BEING A SCIENTIST MEANS NEVER HAVING TO USE OCCAM'S RAZOR:

Michael Phelps' victory dance is innate, scientists say: A study finds that blind athletes strike the same exuberant poses as their sighted counterparts -- as do other primates. (Denise Gellene, 8/12/08, Los Angeles Times)

Jessica L. Tracy, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia and lead author of the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said that the hangdog look of losers also turns out to be instinctive.

Blind athletes across all cultures slumped their shoulders and narrowed their chests, a posture that signals shame in humans and submission in other primates. Sighted athletes from most parts of the world did the same.

But the researchers unexpectedly found that sighted athletes from individualistic societies, such as in the U.S. and Western Europe, tended to put on a brave front, outwardly appearing to stand tall in the face of defeat and shame, the report said.

Tracy speculated that the athletes were intentionally hiding their feelings -- consciously overriding their innate urge to signal defeat -- because losing is so stigmatized in their cultures.

"We have been taught that even if we screw up in life, to hide it," she said.

This is, of course, exactly backwards. Our culture teaches that there is no shame in losing, though there is agony. The shame lies in acting defeated and petulant just because you lost. It's why Richard Nixon had less class, was less manly, than Al Gore.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 12, 2008 9:38 AM