SOMETHING, surely, sets us humans apart. We share 90-odd per cent of our DNA with mice, yet our intelligence is unique. We stand alone as the animal that acts on deliberation and conscious forethought – or so we’d like to believe.
But consider this. A few years ago, Yale University psychologist and colleagues asked volunteers to fill out questionnaires designed to “prime” some of them with words linked to the elderly, such as “Florida”, “sentimental” and “wrinkle”. Afterwards, the researchers timed how long it took participants to walk down a hallway, and found that those who had been…
