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The Dark Psychology of Social Networks
Suppose that the biblical story of Creation were true: God created the universe in six days, including all the laws of physics and all the physical constants that apply throughout the universe. Now imagine that one day, in the early 21st century, God became bored and, just for fun, doubled the gravitational constant. What would it be like to live through such a change? We’d all be pulled toward the floor; many buildings would collapse; birds would fall from the sky; the Earth would move closer to the sun, reestablishing orbit in a far hotter zone. ... Human beings evolved to gossip, preen, manipulate, and ostracize.
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New Research From Psychological Science
A sampling of research about the effects of information timing on risky choices and on visual word representation in reading.
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Feeling Like “Part of the Family” Could Lead Employees to Take Advantage
Using communal “we” language in organizational codes of conduct can contribute to the perception that dishonesty will go unpunished.
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Can Babies Learn to Love Vegetables?
In a laboratory in Denver, on a decommissioned U.S. Army base, a baby sits in a high chair with two electrodes attached to his chest. To his left, on a small table, a muffin tin holds four numbered cups, each filled with a green substance. On the walls and the ceiling, four cameras and an omnidirectional microphone record the baby’s every burble and squawk, then transmit them to a secure server in an adjacent room. What looks like a window with blinds, across the room from the baby, is in fact a two-way mirror with a researcher behind it, scribbling notes. The baby’s mother takes a spoonful of the first sample and lifts it to the baby’s mouth, and the experiment begins. ...
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A face-scanning algorithm increasingly decides whether you deserve the job
An artificial intelligence hiring system has become a powerful gatekeeper for some of America’s most prominent employers, reshaping how companies assess their workforce — and how prospective employees prove their worth. ... But Lisa Feldman Barrett, a neuroscientist who studies emotion, said she is “strongly skeptical” that the system can really comprehend what it’s looking at. She recently led a team of four senior scientists, including an expert in “computer vision” systems, in assessing more than 1,000 published research papers studying whether the human face shows universal expressions of emotion and how well algorithms can understand them.
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The Unexpected Joy of Repeat Experiences
Scrolling through Instagram can quickly convince you that everyone’s life is more interesting than yours. During a particularly adventurous week on Instagram Stories recently, I saw water skiing in Maui, hiking in Yosemite and swimming with wild pigs in Bermuda. Wild pigs! Impulsively, I started Googling flights to new places. Then I ordered pho from the same Vietnamese place I eat at every week and … felt bad about not trying somewhere new.
