|
Genetics and Behavior
Written and researched by Bob Murray, PhD
Latest News |
Back Issues | Get updates:
Subscribe Now
Women Sniff Out Ideal Mates
January 23, 2002
Researchers have discovered that women are attracted to men whose body odor is similar to their father's. The theory is that a man who smells similar to a woman's father is likely to have a compatible immune system.
The natural odors that all humans produce are called pheromones. They are influenced to a degree by a cluster of genes related to the immune system called the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC).
Previous research found that women prefer the smell of men who have different immune system genes from their own. This was thought to ensure that their offspring have as wide a range of immune response genes -- and therefore greater protection against infection -- as possible.
However, the new results show that the odor selection of women is even more finely tuned than was previously thought.
A total of 49 unmarried women were tested by asking them to smell T-shirts worn by men for two consecutive nights. The researchers, led by Dr Martha McClintock from the University of Chicago, found that women preferred men with a genetic smell somewhat the same -- but not identical -- to their own.
"We had men wear the t-shirts at night while they were sleeping, so the scents that we collected were really quite mild. They would be like what you would smell on someone's pillow or sheet," Dr McClintock said.
Analysis showed a significant correlation with odor components produced by immune system genes inherited from the women's fathers. The scientists suggest that being attracted to some of father's gene smells may be a safe gamble for a woman to ensure her offspring gets a tried and tested immune system.
On the other hand, she would also want enough different genes to give her baby a wide range of immune responses. Being attracted to men who smell slightly, but not too much, like her father represented a good compromise. Dr McClintock said the whole process seemed to work on an unconscious level.
"These scents were not detectable as human scents. The women knew they were scents, but had no idea that they were human scents."
It seems that humans are no different to other animals. Research in mice has shown that females prefer males that are just slightly unfamiliar over those that are either very familiar or very unfamiliar.
Read more in Nature
Top of page
Defending the Theory of Evolution Still Seems Needed
January 7, 2002
A biology professor who serves as president of the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) is leading a nationwide effort to "defend" the theory of evolution.
Rutgers-Newark Biology Professor Judith S Weis leads the effort in the face of what the institute views as opposition and indifference from school boards and government entities.
The Institute believes that the teaching of evolution in America is being diminished by the teaching of creationism as well as by an overall lack of teaching Darwin's theory in high school.
According to Prof Weis, "There's nothing that requires schools to teach evolution. Sometimes teachers in high schools just leave it out. However, from the point of view of biologists, evolution is the central theory of biology upon which everything is based. Unfortunately, teaching evolution has become a political issue in many parts of the country and AIBS, as a representative of biologists, wanted to be a major force speaking out in favor of its teaching."
Evolution has been accepted by scientists for nearly 100 years, Weis said, and has been refined, extended and strengthened over the years by findings in paleontology and developmental biology.
Discoveries in genetics, molecular biology and genomics -- all of which provide significant benefits for human health -- would not be possible without the underlying knowledge of evolution. Nonetheless, evolution remains a politically, if not scientifically, controversial issue.
Weis said that this year alone, seven states have had either local or statewide efforts to water down the teaching of evolution, or "balance" it with the teaching of creationism -- a religious belief that different species were created separately by a higher power, such as God. States with such efforts included Arkansas, Michigan, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Georgia and Hawaii.
"Rarely does anyone now use the word 'creationism,' because that's too obvious," Weis said. "The current terminology is 'intelligent design.' Efforts to teach evolution as a theory, not a fact, reflect misconceptions about the nature of science. A theory in science is not just a speculation or a guess, but a concept with a large amount of information supporting it," Weis said. "I see a core part of my field as being under attack. Polls have shown that a majority of people do not understand the theory of evolution and others show that people do not accept evolution theory because teachers do not teach it," Weis said.
"When confronted with the possibility of local objections," she said, "some teachers find it easier to not teach the subject."
Read more in Uniscience
Top of page
Brain Gets Rest When Hands Do Talking
December 8, 2001
In the study, published in the journal Psychological Science, researchers put 26 children and 32 adults who were observed to use gestures through a five- step exercise. First, they solved age-appropriate math problems. Second, they were given a list of items to memorize. Third, they were asked to explain how they had solved the math problems. Fourth, they were tested on their recall of the memorized items. Finally, they were asked to give the explanation again, this time keeping their hands still on a tabletop, and were tested again.
