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The Slippery-Slope Effect: Minor Misdeeds Lead to Major Ones
“Well, you know what happens is, it starts out with you taking a little bit, maybe a few hundred, a few thousand,” notorious fraudster Bernie Madoff told Vanity Fair after stealing $18 billion from investors. “You get comfortable with that, and before you know it, it snowballs into something big.” A new study finds that getting away with minor infractions ends up making it easier for people to justify bigger, more serious ethical violations. Over time, small ethical transgressions--like stealing pens from work--can put employees on the “slippery slope” of increasingly bad behavior.
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To Make Better Decisions, Pretend You’re Deciding for Someone Else
New York Magazine: Perhaps the very last person you should turn to for advice is yourself, according to a new post from the Association for Psychological Science, which references research published last year in Psychological Science. We tend to make wiser decisions when thinking about someone else's problems than when thinking about our own issues, researchers from the University of Waterloo and the University of Michigan found, but there's a way around this. Think through your own decisions from a third-person perspective, suggest the researchers, led by Igor Grossmann at the University of Waterloo. Read the whole story: New York Magazine
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Can Money Buy Us Happiness?
U.S. News & World Report: Money can't buy you happiness, goes the generally accepted wisdom that was probably made up by someone poor, who wanted to bring his rich friends down a few notches. Some scientific studies have agreed with that sentiment, while others have concluded that, yes, being rich helps with being happy. In any case, if you want to crack open your wallet and try to buy some happiness, there are some purchases that may lift your spirits (at least for a while). Buy experiences, not things.
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Why Movie ‘Facts’ Prevail
The New York Times: THIS year’s Oscar nominees for best picture include four films based on true stories: “American Sniper” (about the sharpshooter Chris Kyle), “The Imitation Game” (about the British mathematician Alan Turing), “Selma” (about the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965) and “The Theory of Everything” (about the physicist Stephen Hawking). Each film has been criticized for factual inaccuracy. Doesn’t “Selma” ignore Lyndon B. Johnson’s dedication to black voting rights? Doesn’t “The Imitation Game” misrepresent the nature of Turing’s work, just as “The Theory of Everything” does Mr. Hawking’s? Doesn’t “American Sniper” sanitize the military conflicts it purports to depict?
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The Elastic Brain
Aeon: ve years ago, in a new city and in search of a new hobby, I decided to try playing a musical instrument for the first time. I had never learned to read music; in my grade school, the optional orchestra class was offered at the same time as the optional robotics class, and I chose the latter. Understanding nothing about chords or music theory, I settled on the relatively simple mountain dulcimer, a three-stringed lap instrument from Appalachia. I was proud of how quickly I picked it up. I could replicate many of the old-time fiddle tunes, Civil War ballads and Ozark folk songs my instructor played during demonstrations, and I learned to discern notes by ear.
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Can Science Solve Terrorism? Q&A with Psychologist John Horgan
Scientific American: For years, I’ve been getting emails from people who praise my brilliant research on terrorism and then ask me tough questions about the topic. I’m forced to reply: “Sorry, I’m John Horgan the American science writer. I occasionally write about terrorism, but you have mistaken me for John Horgan the Irish psychologist and terrorism expert.” I wish I could take credit for the work of the other John Horgan (who as far as I know is unrelated to me). For more than 15 years, he has carried out extensive interviews with former militants to understand why they turn to and away from terrorism.
