[HN Gopher] Effects of Latent Toxoplasmosis on Political Beliefs...
___________________________________________________________________
Effects of Latent Toxoplasmosis on Political Beliefs and Values
Author : he0001
Score : 56 points
Date : 2023-02-27 19:18 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (journals.sagepub.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (journals.sagepub.com)
| bondarchuk wrote:
| Did not control for cat ownership AFAICT.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| Anyone who has spent time on OKCupid can speak to the
| correlation of cat ownerships and political perspective, and
| the more cats owned the more magnified the political/social
| passion.
| WaxProlix wrote:
| Does that lay intuition match with the proposed findings in
| TFA? I can copy the relevant sentence from the abstract, in
| case you didn't see it:
|
| > Infected women scored higher in tribalism and lower in
| cultural liberalism
| willcipriano wrote:
| We picked terrible words for political stuff. Cultural
| liberalism is a pro free speech, "classical liberal"[0] (in
| modern times considered conservative) view.
|
| > Cultural Leftists are people who believe "that minorities
| must be protected from psychological harm arising from
| forms of dominant culture, and that a radical
| transformation of science, institutions, narratives and
| culture can redistribute power from dominant to subaltern
| groups."
|
| > Cultural Liberals, on the other hand, "prioritise freedom
| of expression, equal treatment without regard to identity,
| the scientific method, freedom of conscience and the
| primacy of classical liberal traditions of law."
|
| > And finally, Cultural Conservatives are people who
| "prioritise the defense of national, ethnic and religious
| traditions. The dominant form of cultural conservatism in
| Britain is cultural patriotism."[1]
|
| [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
|
| [1]https://iea.org.uk/the-rise-of-cultural-socialism-a-
| review-o...
| bena wrote:
| We must also consider where we source our definitions
| from. The IEA is a right-wing think tank. They have a
| vested interest in promoting certain points of view. And
| to portray those opposed to them in certain ways.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Economic_Affai
| rs
| willcipriano wrote:
| First one that I found and it matches with my education.
| Happy to use any other you provide, but liberalism as a
| concept isn't something only occupied by the left wing
| even though they tend to be conflated.
| bena wrote:
| It's really the portrayal of "cultural leftism" that
| leaves something to be desired. It's framed in such a way
| to make "cultural leftism" seem not only more
| paternalistic than they would describe their goals but to
| portray the issues facing minorities as more abstract and
| ephemeral than they actually are.
|
| I notice how you only focus on the defensible definition
| as if the conflation of liberalism with some conservative
| goals could be the only objection to your post.
| giardini wrote:
| You mean "the more cats owned the more Democratic they vote?"
| Just making sure.
| jonathanlb wrote:
| If so, then we're not that far off from it being spun as
| "cats cause anti-Patriotic" beliefs, followed by a witch
| hunt.
| insanejudge wrote:
| Weird, I've only encountered the exact opposite.
| 86J8oyZv wrote:
| Based on the actual article, it's more like "the more cats
| owned, the more liberal/progressive/socialist men vote and
| behave, and the more conservative/tribal/fascist women vote
| and behave." Which fits well with my experience tbh. The 5+
| cat ladies I know are all surprisingly conservative.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I own 3 cats by accident, and I didn't really "get" owning a
| cat before the first one's mom decided to abandon her new
| born kitten right in front of my house hahaha. Yet I don't
| think my political beliefs have really changed since, but
| maybe I need more cats for that to happen!
| rootusrootus wrote:
| They mentioned that cat ownership does not strongly correlate
| with toxoplasma infection. There are other places to get the
| parasite from, which is why it's so prevalent.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| * * *
| hackerlight wrote:
| "responders via an online survey" so there's a self-selection
| bias. You are selecting the people that chose to seek out a
| diagnosis of this infection, and such people are probably more
| neurotic and anxious.
|
| Also did they control for age, relationship status and number of
| cats owned? Multiple cats owned is sometimes caused by loneliness
| in my experience so the causality may be easy to mix up.
| ineptech wrote:
| I don't think this is true; it looks like they collected a pool
| of participants, asked them questions, and _then_ found out who
| was /wasn't infected. See the "Materials and Methods" section.
| [deleted]
| arwhatever wrote:
| Extremely poor wording in the first page or so:
|
| > This study showed Toxoplasma-infected and Toxoplasma-free
| participants of our cross-sectional study differed in three of
| four factors of PI34, scoring higher in Tribalism and lower in
| Cultural liberalism and Anti-Authoritarianism.
|
| - Is the author referring to the infected or to the free group
| here?
|
| > The stress-coping hypothesis suggests that many toxoplasmosis-
| associated changes, e.g., higher extroversion in infected women
| and lower in men, or lower suspiciousness of infected women and
| higher in suspiciousness of infected men (all in comparison to
| non-infected peers) can be interpreted as gender-dependent stress
| coping reaction.