The researchers, led by Dr Susan Goldin-Meadow, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago, found that people who were allowed to gesture recalled on average 20 percent more items than people who were not.
Another author, Dr Howard Nussbaum, explained that the purpose of making the participants explain their math reasoning was to increase their cognitive load, the amount of work their brain had to do in addition to remembering the list of items. "These findings suggest that gesture reduces the cognitive load of explanation, freeing capacity that can be used on a memory task at the same time," he said.
Dr Goldin-Meadow said the findings could help explain why even blind people gesture and why people gesture when talking on the phone.
Communication through sign-language undoubtedly pre-dates spoken communication by millions of years. Our use of hand gestures is probably an evolutionary hold-over from our pre-verbal past. BM
Read more in the New York Times
Top of page
Early Humans Missed Out on Adolescence
December 8, 2001
The long period of development leading up to a modern human's adulthood arose relatively late in our evolutionary history, according to an analysis of growth patterns in fossil teeth in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
The article was written by Christopher Dean of University College, London, and colleagues including Alan Walker, distinguished professor of anthropology and biology at Penn State.
"One of the things that sets modern humans apart from the living great apes is our long period of growth and development," Dean explains. "While humans take a good 18 to 20 years to grow up, other primate species like chimpanzees and gorillas take just 11 or 12 years."
The research was designed to determine when the prolonged growth period we have today arose during our long evolutionary history. "Dental development is a good measure of overall growth and development," says Walker, who pioneered the study of living primates as a basis for the analysis of fossils and was one of the first to use scanning electron microscope studies of fossil teeth.
Walker adds, "Teeth grow in an incremental manner like trees or shells, preserving a record of their growth with daily marks along the prisms that make up the enamel."
By making thin sections of modern and fossil teeth, the researchers were able to count the daily incremental markings within the enamel of humans, apes, and fossil "hominid" species in the human lineage in order to calculate and compare their rates of enamel formation.
"Of the 13 fossil tooth fragments we studied -- both those attributed to the earliest australopith hominids that lived roughly between 4 and 1 million years ago, and those of the earliest members of our own Homo genus that lived about 1.5 million years ago -- none showed the slower pattern of modern human enamel growth," says Walker.
"We found that the first dental evidence for a modern human-like growth period appears much more recently, in a Neanderthal fossil that lived about 120,000 years ago."
The results are surprising because researchers had expected that Homo erectus -- the first fossil human ancestor to show a suite of modern human-like characteristics including body proportions, body weight, and small teeth and jaws -- would show evidence of a modern human-like growth period.
However, because the brain in Homo erectus was still not as large as a modern human's and because a long growth period is linked with the time needed to grow and learn to use a large brain, the researchers say these findings are compatible with predictions that could be made on the basis of brain size alone.
Read more in Nature online
Top of page
Altruism, Heroism and Human Evolution
September 21, 2001
Much has been written (see our news item "The Mind of a Suicide Terrorist") about the workings of the terrorist mind. However, little has been said about the psychological basis behind the enormous heroism and altruism shown by the firefighters and policemen of New York City and the passengers aboard the doomed highjacked airliner which ploughed into a field near Pittsburgh.
What is altruism and why do we humans have it? What is it that makes some of us go into situations of great danger to rescue others with scant regard for our own safety?
Evolutionary biologists tell us that altruism predates humanity. Today it can be found in a wide variety of species from insects to birds to primates. Even dinosaurs probably had a streak of altruism in their genetic make-up since it is a very useful trait for the survival and propagation of a species, and dinosaurs were very successful.
"There's a general trend in evolutionary biology toward recognizing that very often the best way to compete is to cooperate," Dr Barbara Smuts, a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, was quoted in the New York Times (Sept 18, 2001) as saying. "And that, to me, is a source of some solace and comfort."
Humans can be more altruistic than other species because we can communicate using language. We can use it to reinforce the genetically-based tendency toward altruism, we can identify the good guys from the bad, we can encourage and praise those who go into danger to protect us.
According to Dr Craig Packer, a professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Minnesota (again quoted in the Times); "People are very concerned about their reputation, and that can inspire us to be good. There's a grandness in the human species that is so striking, and so profoundly different from what we see in other animals," he added. "We are an amalgamation of families working together. This is what civilization is derived from."
