in Austria on 7 February 1968, therefore around 50 years ago, following a unanimous decision by the Austrian National Council. The last actual execution in Austria took place on 24 March 1950.

American TV series influence perceptions
The fact that more than one in 10 people think that Austria still has the death penalty is presumably due to the high proportion of American films and TV series on Austrian television," says Benedikt Till. "Detective dramas, in particular, continually portray the American justice system, where the death penalty plays a central role."

From so-called cultivation research, which looks at the extent to which television shapes viewers' perceptions of reality and attitudes, we know that a distorted portrayal of the world on TV can also result in a distorted view of the world on the part of viewers. Till: "For example, people who watch a lot of television often overestimate the number of people in those professions that are frequently portrayed on television, such as doctors, lawyers or policemen, for example. They also overestimate the probability of being the victim of crime."

However, what has newly emerged from the latest study -- that has now been published in the journal "Death Studies" -- is that television viewing not only changes attitudes and values but also has a fundamental negative influence upon knowledge about fundamental societal principles, such as the death penalty, for example," explain the MedUni Vienna researchers. Based on this study, it would also be reasonable to conclude that other prejudices, myths and misinformation about health-related topics -- for example about suicide, a key subject for the two social medicine experts from MedUni Vienna's Center for Public Health -- could be linked with higher levels of exposure to media. MedUni Vienna is currently conducting a study into this aspect.

Story Source: Materials provided by Medical University of Vienna.  Benedikt Till, Florence Truong, Raymond A. Mar, Thomas Niederkrotenthaler. Blurred world view: A study on the relationship between television viewing and the perception of the justice system. Death Studies, 2016

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Attn Mystery Writers: Female CSI Workers More Stressed Than Males

Female forensic scientists more stressed than males

Fueled by shows like "CSI" and "Bones," the field has surged in popularity, particularly among women, who greatly outnumber men in undergraduate and graduate forensic science programs.

Females working in forensic science labs were almost two times more likely to report high stress levels than males, according to the study, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice. Forensic scientists aid criminal investigations by collecting and analyzing evidence such as fingerprints, ballistics and DNA.

"It's not clear why female scientists reported more stress than males," said Thomas J. Holt, MSU professor of criminal justice, "though it may stem from differences in the experiences of female scientists who are not sworn law-enforcement officers working in a quasi-military structure where more males are sworn officers, particularly in supervisory roles."

Employment for forensic science technicians is expected to grow 27 percent between 2014 and 2024, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Fueled by shows like "CSI" and "Bones," the field has surged in popularity, particularly among women, who greatly outnumber men in undergraduate and graduate forensic science programs.

At MSU -- home of the nation's first forensic science program, started in 1946 -- Holt led one of the first studies to examine the job satisfaction and stress of forensic scientists. The researchers surveyed 670 scientists in 25 states; 62 percent of participants were women.

Overall, forensic scientists were happy with their jobs, but also stressed. "The fact that forensic scientists appear to have as much stress as police and corrections officers was somewhat surprising," Holt said.

Specific findings include:

• About 78 percent of participants reported mid to high levels of jobs stress, with female forensic scientists reporting higher levels than males. This finding is consistent with past research that found higher stress levels among female police officers.
• About 84 percent of forensic scientists reported mid to high levels of job satisfaction.
• Scientists who testified more often in court were happier with their jobs. About 51 percent of participants had testified one to five times in the previous year, and about 27 percent had testified six or more times.
• Forensic scientists worked on average about 42 hours per week. Despite dwindling state and local budgets, Holt noted that law enforcement and prosecutors are placing increasing emphasis on the use of forensic evidence and that forensic science labs are under pressure to clear case backlogs such as rape kits.

"Managers of forensic science labs should consider ways to minimize the overtime that scientists work, though this may be difficult if scientists must work more than 40 hours a week to clear backlogs or because of state mandates and a lack of trained staff to more evenly distribute hours," Holt said.

He added that well-defined policies and clear lines of communications should be established across the whole organization -- from forensic science laboratories to police departments to prosecutors' offices.

"This can give forensic scientists direct access to upper management and foster trust between all parties," Holt said.

Story Source:  Materials provided by Michigan State University. "Female forensic scientists more stressed than males." ScienceDaily, 18 August 2016.

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Origins of the female orgasm explained

Not sure how this article will help anyone's fiction - directly - however, it is a cool factoid.

As always, a link to the complete report is included in the attribution.

Enjoy:

Origins of the female orgasm explained

Female orgasm seems to be a happy afterthought of our evolutionary past when it helped stimulate ovulation, a new study of mammals shows.  The role of female orgasm, which plays no obvious role in human reproduction, has intrigued scholars as far back as Aristotle. Numerous theories have tried to explain the origins of the trait, but most have concentrated on its role in human and primate biology.

Now scientists at Yale and the Cincinnati Children's Hospital have provided fresh insights on the subject by examining the evolving trait across different species.

"Prior studies have tended to focus on evidence from human biology and the modification of a trait rather than its evolutionary origin," said Gunter Wagner, the Alison Richard Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary biology, and a member of Yale's Systems Biology Institute.  Instead, Wagner and Mihaela Pavličev of the Center for Prevention of Preterm Birth at Cincinnati Children's Hospital propose that the trait that evolved into human female orgasm had an ancestral function in inducing ovulation.

Since there is no apparent association between orgasm and number of offspring or successful reproduction in humans, the scientists focused on a specific physiological trait that accompanies human female orgasm ­­ the neuro­endocrine discharge of prolactin and oxytocin ­­ and looked for this
activity in other placental mammals. They found that in many mammals this reflex plays a role in ovulation.

In spite of the enormous diversity of mammalian reproductive biology, some core characteristics can be traced throughout mammalian evolution, note the researchers. The female ovarian cycle in humans, for instance, is not dependent upon sexual activity. However, in other mammalian species
ovulation is induced by males. The scientists' analysis shows male­-induced ovulation evolved first and that cyclical or spontaneous ovulation is a derived trait that evolved later.

The scientists suggest that female orgasm may have evolved as an adaptation for a direct reproductive role ­­ the reflex that, ancestrally, induced ovulation. This reflex became superfluous for reproduction later in evolution, freeing female orgasm for secondary roles.

A comparative study of female genitalia also revealed that, coincidental with the evolution of spontaneous ovulation, the clitoris was relocated from its ancestral position inside the copulatory canal. This anatomical change made it less likely that the clitoris receives adequate stimulation during
intercourse to lead to the neuro­endocrine reflex known in humans as orgasm. "Homologous traits in different species are often difficult to identify, as they can change substantially in the course of evolution," said Pavlicev. "We think the hormonal surge characterizes a trait that we know as female orgasm in humans. This insight enabled us to trace the evolution of the trait across species."

Such evolutionary changes are known to produce new functions, as is well established for feathers, hair, or swim bladders, etc., which originated for one purpose and were co-opted into secondary functions later.

Story Source:  Materials provided by Yale University, original written by Jon Atherton and Bill Hathaway. Mihaela Pavličev and Gunter Wagner. The Evolutionary Origin of Female Orgasm. JEZ­Molecular and Developmental Evolution, 2016.

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