|
| - Using " _among_ infected men /women" in place of "of" would add
| a lot of clarity here.
|
| I believe I'll stop reading the article.
| krzyk wrote:
| I believe the authors are Czech, so I would give them a bit of
| slack regarding the language, they are not native English
| speakers.
| arwhatever wrote:
| Good to keep in mind, and I shouldn't be overly harsh.
|
| I considered the possibility and discarded it, given that the
| word choices so strongly resemble poorly-spoken native
| English speakers whom I have personally known. But I could
| have confirmed by looking.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| kneebonian wrote:
| > We measured beliefs and values of 2315 responders via an online
| survey (477 Toxoplasma-infected) using the Political Beliefs and
| Values Inventory (PI34). This study showed Toxoplasma-infected
| and Toxoplasma-free participants of our cross-sectional study
| differed in three of four factors of PI34,
|
| s/study/internet poll/g
| kurthr wrote:
| I'd read this with some interest, but if this citation in the
| introduction is correct then it's not a small deal.
|
| "Toxoplasma gondii, the parasitic protozoon of cats, infects
| about one-third of the human population in both developed and
| developing countries (Tenter et al., 2000)."
| bena wrote:
| It's the entire reason people want to study Toxoplasmosis. If
| it affects anything, that's going to mean a lot of people.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| A couple important notes about toxoplasmosis (someone please
| correct me if I'm wrong, this is gleaned from Wikipedia and the
| CDC website):
|
| - Cats only get toxoplasmosis from prey, and it only sticks
| around in the cat for a few weeks, so if you have an indoor-
| only cat that never goes outside and you don't have any pests,
| you're probably fine
|
| - Even if your cat does go outside, the parasite doesn't become
| infectious until 1 to 5 days after it is shed in a cat's feces,
| so if you're cleaning the litter box daily, you're probably
| fine as well
| ali7388 wrote:
| Where I live, streets are littered with stray cats and their
| feces. Every owner says they are "responsible" but numbers
| speak otherwise!
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Wait, so if it sticks around in the cat for just a few weeks,
| is that also true for humans? Or is it permanent for us, and
| cats are just better at getting rid of it?
| marcellus23 wrote:
| I'm not sure. That's based on this excerpt from
| Wikipedia[0]:
|
| > Cats excrete the pathogen in their feces for a number of
| weeks after contracting the disease, generally by eating an
| infected intermediate host that could include mammals (like
| rodents) or birds. Oocyst shedding usually starts from the
| third day after ingestion of infected intermediate hosts,
| and may continue for weeks. The oocysts are not infective
| when excreted. After about a day, the oocyst undergoes a
| process called sporulation and becomes potentially
| pathogenic.
|
| I guess I was not quite correct -- it may be that it sticks
| around longer in the cat, but it is only excreted for a few
| weeks.
|
| 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis#Transmission
| sp332 wrote:
| CDC puts it at over 40 million in the USA, so over 10%.
| https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/index.html
|
| Edit: here's that paper from Tenter et al.
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109627/#__ffn_...
|
| _As a consequence, no two tests produce the same results in
| all cases, even when carried out in the same laboratory
| [45-54]. In addition, prevalence rates vary over time and with
| the age of the individuals included in the study [55-68]._
|
| The strongest thing they were willing to say is that it's
| higher in Latin America and west Africa, and lower in colder
| climates. Here's a direct link to Table 3
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109627/table/T...
| chabons wrote:
| I'm wondering if they controlled for cat ownership (as a likely
| source of infection), or if any of the variation can be
| attributed to the types of people who own cats.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| ive heard that many get it from eating or working with
| contaminated food
| IshKebab wrote:
| Is there any way to tell if you're infected?
| s5300 wrote:
| Do you have any hazy memories of situations eerily similar to
| this?
|
| https://imgur.com/a/OrOtoPu
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I guess I don't have it then, since I don't look like that.
| But that picture is a gem, even if I'd guess it's not very
| scientifically accurate!
| petre wrote:
| Yes, there are IgG and IgM tests given to pregnant women,
| because the parasite can cause miscarriage or stillbirth.
| NickM wrote:
| Suppose this is accurate; how difficult/expensive is it to get
| tested for this, and if you have it, is there a cure?
|
| Regardless of the effects it may or may not have on the brain,
| the paper mentions that "the differences might be side-effects of
| long-term mild inflammatory reaction", and for general health
| reasons I'd certainly prefer not to have permanent long-term mild
| inflammation.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| There are treatments today, but they are mostly exotic drugs
| today because the parasites are thought to be harmless.
