Published: March 28, 2012
Image: iStockphoto
hen jurors sentencing convicted criminals are instructed to weigh not only facts but also tricky emotional factors, they rely on parts of the brain associated with sympathy and making moral judgments, according to a new paper by a team of neuroscientists. Using brain-imaging techniques, the researchers, including Caltech’s Colin Camerer, found that the most lenient jurors show heightened levels of activity in the insula, a brain region associated with discomfort and pain and with imagining the pain that others feel.
The findings provide insight into the role that emotion plays in jurors’ decision-making processes, indicating a close relationship between sympathy and mitigation.
In the study, the researchers, led by Makiko Yamada of National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Japan, considered cases where juries were given the option to lessen the sentences for convicted murderers. In such cases with “mitigating circumstances,” jurors are instructed to consider factors, sometimes including emotional elements, that might cause them to have sympathy for the criminal and, therefore, shorten the sentence. An example would be a case in which a man killed his wife to spare her from a more painful death, say, from a terminal illness.
“Finding out if jurors are weighing sympathy reasonably is difficult to do, objectively,” says Colin Camerer, the Robert Kirby Professor of Behavioral Finance and Economics at Caltech. “Instead of asking the jurors, we asked their brains.” [continue reading…]
Published: March 27, 2012
You might feel great after going for a jog, but is the “high” purely psychological?
Image Credit: Tobyotter
A new study is tapping into a phenomenon most of us have heard about and some of us might claim to have experienced at some point – “runner’s high”.
In doing so, this study touches on something fundamentally human.
Put simply, our bodies were made to move. Our predecessors were long-distance endurance runners who could work really hard, from an energy-expenditure perspective, if it was required.
Even now, if we really had to, most of us could exert ourselves at a very high level, significantly increasing our energy expenditure, even if was only for a few seconds.
So why don’t we move more? Why are we facing an obesity epidemic driven largely by sedentary behaviour? How come some people enjoy physical activity more than others?
Runner’s high – or the idea of it – is one of the things that drives some people to exercise – a neurobiological reward that occurs during and after distance running, creating a sense of euphoria for the athlete.
This natural high, say some, provides an improved sense of well-being, reduces anxiety, induces post-exercise calm, and can even reduced pain.
But from a “hard-science” perspective, what is this “high” caused by and does it exist beyond the purely psychological? [continue reading…]
Published: March 23, 2012
By C. Hazlett. (Dusenostachys123 at en.wikipedia) Wikimedia Commons
he discovery of how the hallucinogen Salvia affects the brain could lead to new avenues for treating drug addiction, chronic pain, and depression.
At the molecular level, drugs like salvinorin A (the active ingredient of the hallucinogenic plant Salvia divinorum) work by activating specific proteins, known as receptors, in the brain and body. [continue reading…]
Published: March 22, 2012
istockphoto
onesty may be the best policy, but new research from the
University of Sydney suggests that consumers feel more satisfied if they lie and get what they want than if they tell the truth.
The study, to be published in the Journal of Consumer Research by Dr Christina Anthony and Professor Elizabeth Cowley of the University of Sydney Business School, found that people who lie during a service encounter have more extreme reactions to the outcome than their honest peers.
The research raises interesting questions about the way marketers and businesses respond to dishonest customers and train their staff, particularly given the volume of lies people tell every day – previous research shows that people tell on average one to two lies a day, which equates to about 42,000 lies before the age of 60.
“Lying is hard work. When people lie, they’re so preoccupied with telling the lie and not revealing the truth that they aren’t able to monitor cues from the listener, which are important for updating expectations about the likely outcome of the conversation. This means that they are more surprised by the outcome and so have a stronger reaction to it,” says Dr Anthony.
“So when you lie to get a refund or to file an insurance claim and get away with it, you will have a much more polarised reaction than if you had told the truth. People who lie are more satisfied than truth tellers if they get a favourable outcome and more dissatisfied if they get an unfavourable outcome.” [continue reading…]
