Synchronicity

"Piping Lover"--Wednesday, 4/13/16

I found this inspiration photo on Audrey's site quite a while back.  I could have done something more similar, staying true to the pieces/silhouette of this look, but chose to focus on the colors instead of creating yet another grey leopard sweater dress weekend outfit.

From puttingmetogether.com

I'm kind of crazy about these maroon pants right now, so that's where I started.

Grey leopard blouse (JNY), $5.85/wear
Black tipped blazer (JNY), $5.45/wear
Black/burgundy bead necklace by RB
Maroon pants (thrifted, Lands End), $2.62/wear
Black suede Oxfords (thrifted, Munro American), $0.71/wear

Outfit total: $14.63/wear

I initially tried it with a black cardigan but it didn't work right with the top, which I thought needed more structure.  Tipped blazer for the win!  (I loved this outfit.)

I'm glad I didn't have to call this outfit "Piping Hot."  It was warm today (currently 68 F) but not so warm that I overheated in these layers.  Though maybe I did immediately remove my blazer, shoes, and socks when I got home from work.

Did you catch that this outfit name is a nod to this lovely (endangered) bird?  He's got the whole black/white/grey thing going with bright legs--his are more true orange than my maroon, but still.  (The bird is named for its "melodic mating call" rather than the edging on its jacket.  As you'll notice from this photo, piping plovers do not typically wear jackets in the wild, though they do wear chokers.)
 

The Piping Plover, from allaboutbirds.org

In other news...Tam sent this article about some recent experiments finding that people who grew up poor eat the same amount of snack food when they (1) are full as when they are hungry, (2) had just drunk a caloric soft drink as when they had a glass of water, and (3) had high blood glucose as when they had low blood glucose.  People who grew up in higher socioeconomic settings differed in their snacking behavior based on their hunger level, the caloric value of the beverage, and their blood glucose level.

Interestingly, the experimenters measured participants' childhood socioeconomic status and current socioeconomic status, expecting both SES metrics to relate to snacking behaviors.  However, only childhood SES was a predictor of the "snacking when not hungry" behaviors they observed.

I am skeptical of this line of argument: 

Hill [one of the experimenters] posits that growing up in poorer households, which tend to have less educated parents, could lead to less of an awareness of one's body and the changes that it undergoes. "If they aren't in tune with their bodies, they might not be in tune with their bodily needs," she said. "And that's kind of what the results suggest."

I'm not sure why parents' education level would have such a strong influence of a child's (now adult's) awareness of bodily needs.  Perhaps I underestimate the extent to which "listening to one's body" is explicitly taught or something but it doesn't seem like having a lower education level would make you not understand the relationship between eating and hunger.  I mean, babies can do it, you know?

I find Hill's second suggestion more plausible:

There might also be a form of conditioning that's tied to the actual circumstances in which poorer families encounter and experience food. For those who never had to worry about a meal, foregoing a snack is no big deal—it's an afterthought. But for those who did, it could mean the difference between a good night's sleep and hours awake in bed.

To me it makes sense that ignoring one's current hunger level/recent caloric intake when deciding whether to eat makes a lot of sense if you grew up in a food insecure environment.  If you don't feel certain at a deep level that whenever you get hungry, you can eat, it seems reasonable to eat when you can.  It's easy to see how over time one could develop a dominant response to food that is EAT IT NOW.

It was a little difficult to follow Traci Mann's argument (I think that is due to the necessity of making it brief for the news article, not because I think her argument is inherently confusing) but I read it as saying that caloric deprivation due to low financial resources in childhood can have the same effect on one's body's biological responses to food as other forms of caloric deprivation, such as chronic dieting.  (Note: Traci Mann is a professor in the psych department at my PhD university.)

I was a little surprised that they didn't quote anyone in the article taking an explicitly evolutionary psychology perspective on this, as it is entirely in line with previous research grounded in life-history theory. 

This theory, applicable to both animal and human behavior, posits that individuals vary in the degree to which they take a "slow" or "fast" strategy to life.  Rabbits are the classic "fast" strategy animal--they develop quickly, sexually mature at a young age, have a lot of sex, have a lot of babies, invest relatively little in those babies, etc.  Humans as a group are on the "slow" strategy end of things.  But while we can categorize different species of animals as being on a faster or slower track, obviously individuals within a species differ along this continuum as well, and early life environments are considered a key factor in whether an individual is "slower" or "faster." 

So I thought the findings of this study were predictable from this previous behavioral research from a life-history perspective.  For example, research has found that people from harsher early life environments (i.e. low childhood SES) can be more impulsive, more risk taking, more approach-oriented toward tempting options, etc. 

And then I went to the link to the news release and found, Oh, one of my professors from my PhD program is a co-author of this paper, so I feel quite confident that life-history theory is actually the guiding theory of this work.

Then I went to his website to see if he had the manuscript available, which he did.  I downloaded it.  The first words of the abstract are "Life history theory predicts..."  Hah!

I guess I did learn a few things in grad school after all.

And to bring it all together for you, here is a recent PhD dissertation which examines Great Lakes piping plovers from, among other things, a life-history theory perspective.  (Note: as a further synchronicity, the author graduated from the same university I was at for my PhD program!)