But this sense of altruism can be very limited. It often does not spread past those who we perceive of as being part of our tribe. We can be altruistic towards the people of New York and at the same time have little concern for the huddled masses in Afghanistan or Iraq. In our minds these people are different, and that part of us which displays altruism as a means of preserving our own genetic kin can turn violently against those who we feel are not part of our family.
"Moral behavior is often a within-group phenomenon," said Dr David Sloan Wilson, a professor of biology at the State University of New York at Binghamton. "Altruism is practised within your group, and often turned off toward members of other groups."
Biologically, altruism springs from the desire to protect one's young and pass on one's genes. But one's genes are shared by other members of one's pack, hive or family. By protecting them we are helping to pass on our genetic inheritance. This is true of worker bees, subordinate gorillas or human beings.
Dr Richard Wrangham, a primatologist at Harvard, cites the example of the red colobus monkey. When they are being hunted by chimpanzees, the male monkeys are "amazingly brave," Dr Wrangham said. "As the biggest and strongest members of their group, they undoubtedly could escape quicker than the others." Instead, the males jump to the front, confronting the chimpanzee hunters while the mothers and offspring jump to safety. Often, the much bigger chimpanzees pull the colobus soldiers off by their tails and slam them to their deaths."
There have been studies which have shown that the path of enmity can begin as soon as perceived differences, even quite small ones, are made. This enmity can be exploited by using the very altruism that is within our DNA. An example of this comes from ancient Constantinople, where there were two feuding political parties -- the Reds and the Greens. There was absolutely no real ideological difference between them yet their rivalry led to riots and destruction. There are records of individuals showing great bravery in defending the members of 'their' party and perfidy in attacking and 'terrorizing' the other. Fanatical Reds and altruistic Reds versus fanatical and altruistic Blues. Through all this the emperor and the imperial court (who had set up the parties in the first place and financed both) were able to maintain power.
As has been noted in another place ("Book of Hope" by Ati pub. European American Publishing, 1994, pp 179) creating differences and exploiting both valour and fanaticism begins as early as kindergarten through "team sports, class competitions, examinations and so forth. Once this concept of 'them and us' is introduced some very nasty things start to happen. The child's tolerance of others decreases, he or she thinks of him or herself as part of a small group of 'us' surrounded by a hostile 'them.'"
Nevertheless there is hope.
Dr James J. Moore, a professor of anthropology at the University of California at San Diego, said he had studied many species, including many different primates. "We're the nicest species I know," he said. "To see those guys risking their lives, climbing over rubble on the chance of finding one person alive, well, you wouldn't find baboons doing that." The horrors of last week notwithstanding, he said, "the overall picture to come out about human nature is wonderful."
"For every 50 people making bomb threats now to mosques," he said, "there are 500,000 people around the world behaving just the way we hoped they would, with empathy and expressions of grief. We are amazingly civilized."
Our philosophy asserts that the tendency toward harmony in nature and altruism in humans far outweighs disharmony and division. We have all watched as people in the aftermath of the tradgedy in New York, once disconnected and isolated from one another, are reaching out to help one another and share their experiences. We are hoping through our teaching and techniques to help create a society where no-one around you is a stranger and we can all understand and embody the benefits of cooperation. AF
Read more in The New York Times
Read more in the "Book of Hope" by Ati. Pub: European American Publishing, 1994
Top of page
Social Conscience Came Early
September 21, 2001
A jawbone discovered by a Washington University team in France has shown that care for the elderly and disabled may have been around a lot longer than we thought. The discovery of a jawbone scarred by severe gum disease hints that a toothless early human got by with a little help from his friends.
Minus teeth, unable to chew his or her food, the owner of the deformed jawbone nonetheless survived "for at least several months," estimates anthropologist Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. "Chewing had worn the bone that had re-grown to fill the tooth sockets. This individual was preferentially getting the soft bits [of food] or was getting help," says Trinkaus. His research team discovered the mandible in France.
This level of social awareness was thought to have originated about 50 thousand years ago among our thickset cousins the Neanderthals. The jawbone pushes the date for collaborative survival way back -- about 175 and 200 thousand years ago.
"It suggests pre-Neanderthals had significant elements of fully human behaviour," says Chris Stringer, an archaeologist at the Natural History Museum in London. But it doesn't tell us exactly when caring for other group members first evolved.
