Why religion and spirituality are important in human biological research.

The study of human biology includes exploration of all the genetic and environmental influences on human variation and life history, including impacts of sociocultural and physical environments. Religious practice and spirituality may be one of these influences. There are more than 5.8 billion religiously affiliated adults and children, accounting for 84% of the world's 6.9 billion people. Furthermore, 70% of Americans consider themselves spiritual in some way, including 22% who do not consider themselves religious, and the numbers for Europe are lower but proportionally similar. Such a high rate of religious affiliation and spiritual belief suggests that religion and spirituality could be sociocultural influences on human variation, but human biologists have scarcely attended to their impacts, as indicated by the limited numbers of relevant articles in the two flagship human biology journals. In this article, we discuss why human biologists may have overlooked this important force for human variability and highlight foundational work from human biology and other disciplines that can give our colleagues directions forward. We review the impacts of religion and spirituality at population and individual levels and call for human biologists to attend to the many aspects of religion and spirituality that can impact human biology and are much more than simply influences of denominational affiliation.

The value of publicly engaged podcasting in human biology.

Podcasting about science may be popular, but does it motivate engagement? The Human Biology Association and American Journal of Human Biology (AJHB) cosponsor a podcast that highlights recent articles. We hypothesized that AJHB articles discussed on the podcast (n = 42) receive more online views than other articles from the same issues. We used Student's t-tests to compare mean article views and found podcasted articles received more views, but the difference was not significant. When extreme outliers were removed, podcasted articles had over twice the views of control articles (p = .04), indicating that journal-affiliated podcasting can increase science engagement.

Impacts of family and fieldwork on career/family balance among tenure-track and tenured anthropologists.

OBJECTIVES: A common dilemma rarely mentioned during doctoral training is career/family balance-especially the timing of children. This dilemma extends to professional anthropologists and includes questions surrounding the benefits and challenges of taking children to the field. We analyzed survey data from tenure-track and tenured anthropologists to determine if fieldwork in general and fieldwork with or without their children on site impacts career/family balance. We hypothesized that having children and the burden of fieldwork puts more strain on women than on men in anthropology. METHODS: We compared 297 tenure-track and tenured anthropologists by gender, tenure status, and mean annual time spent conducting fieldwork using survey data collected for the Family and the Field study. Analysis was conducted using a combination of hierarchical multivariate analysis of variance and regression to analyze the differing factors affecting various groups. RESULTS: The primary differences in career/family balance occurred between tenure-track and tenured anthropologists, not women and men, and that fieldwork requirements do not necessarily make achieving personal balance harder for anthropologists than other academics. CONCLUSIONS: The need to conduct fieldwork may dissuade some people with or planning to have children from becoming anthropologists. However, upon obtaining tenure-track positions, the burdens impacting "balance" taper off and become less stressful. We offer policy suggestions for buffering stress related to career/family balance that may negatively impact decisions to pursue or continue in anthropology as a career.

The evolutionary adaptation of body art: Tattooing as costly honest signaling of enhanced immune response in American Samoa.

BACKGROUND: Tattooing has been practiced globally for thousands of years. From an evolutionary perspective, this tradition seems counterintuitive because it is a dermal injury that risks infection. Previous research indicates tattooing may habituate the immune system for subsequent stress, as with exercise or vaccination, an important benefit in high-risk areas. Visible injuries through tattooing may be a form of costly honest signaling-consciously or unconsciously drawing attention to immunological quality. OBJECTIVES: We tested this habituation effect of tattooing in American Samoa, where its practice is common and extensive and infectious disease rates high. We hypothesized that people with more tattoo experience would have enhanced immune response related to the stress of being tattooed. We compared total and rate of tattoo experience to determine if tattooing is more analogous to exercise or vaccination. METHODS: We measured secretory immunoglobulin A (SIgA), cortisol, C-reactive protein (CRP), and tattoo experience in 25 adults receiving tattoos. We compared post-tattoo SIgA to total and rate of tattoo experience using analyses of covariance, controlling for pre-tattoo SIgA, tattoo duration, age, marital status, and stress and baseline health (cortisol, CRP, body mass index, and cigarette use). RESULTS: Post-tattoo SIgA positively correlated with total tattoo experience (P < .05). Furthermore, when dichotomized by experience, participants with low tattoo experience showed little to no stress-related immune change, whereas high-experience participants exhibited elevated SIgA, suggesting habituation to repeated tattooing. CONCLUSIONS: The historical and cultural popularity of tattooing may be partly due to honest information tattoos convey about adaptive biology, similar to physical benefits of exercise.

Zika virus in American Samoa: challenges to prevention in the context of health disparities and non-communicable disease.

