Round-up: What's the evolutionary function of love?

The most interesting articles that came to our attention this week

Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government. Dan Kahan and colleagues investigate the relationship between numeracy and ability to interpret evidence among partisans. When asked to interpret evidence about a skin-rash treatment, those higher in numeracy performed better. Yet when asked to interpret evidence about a gun-control ban, those higher in numeracy were more polarised. And they performed worse when the evidence was “ideologically inconvenient”.

Changing Polygenic Penetrance on Phenotypes in the 20th Century Among Adults in the US Population. Dalton Conley and colleagues track changes in the associations between polygenic scores and their corresponding phenotypes over time in the US. They find that while the association has increased for height, it has decreased for educational attainment. The result for education may be due to expanding enrolment.