While sociable, there's no evidence that our common ancestors, primates, care for sick or disabled members of their social groups. Studies indicate that they starve after losing their teeth, according to Trinkaus.
My own feeling is that the uniquely human ability to care for sick or wounded members of our species probably arose with language. Language enables us to feel more acutely the pain and suffering of another person and to put ourselves more fully in that person's place. By extension we have transferred this feeling to our pets. It is almost certain that our ancestor, homo erectus, who evolved long before the neanderthals, had at least a primitive language and it may be that the ability to empathize and care for others began with that species of human. BM
Read more in Nature
Top of page
Are We Setting Ourselves up for the Disaster That Befell the Pharoahs?
August 8, 2001
We have, perhaps, become enured to the effects that climate change can have. In our centrally-heated homes and air conditioned offices we tend to think that we are safe from global warming or the looming next ice-age. In reality both will come and both will unutterably change our world. The only real question is which will come first.
Just how devastating climate change can be is revealed in a new BBC-TV series called Ancient Apocalypse to be broadcast in the UK shortly (and presumably shown on PBS in the US and the ABC in Australia).
Four thousand two hundred years ago, the first great civilisation in Egypt collapsed. The pharaohs of the Egyptian Old Kingdom had built the mightiest legacy of the ancient world -- the pyramids at Giza. But after nearly a thousand years of stability, central authority disintegrated and the country collapsed into chaos for more than a 100 years.
What happened, and why, has remained a huge controversy. But Professor Fekri Hassan, from University College London, UK, wanted to solve the mystery, by gathering together scientific clues. His inspiration was the little known tomb in southern Egypt of a regional governor, Ankhtifi. The hieroglyphs there reported "all of Upper Egypt was dying of hunger to such a degree that everyone had come to eating their children."
Dismissed as exaggeration and fantasy by most other Egyptologists, Fekri was determined to prove the writings were true and accurate. He also had to find a culprit capable of producing such misery.
"My hunch from the beginning was that it had to do with the environment in which the Egyptians lived." Fekri felt sure the Nile, the river that has always been at the heart of Egyptian life, was implicated. He studied the meticulous records, kept since the 7th Century, of Nile floods. He was amazed to see that there was a huge variation in the size of the annual Nile floods -- the floods that were vital for irrigating the land.
But no records existed for 2,200BC. Then came a breakthrough -- a new discovery in the hills of neighbouring Israel. Mira Bar-Matthews of the Geological Survey of Israel had found a unique record of past climates, locked in the stalactites and stalagmites of a cave near Tel Aviv.
What they show is a sudden and dramatic drop in rainfall, by 20%. It is the largest climate event in 5,000 years. And the date? 2,200 BC.
As Israel and Egypt are in different weather systems, Fekri needed evidence of some worldwide climate event to link this to the collapse of the Old Kingdom. And the evidence came out of the blue. Geologist Gerard Bond, of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, US, looks for climate evidence in the icebergs of Iceland. As they melt on their journey south, they leave shards of volcanic ash on the ocean floor. How far they travelled before melting tells him how cold it was. Cores of mud from the ocean floor revealed to him regular periods of extreme cold -- mini ice ages -- in Europe every 1,500 years, and lasting 200 years. And one mini ice age occurred at 2,200 BC.
Gerard's colleague, Peter de Menocal, looked at climate records for the rest of the world at exactly the same time. From pollen records to sand, the story was the same -- a dramatic climate change from Indonesia to the Mediterranean, Greenland to North America.
Scientists were confirming everything Fekri believed -- severe climate change causing widespread human misery 4,200 years ago, misery we are only now learning about for the first time.
By my reckoning we are about due for the next =ce-age now, but we may be saved by global warming! On a more serious note we humans are a product of climate variation and the most successful societies are those which learn to adapt best to climate change. The Egyptians couldn't adapt, nor could the Norse settlers in Greenland when faced by a similar mini ice-age. Our political barriers, or migration policies, our concepts of ownership of goods and land and even our relationships, make our society very rigid and susceptible to climatic disaster. BM
Read more on BBC News
Top of page
Garden of Delights for Care Home
August 8, 2001
The sensory sensations of a special garden are being enjoyed by residents at a care home for people with dementia. The garden, which stimulates all five senses, includes scented flowers, wind chimes, water features and herbs that crackle under foot.
