Econ_May_05

The scratches on this flake of flint may not look much but they were made with

deliberation by a Neanderthal man or woman. That is the conclusion of Ana Majkic of the

University of Bordeaux and her colleagues, in a paper just published in

PLOS ONE

Majkic’s analysis bears on the question of whether Neanderthals had anything that might

remotely be described as an artistic impulse—a phenomenon many anthropologists

suspect is unique to

Homo sapiens

. The stone in question, about 4cm long, was found in

1925 (though no description of it was published until 2006) in a cave in the Crimea that

also played host to Neanderthal bones. Patterns of scratches on stones used by

Neanderthals are not unusual. They have been found at more than two dozen sites. But

whether those patterns are deliberate or accidental is much debated. Dr Majkic argues for

deliberation in this case because microscopic examination suggests the scratches were

made by two different engraving tools, and also because, despite the flint being small,

the pattern on it is framed by an unscratched area. If the scratches were accidental, some

of them would probably reach the edge.

But is it art?

76 Science and technology

The Economist

May 5th 2018

IPLOMATS theworldover knowthat a

well-chosen turn of phrase can make

or break a negotiation. But the psycholog-

ical effects of different grammatical struc-

tures have not been investigated as thor-

oughly as they might have been. A study

just published in

Psychological Science

, by

Michal Reifen-Tagar and Orly Idan, two re-

searchers at the Interdisciplinary Centre

Herzliya, in Israel, has thrown some light

on the matter. Dr Reifen-Tagar and Dr Idan

have confirmed that a goodway to use lan-

guage to reduce tension is to rely, whenev-

er possible, on nouns rather than verbs.

Dr Idan, a psycholinguist, knew from

previous work that the use of an adjective

instead of a noun in a sentence (“Jewish”

rather than “Jew”, for example) can shape

both judgment and behaviour. Likewise,

Dr Reifen-Tagar, a social psychologist,

knew from her own earlier research that

successful diplomacy often hinges on

managing anger in negotiatingparties. Put-

ting their heads together, they suspected

that employing nouns (“I am in favour of

the removal of settlers”), rather than verbs

(“I am in favour of removing settlers”), to

convey support for policy positionswould

have a calming effect. The one is more like

a statement of an abstract belief. The other

ismore like a prescription of a course of ac-

tion and is thus, they hypothesised, more

likely to arouse emotions.

To test this idea they recruited 129 Jew-

ish-Israeli college students and presented

themwith statements about policies asso-

ciated with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Specifically, these statements concerned Is-

raeli concessions on matters like the re-

lease of Palestinian prisoners, the borders

of Israel, the return to Israel of Palestinian

refugees and the division of Jerusalem.

Half of the statements were given in

noun form (“I support the division of Jeru-

salem”). The other half were given in verb

form (“I support dividing Jerusalem”). Par-

ticipants responded to each on a six-point

scale, where a value of one indicated “I to-

tally disagree” and a value of six indicated

“I totally agree.” All of the statements were

in Hebrew, in which such sentence struc-

tures are natural and acceptable. After each

statement was given, participants were

asked to indicate, also on a six-point scale,

the extent to which they would feel anger

towards the state of Israel if the concession

in questionwere actually granted.

As the researchers had hypothesised,

presenting the statements in noun form re-

duced feelings of anger. Participants so

treated had an average anger score of 3.21,

in contrast to the 3.67 averaged by those

presentedwith verb-form statements. This

is a statistically significant difference. The

noun forms of the statements also in-

creased support for the concessions, with

these scores averaging 2.02, in contrast to

the average of 1.72 scored by participants

presentedwith verb-form statements.

Given these results, Dr Reifen-Tagar and

Dr Idan wondered whether the reduced

anger induced by the noun form would

translate into reduced support for hostile

action toward Palestinians. They therefore

ran the experiment again, having recruited

270 new participants, with additional

statements like “I am in favour of demol-

ishing/the demolition of homes belonging

to familymembers ofthose involved in ter-

rorist activities” and “of cutting off/the cut-

ting offof supply of electricity to Gaza dur-

ingwartime”.

The results were much the same as

those in the earlier experiment. Partici-

pants given the noun-structure statements

again showed notably more support for

concessions. But they also showed much

less enthusiasm for retaliatory policies,

with an average score of 2.92 compared

with the 3.91 averaged by those given verb-

structure statements. Inmatters of conflict,

as in somanyother areas oflife, it turns out

that presentation is everything.

Language

Manners of

speaking

Science looks at the subtleties

of semiotics

LAN TURING was no slouch. He laid

the mathematical groundwork for

modern computing. He led the successful

effort to crack Germany’s Enigma code

during the second world war. And he also,

though it is less well known, made an im-

portant contribution to chemistry with a

paper winningly entitled “The chemical

basis ofmorphogenesis”. In it he described

howthe diffusion of two chemicals that re-

act with each other can, in certain circum-

stances, produce complex patterns of

blobs and striations. These patterns, now

called “Turing structures”, bear an uncan-

ny resemblance to many that are found in

nature: a zebra’s stripes, for example, or a

ladybird’s spots.

The extent to which such processes are

involved in the embryonic development

of animals is debated. But, on a more prac-

tical note, ZhangLinofZhejiangUniversity

in Hangzhou, China, and his colleagues

now hope to turn Turing’s chemical in-

sights to the task of improving desalina-

Chemistry

Howdesalination

got its stripes

Amembrane that can remove salts from

watermore efficiently

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