Learn about how certain fonts can send political messages; why the “first instinct fallacy” says you shouldn’t always go with your first instinct; and why DNA and RNA are just two of millions of possible genetic molecules.
Learn about how certain fonts can send political messages; why the “first instinct fallacy” says you shouldn’t always go with your first instinct; and why DNA and RNA are just two of millions of possible genetic molecules.
Fonts can send political messages by Kelsey Donk
The "first instinct fallacy" says your gut response isn't always right by Steffie Drucker
DNA and RNA are only two of millions of possible genetic molecules by Grant Currin
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/fonts-can-send-political-messages-dont-always-trust-your-first-instinct-and-nucleic-acids-beyond-dna-and-rna
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about how certain fonts can send political messages; why you shouldn’t always go with your first instinct; and why DNA and RNA are just two of millions of possible genetic molecules.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Here’s something weird: certain fonts can send political messages.
A little while ago, a researcher at Virginia Tech named Katherine Haenshen [like “Hansen” with an “sh”] noticed that a local political candidate used different fonts on their signs in rural areas than they did in town. As a political messaging expert, she wondered why — was there something different about the fonts that worked best with people in the city versus people in the country?
So Haenshen turned that question into a research project. She and her team surveyed more than two thousand people to find out what they thought of various typefaces, and whether they thought fonts lined up with political ideologies. Sure enough, they found that fonts can send political messages. People see fonts as having liberal or conservative leanings. And the more people think a font aligns with their thinking, the more they’ll like it.
Here’s the breakdown. Fonts come in two basic varieties: serif and sans-serif. A serif is a little line or stroke at the end of a letter — think Times New Roman, or your classic typewriter font. The stuff you see in newspapers. Sans serif fonts are the ones without serifs, so like Arial, Helvetica, or the Merriweather Sans of the Curiosity logo. Or just look at your keyboard right now; chances are the letters are in a sans serif style. The study showed that generally speaking, serif fonts are considered more conservative, and sans-serif fonts are seen as more liberal. Bold type is seen as more conservative than italic type.
But there are some differences within font families. For example, the highly serifed “blackletter” typeface you usually see on the masthead of the New York Times and the Washington Post was seen as more liberal by conservative participants. The important thing is that the more people viewed a font as aligned with their ideology, the more they liked it, and vice versa.
Basically, this research shows that fonts have meaning, and they’re not just all about looks. So as the 2020 election heats up, maybe take a closer look at those lawn signs and billboards. Design has a bigger impact than you think.
Pop quiz: When you’re taking a multiple-choice test and you have second thoughts about a previous answer, should you change it or stick with your first instinct? Many students, teachers, and even test-prep books would say you should stick with your original choice — but that’s flat-out wrong. Science says that if you have second thoughts, go back and change your answer.
Our impulse to follow our first instinct is super strong. Seventy-five percent of students and more than half of college instructors surveyed believe that changing your answer in this situation tends to lower your score. But decades of studies have shown that test-takers who change answers they’re unsure of usually improve their scores, not lower them. That second thought is usually right.
So what’s causing the disparity here? One possible explanation is something called the “endowment bias.” That’s where we feel more attached to things we already have, like an answer that’s already on the page. There’s also the tendency for counterfactual thinking — basically, thinking about how things might have been different if you’d made another choice. Getting wrong answers on a test is normal, so a wrong first choice ordinarily doesn’t stick out in your memory. But when you abandon your first choice and turn out to be wrong, you remember that as an error that almost didn’t happen. The frustrating emotions attached to that memory make it more vivid, so it seems like these errors happen more often than they do.
So how do you know when to stick to your guns? It involves some self-reflection.
A 2015 study that had students note their level of confidence for each answer in an exam found that the students had a good sense of their accuracy in the moment. But after the exam, their perception of how they’d done was WAY off. That suggests that if you can record how you feel about an answer in the moment instead of relying on your feelings afterward, you can better judge whether to change your answer or stick to your guns.
Our brains are sometimes too focused on protecting us from mistakes to see things the way they really are. But if you know that and learn ways to work around it, you AND your brain can be more successful.
DNA and RNA aren’t the only molecules that can store genetic information. And recently, a team of researchers figured out just how many other molecules might also do the job. The answer? Scientists are going to be busy with this for quite some time.
Scientists have known for decades that DNA — and a similar molecule called RNA — encodes information in the particular arrangement of a handful of chemicals called nucleic acids. Those include adenine [AD-uh-neen], guanine [GWA-neen], cytosine [SYE-tuh-seen], and thymine [THYE-meen], plus uracil [YER-uh-sill] if you’re talking RNA. That’s it. These molecules basically function as chemical letters. The blueprint of the entire tree of life, of every person you’ve ever known and every microbe that’s made you sick, is written in that handful of chemicals.
But there are other nucleic acids, and there are probably other ways they can be used to store information. Since scientists are pretty good at figuring out how chemicals can fit together to form molecules, it may be possible to use a specialized computer program to figure out all the ways nucleotides could fit together into molecules that store genetic information.
The researchers started by telling a computer how a molecule like DNA needs to be built. You need some sort of structure that uses the laws of physics to its advantage, and you need chemical components to store the data. And the whole thing needs to be built so its pieces don’t collapse into one big clump or repel one another and rip the thing apart.
Guess how many hypothetical molecules they found. And remember: we only know of two that exist anywhere on earth: DNA and RNA.
The answer? They found 1,160,990 molecules that might be able to store information in their molecular structure.
Where will researchers go from here? There are actually a lot of ways this new information could be used. The most important might be in medicine. We already use nucleotide analogs to treat illnesses like HIV, herpes, and viral hepatitis. Since the viruses that cause these diseases are made of nucleic acids, we can use medicines made of nucleic acids to stop the viruses from copying themselves and doing more damage. The new discovery is also important in a more fundamental way: it can help scientists better understand the origin of RNA and DNA, and why evolution landed on those to form life on Earth. Because as we now know, it had A LOT of choices.
ASHLEY: So what’d we learn today? Let’s review.
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CODY: Today’s stories were written by Kelsey Donk, Steffie Drucker, and Grant Currin, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!