BACKGROUND: Zika virus (ZIKV) is linked to deleterious foetal and neonate outcomes. Maternal exposure to ZIKV through mosquitoes and sexual fluids creates a public health challenge for communities and policymakers, which is exacerbated by high levels of chronic non-communicable diseases in American Samoa. AIM: This study aimed to identify structural barriers to ZIKV prevention in American Samoa and situate them within locally relevant cultural and epidemiological contexts. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: This study assessed knowledge, attitudes and access to ZIKV prevention among 180 adults in American Samoan public health clinics. It queried knowledge about pre-natal care, protection against mosquitoes and condom use. RESULTS: Women were most likely to identify pre-natal care as important. The majority of participants were able to identify how to prevent mosquito bites, but may have been unable to follow through due to socioeconomic and infrastructure limitations. Few participants identified condom use as a preventative measure against ZIKV. Prevention misconceptions were most pronounced in women of low socioeconomic status. CONCLUSIONS: These findings reinforce the need for a multi-pronged approach to ZIKV. This study highlights the need for information on culturally specific barriers and recognition of additional challenges associated with dual burden in marginal populations where social inequalities exacerbate health issues.

Tattooing to "Toughen up": Tattoo experience and secretory immunoglobulin A.

OBJECTIVES: A costly signaling model suggests tattooing inoculates the immune system to heightened vigilance against stressors associated with soft tissue damage. We sought to investigate this "inoculation hypothesis" of tattooing as a costly honest signal of fitness. We hypothesized that the immune system habituates to the tattooing stressor in repeatedly tattooed individuals and that immune response to the stress of the tattooing process would correlate with lifetime tattoo experience. METHODS: Participants were 24 women and 5 men (aged 18-47). We measured immune function using secretory immunoglobulin A (SIgA) and cortisol (sCORT) in saliva collected before and after tattoo sessions. We measured tattoo experience as a sum of number of tattoos, lifetime hours tattooed, years since first tattoo, percent of body covered, and number of tattoo sessions. We predicted an inverse relationship between SIgA and sCORT and less SIgA immunosuppression among those with more tattoo experience. We used hierarchical multiple regression to test for a main effect of tattoo experience on post-tattoo SIgA, controlling for pretest SIgA, tattoo session duration, body mass, and the interaction between tattoo experience and test session duration. RESULTS: The regression model was significant (P = 0.006) with a large effect size (r(2) = 0.711) and significant and positive main (P = 0.03) and interaction effects (P = 0.014). CONCLUSIONS: Our data suggest that the body habituates over time to the tattooing stressor. It is possible that individuals with healthy immune systems heal faster, making them more likely to get multiple tattoos. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 28:603-609, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Tattooing as a phenotypic gambit.

OBJECTIVES: Tattooing is not an evolved behavior, but it may be a phenotypic gambit to highlight immunological health. Phenotypic gambits are traits or behaviors that appear costly but occur at high rates as a honing process of natural selection not constrained by genetics. Tattooing is an ancient practice that is increasing in popularity worldwide, but it involves wounding the body, which seems counterintuitive because it challenges the immune system and makes one more susceptible to infection. But tattooing may represent a costly honest signal of fitness by "upping the ante" in an era of hygiene or a means to stimulate the immune system in a way that improves and highlights underlying fitness. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We investigated this hypothesis by assessing bacteria killing activity (BKA) in saliva samples collected during two studies of tattooing (N = 40). We compared previous tattoo experience (extent of body tattooed and hours spent being tattooed) to BKA before and after getting a new tattoo. RESULTS: Tattoo experience positively predicts post-tattoo BKA (ß = 0.48, p = 0.01), suggesting that people with more tattoo experience have a relatively more immediate and active immune response than those with less tattoo experience. DISCUSSION: Tattoo experience may elevate innate immunological vigilance, which could aid in protecting against future dermal insults.

Family and the field: Expectations of a field-based research career affect researcher family planning decisions.

Field-based data collection provides an extraordinary opportunity for comparative research. However, the demands of pursuing research away from home creates an expectation of unburdened individuals who have the temporal, financial, and social resources to conduct this work. Here we examine whether this myth of the socially unencumbered scholar contributes to the loss of professionals and trainees. To investigate this, we conducted an internet-based survey of professional and graduate student anthropologists (n = 1025) focused on the challenges and barriers associated with developing and maintaining a fieldwork-oriented career path and an active family life. This study sought to determine how (1) family socioeconomic status impacts becoming an anthropologist, (2) expectations of field-based research influence family planning, and (3) fieldwork experiences influence perceptions of family-career balance and stress. We found that most anthropologists and anthropology students come from educated households and that white men were significantly more likely to become tenured professionals than other demographic groups. The gender disparity is striking because a larger number of women are trained in anthropology and were more likely than men to report delaying parenthood to pursue their career. Furthermore, regardless of socioeconomic background, anthropologists reported significant lack of family-career balance and high stress associated with the profession. For professionals, lack of balance was most associated with gender, age, SES, tenure, and impacts of parenting on their career, while for students it was ethnicity, relative degree speed, graduate funding, employment status, total research conducted, career impact on family planning, and concern with tenure (p < .05). Anthropology bridges the sciences and humanities, making it the ideal discipline to initiate discussions on the embedded structural components of field-based careers generalizable across specialties.