|
| Martin Shkreli (pharma bro, however it's spelled) got into a
| lot of hot water for buying up a toxoplasmosa treatment and
| jacking the price by 100x.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Interesting that many scientists now think that any behaviour
| changes are not due to the parasite controlling the brain (which
| is how the parasite spreads in rats and cats!) but due to
| reactions dealing with long term stress caused by the infection.
|
| One could assume that other long term pain that causes stress
| could see the same results in behaviours and the associated sex
| differences.
| ryanklee wrote:
| If it's true that toxoplasmosis is is present in 1/3 - 1/2 of the
| population, I immediately find any specific findings like this
| dubious since the scale of confounding factors must be enormous.
| Yes, they controlled for some, like malnutrition, but that's
| hardly the whole story.
|
| It's way more likely that there is something else (maybe many
| other things!) that explain the correlation.
|
| It's one of those sexy findings that is probably bullshit.
| tomlockwood wrote:
| > It's one of those sexy findings that is probably bullshit.
|
| Yeah and also one that gets highly upvoted on the sites of
| people who think a certain way. Social media really has
| contributed to clickbait confirmation bias brainrot.
| Spivak wrote:
| Yeah but even if it's not a causal relationship it's incredibly
| suggestive. It mirrors my own personal experience and what I've
| seen in others. I'm pretty much a bleeding heart liberal now
| but I used to be super conservative to the point where my
| friends had to sit me down and have an intervention. It matches
| exactly with the time in my life when I was in constant stress,
| horrible mental health, even worse physical health. It really
| was, "I'm incredibly lonely and isolated, people suck and treat
| me like shit, I hate myself, and I have no support why should
| anyone else get it?" Like damn, I never connected the dots.
|
| It took so long to turn my life around that I never even
| noticed the shift. It's so obvious in hindsight jesus.
| ryanklee wrote:
| You had it?
| Spivak wrote:
| If you mean I had support because I used the word friends,
| I use that term pretty loosely. They were my roommates and
| tolerated me up until they were tired of my shit.
|
| Edit: No, sorry, I'm referring to the results section of
| the study where they talk about the fact that this is a
| small slice of a broader picture where toxoplasmosis ->
| stress -> political views. Because that seems like it's the
| "point" of this study. You have a mild chronic condition
| that affects a lot of people pretty much uniformly and adds
| stress. So if you see a difference in infected/not-infected
| then you have a strong case that more stress -> more
| conservative.
|
| > It was suggested by that these associations might be the
| results of a mild chronic stress caused by the
| toxoplasmosis infection instead of the result of the
| toxoplasmosis itself. The presence of a chronic stress not
| only explain the presence of behavioral and political
| differences with the non-infected control group, but also
| the presence of sex differences in these behavior and
| ideologies as different responses to chronic stress in the
| two sexes, involving differences in the immune system
| response and in the coping strategies used
|
| > previous studies showed that infected subjects scored
| lower in novelty seeking, a factor that contributes to a
| conservative and political opinion
| r2_pilot wrote:
| I believe the parent of your response was asking if you
| had been diagnosed with toxoplasmosis, rather than
| support.
| ryanklee wrote:
| No, I mean toxoplasmosis. Your original comment seemed to
| imply you had a personal experience that lent credence to
| the study's result.
| chitowneats wrote:
| [flagged]
| jandrese wrote:
| I thought it was an interesting premise going into the article,
| but the individual results are all over the map, and vary a
| significantly between men and women in the study. Correlating
| those with political affiliation seems dubious to me.
| notahacker wrote:
| Yeah. My initial thought was "it's going to be _very_ hard to
| unpick any possible causal relationship of Toxoplasmosis to
| political affiliation from likely regional and income level
| variation in Toxoplasmosis, and this study doesn 't even
| control for those.
|
| It's also a study with a low number of participants, and none
| of the political factors are statistically significant for
| men _and_ statistically significant for women. Surprised it
| was published tbh, although I guess it 's better to publish
| inconclusive results to interesting hypotheses than encourage
| p-hacking...
| cultureswitch wrote:
| They say specifically that this is actually a point in favor
| of the association. The reason being that men and women deal
| with stress in diametrically opposed ways (they cite two
| other studies) and that being infected increases the stress
| response behaviors in both sexes.
| ineptech wrote:
| I don't follow; doesn't a larger affected population make it
| _easier_ to control for confounds?
| ryanklee wrote:
| If you identify them.
| ineptech wrote:
| I still don't follow. You don't have to control for each
| confounding variable if you select your pool at random,
| like they did here.
| adr1an wrote:
| Getting a random pool works when your size (n) is not so
| many magnitudeblevels below of totalvpopulation (N). For
| example, say we are about to measure X variable on a deer
| population of 10k. If we capture 100 dears, we are good.
| Of we get less, maybe too. But with humans, the
| population is huge. This doesnt mean its impossible.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-02-27 23:02 UTC)