from Hacker News

East Asian personality may stem from Ice Age Siberia 20000 yrs ago

by kvee on 3/14/25, 7:30 PM with 45 comments

• by nostromo on 3/14/25, 8:04 PM

  > I enthusiastically applied to various PhD programs, but was unceremoniously rejected, and upon reaching out was met with “…engaging in outdated notions of environmental determinism.” “…you’re playing with fire by suggesting evolved cognitive differences… ” “The political climate on our campus is highly unfavorable for these areas of research.” “…this is probably the worst time in history to be studying such topics.” “…you will likely encounter extreme difficulties in securing grants.”

  This is incredibly sad.

• by nis0s on 3/14/25, 8:28 PM

  The claims are poorly substantiated, it’s not enough to make assumptions about something and read about it. You must directly validate a claim by rigorously defining the traits in question, and then find some way to perform measurements—indirect evidence isn’t appropriate to make statements about psychological and personality similarities.

  Note that genetic testing or evidence will be insufficient for proving the type of claim this paper is making because there are too many confounding factors which override biological similarities—that’s the whole issue with nature vs. nurture.

• by zasz on 3/14/25, 8:32 PM

  I too have read Never in Anger, the ethnography mentioned in this blog post, and the way I found it was by reading a survey of egalitarian societies called Hierarchy in the Forest, by Christopher Boehm. Many of the personality traits that the author seems to think are special about people who share the East Asian phenotype are actually common amongst fiercely egalitarian societies. It is normal to highly police socio-emotional expression and to regard angry tribe members with suspicion. The !Kung San live in a hot climate and are like this. The Montenegro Serbs live in the Balkans, a rather different climate, and are also like this. I finished Hierarchy in the Forest with the strong impression that no member of any modern society could tolerate the lack of personal expression required to suppress any would-be chiefs.

  This person could've spent a lot less time going down a rabbit hole with a couple introductory anthropology classes and by asking themselves if there were any societies with these same traits in a warm climate. It is poor scientific reasoning not to check for examples of this personality type in hot climates. Not exactly PhD material.

• by pavel_lishin on 3/14/25, 8:21 PM

  > I then wondered, is this mere coincidence, or do extreme cold/polar environments cause this in people? I recalled Russia had gas workers in the Arctic regions and tried to look up papers on it. It led me down a rabbit hole of discovering entire troves of scientific literature from various nations that had polar programs, with tons of data on polar personnel psychology, most conveniently refined into personnel selection criteria that shows which traits are the most desirable in candidates for polar work or expeditions.

  Cause it in individuals? Or select for it through evolution?

  If the former, there's no genetic component here, and the effect should vanish as soon as you get somewhere warm.

  If it's the latter, then it can't cause it in individuals who happen to work there over local-winter, right?

• by fliglr on 3/14/25, 8:50 PM

  Per David Reich: >10-20% of the ancestors of Eurasian people are neanderthal

  >West African populations have up to 19% "Ghost DNA", belonging to an extinct species their ancestors interbred with

  >Southeast Asians have DNA of the extinct Denisovan species, as much as 3-5% in the aboriginal people of Papua New Guinea, Australia, the Philippines

  >These aboriginals also have DNA belonging to a now extinct, but not yet discovered hominid species

  I'm sure the implications of all these findings have not yet been discovered but it's exciting to see them explored

• by bondarchuk on 3/14/25, 8:13 PM

  Direct link to the article this is about: https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2025-88410-001.html ("Arctic Instincts? The Late Pleistocene Arctic Origins of East Asian Psychology")

• by kelvinjps10 on 3/14/25, 8:30 PM

  But peruvians are not cold and their personality/culture is not similar to east Asian?

• by ChrisArchitect on 3/14/25, 8:33 PM

  Title is: The Origins of Arcticism Theory: A Fateful Encounter in Peru

• by nobodyandproud on 3/16/25, 5:13 PM

  It’s a shame this was downvoted and flagged.

  The author did themselves a disservice by not filtering some of the bitterness of their journey, because the opening story was fascinating and hints at something worth exploring.

  The constructive criticism would be better served as a follow-up post.

• by paulluuk on 3/14/25, 8:22 PM

  I can't judge whether this is a good paper or not, and I think it's really cool that someone with only a bachelors degree (like myself) can get a paper published without first doing a PhD.

  However, the anti-"woke" part of this article seems so odd to me. Given all the wacky "science" from Nazi scientists that "research" differences between races leading to genocide, it seems completely logical to me that you jump through several hoops and make sure your research is really sound before you publish a paper that explores exactly that topic.