Effects of Latent Toxoplasmosis on Political Beliefs and Values
journals.sagepub.com
journals.sagepub.com
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.
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...
It took so long to turn my life around that I never even noticed the shift. It's so obvious in hindsight jesus.
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
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.
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.
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.
One could assume that other long term pain that causes stress could see the same results in behaviours and the associated sex differences.
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.
> Infected women scored higher in tribalism and lower in cultural liberalism
> 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...
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.
"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)."
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...
- 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
> 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.
The only reason they didn't die on the streets was because we're under lockdown at the moment. So instead dying on the streets, they died indoors.
s/study/internet poll/g
> 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.
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.