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How Thoughts of Money Lead Us Astray
The Wall Street Journal: The New Year makes many of us think about time passing, and research shows that such thoughts often spur us to act more ethically. If we were to brood instead about the cash we're likely to blow on Dec. 31, our actions might be less upright. Two business professors from Harvard University and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania conducted experiments in which some people were primed to think about money and others about time. Then the participants were given the opportunity to cheat anonymously. The results? Thinking about time led to much more honest behavior.
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See half a world and you can’t reason about the past
New Scientist: DRAW a line across a page, then write on it what you had for dinner yesterday and what you plan to eat tomorrow. If you are a native English speaker, or hail from pretty much any European country, you no doubt wrote last night's meal to the left of tomorrow night's. That's because we construct mental timelines to represent and reason about time, and most people in the West think of the past as on the left, and the future as on the right. Arnaud Saj at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and his colleagues wondered whether the ability to conjure up a mental timeline is a necessary part of reasoning about events in time.
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The Brain, in Exquisite Detail
The New York Times: ST. LOUIS — Deanna Barch talks fast, as if she doesn’t want to waste any time getting to the task at hand, which is substantial. She is one of the researchers here at Washington University working on the first interactive wiring diagram of the living, working human brain. ... Dr. Barch is explaining the dimensions of the task, and the reasons for undertaking it, as she stands in a small room, where multiple monitors are set in front of a window that looks onto an adjoining room with an M.R.I. machine, in the psychology building. She asks a research assistant to bring up an image.
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Are We Genetically Inclined To Be Materialistic?
NPR: People tend to hate to lose stuff they already own. This trait, known as the endowment effect, is likely handed down to us by evolution, since it is visible cross-culturally as well as in non-human primates. However, new research suggests certain cultures place a brake on this evolutionary trait, whereas capitalistic societies put it on steroids. A common complaint about the holiday season is that it's become too commercial. Selfishness and materialism are a part of human nature. At least that's what we thought. But in a recent experiment, researchers found a group of people with a very different kind of nature.
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The Open-Office Trap
The New Yorker: In 1973, my high school, Acton-Boxborough Regional, in Acton, Massachusetts, moved to a sprawling brick building at the foot of a hill. Inspired by architectural trends of the preceding decade, the classrooms in one of its wings didn’t have doors. The rooms opened up directly onto the hallway, and tidbits about the French Revolution, say, or Benjamin Franklin’s breakfast, would drift from one classroom to another. Distracting at best and frustrating at worst, wide-open classrooms went, for the most part, the way of other ill-considered architectural fads of the time, like concrete domes.
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How Cyclical Thinking Might Help You Save Money
Pacific Standard: Whether it’s a lack of decent-paying jobs or an advertising-induced confusion between wants and needs or a propensity to spend without simultaneously practicing the refined art of saving, many Americans reside in financially precarious conditions. National household debt, for example, is on the rise, with consumers currently owing $11.3 trillion. Furthermore, nearly half of the country’s occupied homes are one monetary disaster away from poverty. Then there’s the growing problem of student loans.