It was the idea of Chris Rowlands, the charge nurse who runs the home. Before the garden was developed, it boasted just a solitary patch of daffodils.
But Mr Rowlands said a course he attended outlined the benefits of a sensory garden for patients with dementia. He took the ideas back to Bredon House, home to 19 dementia sufferers at Bupa's Court House care home in Malvern, Worcestershire in England. With the help of colleagues and gardener John Whitehead, he transformed the garden at a cost of just $3,000.
Mr Rowlands told BBC News Online: "Before we built this, it was unsafe and residents were unable to walk out there. Now they really enjoy it."
The garden has 'mock orange' flowers -- which as their name suggests smell fruity -- lilac, honeysuckle and jasmine. Thyme is built into cracks in the patio so that it crackles when residents walk on it, releasing the scent of the herb. Mr Rowlands said: "One of the consequences of Alzheimer's Disease is that people wander, now they can wander in this garden. It helps them relax."
He said research was being carried out into the effects of aromatherapy on dementia, with jasmine recognised as being effective in calming agitation.
The garden, developed over three months earlier this year, has also been designed so that wherever residents sit, they are facing into the garden so they do not feel enclosed.
As an evolutionary psychologist, I think I've got a handle on how aromatherapy works. Our ancestors came from the jungle and the savannah. We are genetically programmed to react to the natural scents of those environments. The scent deprivation of modern sanitized environments may well have a profoundly negative effect on those areas of our brains which specialize in emotions. This lack of natural sensory experience may contribute to a number of disorders, including depression and dementia. BM
Read more on BBC News
Top of page
Gorillas: Now You See Them, Now You Don't
July 30, 2001
Two stories from National Geographic highlight the dilemma facing researchers seeking to find out more about this species and, because they are our very close cousins, about ourselves.
Gorilla society, in many ways, reveals the origin of facets of human society which otherwise might be difficult to explain. For example it has long been known that step children are in more danger of abuse by a step parent -- especially from a step father -- than natural children. The same is true in gorilla society where a newly dominant male will often kill all of the juvenile off-spring of the previously dominant male. Genetic imperatives are at work in our society as they are in primate ones. We need to understand these evolutionary origins of our behavior if we are to work out strategies to better cope with stressful situations.
Some of the mating displays that primates use can be seen reflected in our own courtship behavior, and indeed, perhaps, in our own use of language. Take the phrase 'to make a splash.' I wouldn't swear that the origin of this comes from male gorilla courtship rituals, but some interesting research hints at a fascinating connection.
Scientists have found that male gorillas in the forests of northern Congo (Brazzaville) deliberately splash about in swampland clearings to intimidate their competitors in the battle to woo female companions. The discovery is the first evidence of a wild animal using its body to manipulate water for a visual effect.
"If you see a 160-kilogram (353-pound) silverback charging into the river, you are unlikely to lead to the conclusion that he is bathing," said Richard Parnell, a primate researcher at the University of Stirling, in Scotland. "It is a very forceful display."
Parnell and his colleague Hannah Buchanan-Smith studied the behavior of western lowland gorillas at Mbeli Bai, a swampy clearing in the Congo where at least 14 gorilla families come to feed. The gorillas visit the area regularly to eat aquatic herbs, some of which are high in sodium. The frequency of those visits makes the site a good place for researchers to observe the gorillas and study the interactions among families and individuals.
The insight they acquired is especially intriguing because researchers have generally found it difficult to get close to western lowland gorillas in the dense forests of the Congo, so knowledge about their social behavior is quite limited.
From their observations at Mbeli Bai, the researchers discovered that the wide-open swampland was more than just a feeding ground. In human terms, this is a pick up joint. "The Bai is a great place to check out females," said Parnell.
To strengthen his chances of being chosen by a female, a male often intimidates other males by heartily displaying his splashing prowess. The behavior is so pronounced the researchers could observe it from a fairly long distance. Our males have their own displays: think John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever).
"We are pretty confident that the behavior is tied to aggressive display where the male gorilla is saying something about himself, announcing his presence and saying he is not to be messed with," said Parnell. Among the splashing displays is one rather like the "cannonball" which young humans use to make a large splash in a swimming pool.
