New Scientist - UK (2022-05-14)

18 | New Scientist | 14 May 2022

Animal behaviour

Corryn Wetzel

HUNGRY worms are more willing

than satiated worms to cross a

toxic barrier of copper to reach

the scent of a meal.

To better understand how hunger

changes behaviour, Sreekanth

Chalasani at the Salk Institute in

California and his colleagues turned

to transparent roundworms called

nematodes. They aimed to answer

three key questions: how does

hunger affect what is happening

in the worm’s body, how is that

change relayed to the brain and how

does that ultimately shape choices?

The team placed about

60 nematodes (Caenorhabditis

elegans) on one side of a barrier

made of copper, which is toxic to

them, with the smell of buttered

popcorn wafting over from the

other side. Half of the worms

hadn’t eaten for 3 hours, while the

others had eaten a recent meal.

The team found that some 80 per

cent of the hungry worms crossed

the copper to reach the food

compared with around 20 per

cent of their well-fed counterparts.

When the hungry worms were fed,

they reverted to the less-risky

behaviour of satiated worms.

Using genetic and imaging

analysis, the team showed that

certain proteins in the worms’

intestinal cells may tell the brain

that the gut needs food (PLoS

Genetics, doi.org/hs3n).

“The intestine tells the brain, and

the brain then changes behaviour,”

says Chalasani. “We didn’t expect

that the worm would have this

level of sophistication.”  ❚

Hungry worms will

risk hurt if it helps

them reach a meal

News

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Nematodes take

more risks when

they are hungry

PEOPLE from privileged

groups may misperceive

equality-boosting policies

as harmful to them, even if

they would actually benefit.

Previous studies have

found that advantaged

people often don’t support

interventions that redistribute

their resources to others who

are disadvantaged, in zero-sum

scenarios where there are

limited resources.

Now, researchers have

explored the degree to which

people from privileged groups

think equality-promoting

policies would harm their access

to resources in scenarios where

the strategies would benefit or

have no effect on their group,

while bolstering the resources

of a disadvantaged group.

Derek Brown at the

University of California,

Berkeley, conducted a series of

studies involving a total of more

than 4000 volunteers in the US.

In one study, they

presented white people who

weren’t Hispanic with policies

that didn’t affect their own

privileged group and benefited

a disadvantaged group that they

didn’t belong to: people with

disabilities, those who had

committed a crime in the

past, members of a racial

minority group or women.

Importantly, the researchers

told participants that the

resources – in the form of jobs

or money – were unlimited.

For example, one policy

would direct more money

to mortgage loans for Latino

homebuyers without limiting

how many mortgage loans

were available for white people.

Participants were then

asked to rank how they thought

the policy would affect the

privileged group’s access to

resources on a scale from greatly

harmful to greatly beneficial.

The team found that, on

average, advantaged people

perceived equality-boosting

policies as harmful to their

resource access, even though

they were told that resources

were boundless.

“We find that advantaged

members misperceived these

policies as a sacrifice to their

group, even when that’s not

the case,” says Brown.

The researchers then

asked participants to consider

a win-win scenario involving

equality-promoting policies

that benefited both the

disadvantaged and privileged

groups – but the latter to

a lesser extent. In this case,

most privileged people thought

equality-enhancing policies

with benefits for all would be

more harmful to them than

inequality-enhancing polices

that came at a cost to both

groups (Science Advances,

doi.org/htcg).

“We thought, maybe if we

make a win-win or mutual-

benefit situation, then maybe

[advantaged people] will

see the equality-enhancing

policies as helpful. But they

didn’t,” says Brown.

“It was an ambitious series

of studies that did an excellent

job of ruling out alternative

explanations,” says Dan Meegan

at the University of Guelph,

Canada. “The work paints a

pretty dark picture for those

trying to convince people to

support policies designed to

reduce intergroup inequality.”

However, Brown thinks

education could help to

tackle inequalities by making

people more aware of this

tendency to misperceive

equality-boosting policies that

would actually benefit them.

“It’s pretty troubling what

we found. [But] I think people

have the capacity to believe

in these policies. And I think

there’s a way forward – we

just have to find it,” he says.  ❚

People receiving

food donations at a

mosque in New York

Psychology

Carissa Wong

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Privileged people misjudge

pro-equality policies

“ It’s pretty troubling what

we found, but I think

there is a way forward –

we just have to find it”