recent research

Picks from Kevin Lewis' picks:

• When faced with a moral dilemma, your heart beats faster. Or is it when your heart beats faster you're faced with a moral dilemma? (Jun Gu)
• We judge others not so much for the bad things they do - but how easily they do them. (Clayton Critcher)
• One way to get humans to act humanistically: remind them they're animals. (Matt Motyl)
• One theory about xenophobia is that it's related to fear of disease. Now you can map that theory on to our national values. (Florian van Leeuwen)
• Power improves your golf swing. (Pascal Burgmer)
• "Hard" republicans and "soft" democrats: not just descriptive metaphors. (Michael Slepian)
• All those political comments you post on Facebook? They actually have an - incremental - effect, at least when it comes to getting your friends to the polls. (Robert M. Bond)
• The reason why campaigns run TV ads: they kinda work. (Michael D. Jones)
• Tightly knit social networks make us politically stupid. (Elif Erisen)
• Making it more convenient to vote actually means more people vote. (Robert M. Stein)
• Citizens might not be such incompetent voters as we sometimes think, especially when it comes to local elections. (Lee Shaker)

what to not forget

Yesterday was September 11th, and try as hard as I could not to look at my Facebook page (okay, not very hard) I couldn't help avoiding all the reminders to "Never Forget."

Yesterday was also the second meeting in my intro to Social Psych seminar, where we get to read all the oldies but goodies in psych research. This week's discussion was Milgram's 1960's Yale study. You've almost certainly heard of it: New Haven residents innocently came in to participate in a study about "learning" and within an hour found themselves obediently administering electric shocks, starting at 15 volts and moving up to 450, to another "participant" (actually a "confederate" in on the game). Almost all participants started to be concerned when the confederated began hollering in pain and begging to be released, but most - over 60% - continued to flip the shock switch all the way up to 450, even after the screams from the confederate suddenly stopped, leading them to wonder if they had killed the guy. What's unsettling about the study is not just that so many people easily follow orders to harm another, it's that these participants look - and act - like such nice people. They're intensely concerned about the welfare of the person they're zapping, visible writhing in metaphysical pain themselves, yet they zap away.

In light of the Milgram study, I couldn't help wonder what it was I was supposed to be not forgetting on September 11th. When we hear the words "Never Forget" in reference to the Holocaust, the lesson is pretty clear; at least according to the tour guide in Israel's Holocaust museum, we're never to forget that humans, even when they appear to be at the height of civilization, are capable of horrendous acts. And, by humans, we're talking about me and you. It's the same message Milgram hoped to get across (along with Hannah Arendt and many others): it doesn't take much to turn us all (or a good 90%+ of us) into willing executioners.

But I'm pretty sure that is not what all those images of the twin towers with the words "Never Forget" were trying to tell me. I know some were saying we should never forget to honor the many innocent lives that were lost in the tragedy. But perhaps just as many don't want to forget that "bad people did something really bad to us."

I agree a noble society always remembers those who were sacrificed in its name (AQ was taking aim at all of us, and just happened to hit those 3000). But I don't understand what we gain out of remembering that some people once tried to hurt us. There's not much to learn beyond anger and paranoia. 

We're much better off remembering Milgram and, instead of hoping we can eradicate all the bad guys from the earth, being very vigilant that one day we don't become the bad guys ourselves.

recent research

Just a few picks this week from Kevin Lewis' blog:

• Awe: it can make you less impatient, more generous with your time and more satisfied with life - all by making you feel richer in time. (Melanie Rudd)
• More evidence that dwelling on what you're grateful for can make you happier. (Steven Toepfer)
• Increase hope - and so increase your chances of reaching your goals - in 90 minutes or less. (David Feldman)

religious inconsistencies

If there is a definitive example of humans' ability to explain away factual inconsistencies in order not to disturb their belief system, it's got to be religion - as this image reminded me this morning:

You don't need to take a course in biblical exegesis (even though I did years ago - and I highly recommend you do too) to admire the creative rationalizations of Judeo-Christians (and, I'm sure, other religious believers) to justify why, for example, it makes perfect sense that we're all descended from Adam and Eve, a couple who only had sons.

But what grates is how many of those same inconsistent believers point to others and demand consistency between their holy book and their religious beliefs - for example, how some Judeo-Christians pick out passages in the Koran and claim that Islam is inherently violent. That is an inconsistency I cannot admire.

recent research

Catching up with Kevin Lewis picks:

• Showing a picture makes any fact seem more truthy. (Eryn Newman)
• Seeing red makes us more aggressive bidders and negotiators. (Rajesh Bagchi)
• The endowment effect (the increased value we give to things we possess) is usually explained by "loss aversion." But it could be we value items more once we identify them with ourselves. (Sara Dommer)
• One way to feel like we have more time: give time away. (Cassie Mogilner)
• A one time incentive to give blood can make life-long blood donors. (Nicola Lacetera)
• Feeling powerful: it accentuates your willingness - or unwillingness - to help others, depending on your initial inclination. (Kenneth DeMarree)
• Reflecting on how much we've received doesn't make us more generous, but thinking about how much we've given does. (Adam Grant)
• Not only do we give more money to lenders who look trustworthy, we're pretty good at telling who, indeed, is trustworthy. (Jefferson Duarte)
• In trust games, giving a full history of players' past actions doesn't instill as much trust as giving a little info an adding in some competition. (Steffen Huck)
• Two-year-olds demonstrating that humans are a nice species. (Robert Hephach)
• Ten-year-olds showing how our nice instincts get enhanced when made public. (Daniel Houser)
• When it comes to cooperation game, the type of network we're playing within doesn't matter - but whether our neighbors cooperated or not in the previous round does. (Carlos Gracia-Lazara)
• Red: the universal color of love. (Andrew Elliot) And tipping. (Nicolas Gueguen)
• When our ideas about morality and facts conflict, we change the facts. (Brittany Liu)
• At least when it comes to game theory games, chimps are better strategists than humans. (Christopher Flynn Martin)
• Money - via its ability to remind us of our power and resources - may also make us more abstract thinkers. (Jochim Hansen)
• And when we're feeling powerful we respond better to abstract arguments. (Echo Wen Wan)
• We seek evidence to support our - even arbitrary - predictions, because it feels so good to be right. (Aaron Scherer)
• We're not completely bull-headed; presenting people with conflicting views makes them less assured of their original views. (Erin Beatty)
• Conservatives might not dislike blacks and gays because they're black and gay - but because they're liberal. (John R. Chambers)
• When it comes to presidential approval, charisma counts. (James Beck)
• Explaining why ruralites seem to vote against their economic interests: it's a class consciousness thing. (Katherine Cramer Walsh)
• A theory of political parties where interest groups - not party elites - call the shots. (Kathleen Bawn)
• And one where issues - not ideology - are at the root of polarization. (Ashley Jochim)
• Is simple rhetoric better at winning elections than complex rhetoric? The answer is not simple. (Lucian Gideon Conway)
• The poor's views are represented less in the GOP, but more so in the Democratic party. In the end, the poor are just as well represented as the rich. (Eric Bunner)
• The power of metaphor in politics. (Todd Hartman)

recent research

From the great aggregator Kevin Lewis:

• Maybe over-confidence has nothing to do with self-esteem and confidence; maybe it's all about looking good. (Cameron Anderson)
• Editorial opinion leaders: more like government opinion followers. (Philip Habel)
• Political activists as thrill seekers. (Cindy Kam)
• Tracking down influentials in a social network. (Sinan Aral)
• Online politicos: more politically active in real life, but not more politically savvy. (Meredith Conroy)
• Want to start a video meme? Have a popular person seed it. (Hema Yoganarasimham.
• Jury deliberations: a little reasoned compromise and a little peer pressure. (Michelle Baddeley)
• Social conformity: broken down neural response by neural response. (Anna Shestakova)
• One way to dampen the influence of interest groups: get us all voting on the same day. (Sarah Anzia)
• Want to get your political message across? Obscure the messenger. (Christopher Weber)
• Presidential speeches are not total wastes of time - yet. (Amnon Cavari)
• Laws aimed at voter turn-out: restrictive laws tend to work; expansive laws not so much. (Melanie Springer)
• Independents may like to think they're independent thinkers, but their partisan leanings suggest otherwise. (Carlee Hawkins)
• The ambiguous effects of public funding in state elections. (Michael Brogan)
• Get-Out-The-Vote emails from independent groups have been shown to not work so well - but when GOTV emails come from government agencies it's a different story. (Neil Malhotra)
• A new study overturns previous research that suggested that once we vote for a party we tend to like that party even more. (Mikael Elinder)

recent research

This week over at Kevin Lewis' blog:

• Milgram experiment revisited: perhaps subjects weren't passively following orders, but creatively working with a leader they identified with.
• The commitment principal exercised on hotel guests: when they symbolically commit to environmental practices at check in, they're 25% more likely to reuse their towels. (Katie Baca-Motes)
• One way to make someone pursue a goal may be to ask them to put it aside. (Kurt Carlson)
• As amnesiacs show us, remembering which candidates share our views does not happen at a conscious level. (Jason Coronel)
• What gets us to the polls on election day? Genes, for one. (Peter John Loewen) And for two. (Robert Klemmenson)
• If you want to change someone's mind on a policy, try attacking the policy's underlying values. (Kevin Blankenship)
• Policy and participation: a review of how the two impact each other. (Andrea Louise Campbell)
• More evidence that non-partisans, especially those less savvy, are more open to persuasion - in this case, from interest groups. (Gregory Nedenriepp)
• Good news for deliberative democracy: those more confident in their views are those most likely to change them. (Julia Albarracin)
• The post-debate rap session: when focused on who won (versus who held what policy) and gains in policy understanding are lost. (Raymond Pingree)
• Inter-citizen discussions matter: how they influenced Polish citizens' support of intervention in Iraq. (Elizabeth Radziszewski)
• Expanding our "moral circle" (how many people we think worthy of moral consideration) makes us better environmentalists. (Broyka Bratanova)