In a paper in the July 16 issue of Nature describing their splashing study, the scientists said: "We anticipate that gorillas, maligned as cognitively poor cousins to the other great apes, will emerge from further bai studies as adaptable, innovative, and intelligent creatures that exploit a complex environment."
The problem is that we may not have the time to carry out those studies.
There are about 110,000 gorillas living in the wild today, most of them highly threatened by the illegal trade in bush meat. At the current rates of hunting, within 5 to 15 years the only viable populations of any of the great apes will be in protected areas, such as national parks, according to Cristina Ellis, director of Africa Programs for the Jane Goodall Institute in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Bush meat, or the meat of wild animals, is seen in some cultures as a high-status and often traditional source of protein, according to conservationists. Most of the animals hunted and killed in the bush are transported to urban markets, where primate meat is sought by growing populations.
The trade in bush meat has often been linked with the logging industry. As timber concessions are established in previously undisturbed forest, animals that dwell in the surrounding area especially large mammals are killed to both feed the workers and be sold in the cities.
Some progress is being made by joint efforts by conservation groups and logging companies to stem the slaughter, but the underlying problem is over-exploitation of the environment and over-population.
Read more in National Geographic online
Top of page
Rape Often Leads to Pregnancy
July 10, 2001
Quite a few studies have shown that women are more likely to become pregnant through intercourse with someone who is not their normal partner. In fact one recent study concluded that about 25% of all babies born to married couples were fathered by someone other than the husband.
Now a new study shows that rape may have evolved from an evolutionarily successful reproductive strategy. In fact a single act of rape may be more than twice as likely to make a woman pregnant as a single act of consensual sex.
That statistic could help to explain why men raping women has been so common throughout history and across cultures, according to two US researchers who presented work at the Human Behaviour and Evolution Conference in London, UK.
Previous studies found that rates of pregnancy resulting from rape could be anything up to 30 percent, compared to a two to four percent chance of getting pregnant from a single act of consensual sex. This led some biologists, notably Randy Thornhill from the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque, to parade the figures as evidence that rape is a natural way for men to spread their genes.
Jon Gottschall, a researcher at St Lawrence University in Canton, New York, says the studies failed to answer the crucial question: "What is the evolutionary success of rapists?" To find out, he and his wife Tiffany Gottschall examined the results of National Violence Against Women Survey, a study by the US National Institute of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The women studied were phoned at random and interviewed about their experiences.
The Gottschalls focused on 405 women who had suffered a single incidence of penile-vaginal rape at some point between the ages of 12 and 45. Of these, 6.4 per cent became pregnant. But that figure jumped to nearly eight per cent when the researchers allowed for the women who'd been using birth control.
It really does seem, according to the study's authors, that rape really does result in more pregnancies.
One possibility is that women feel more attractive and sexy when ovulating, and unconsciously give off signals that rapists might pick up -- although it's unclear whether men do in fact notice these signals. Another, more likely, explanation is that rapists target attractive and healthy-looking women -- both characteristics that can indicate fertility. But whatever the reason, say the researchers, none of this absolves the rapist or means the victim is in some way to blame.
One other question remains unanswered. For this form of rape to be a successful evolutionary strategy, the benefits of the crime have to outweigh the costs for the rapist. And the costs are extremely hard to judge. However, some surveys suggest that less than one per cent of rapists are convicted in the US, says Jon Gottschall. Even in traditional societies, a high proportion of rapists may have never been punished because of the costs to the victim of reporting the crime.
Rape may have been a successful and, in a sense perhaps, necessary evolutionary strategy at a time when hunter-gatherer bands were small and the danger of inbreeding was high. Rape then was more likely a case of the capture of females from another band and forcing them to 'marry' one of the men. Personally I think that modern rape has more to do with the need of some men for a sense of empowerment in a very disempowering society. BM
Read more in New Scientist
Top of page
RELATED LINKS
Check our event schedule for workshops and seminars.
About the Author
Dr Bob Murray is a widely published psychologist and expert on emotional health and optimal relationships. Together with his wife and long-term collaborator Alicia Fortinberry, he is founder of the highly successful Uplift Program, and author of Raising an Optimistic Child (McGraw-Hill, 2006) and Creating Optimism (McGraw-Hill, 2004).
Do you like our site? Recommend this page to a friend!
|
