If someone told you to press a button to deliver a 450-volt electrical shock to an innocent person in the next room, would you do it?
Replicating one of the most controversial behavioral experiments in history, a Santa Clara University psychologist has found that people will follow orders from an authority figure to administer what they believe are painful electric shocks.
More than two-thirds of volunteers in the research study had to be stopped from administering 150 volt shocks of electricity, despite hearing a person’s cries of pain, professor Jerry M. Burger concluded in a study published in the January issue of the journal American Psychologist.
“In a dramatic way, it illustrates that under certain circumstances people will act in very surprising and disturbing ways,” said Burger. Link to read more
Dan Gilbert believes that, in our ardent, lifelong pursuit of happiness, most of us have the wrong map. In the same way that optical illusions fool our eyes — and fool everyone’s eyes in the same way — Gilbert argues that our brains systematically misjudge what will make us happy. And these quirks in our cognition make humans very poor predictors of our own bliss.
The premise of his current research — that our assumptions about what will make us happy are often wrong — is supported with clinical research drawn from psychology and neuroscience. [continue reading…]
An animated reconstruction of Stephen Lawrence’s murder that puts the viewer in his shoes is to be launched on the web in a new campaign against hate crime.
I am slowly coming to the conclusion that I hate e-cards at Christmas. If I see another Christmas Jib-Jab I think I will scream. Please don’t send me any e-cards. What is the point of them? No one knows you’ve got them, you can’t put them on display and visitors will think you have no friends! Call me old-fashioned but I like receiving cards from my dotty aunts who can barely remember my name, let alone that I live in Vancouver. Give me the barrel-chested Robin on a snow covered log and the white glitter snowscapes anyday.
Tell me what’s wrong with standing for 55 minutes in a queue at the post office while Mrs. Smith in front of me is sending a parcel to her long list of relatives in Australia or Timbuktu. Hasn’t she discovered the internet I ask myself? Is she just doing this to annoy me?Doesn’t she realize I need to get to work!
So really what is about this ritual I find so appealing? Would it really be better for the planet if I stopped sending my paper cards by mail? Sorry but that is exactly what I will continue to do… and one day I (not too far into the future) I am going to be the dotty relative who slips $20 into the silly Santa card that my grandkids will eagerly seek out, just as I did and my children did.
Replicating one of the most controversial behavioral experiments in history, a Santa Clara University psychologist has found that people will follow orders from an authority figure to administer what they believe are painful electric shocks.
I am slowly coming to the conclusion that I hate e-cards at Christmas. If I see another Christmas Jib-Jab I think I will scream. Please don’t send me any e-cards. What is the point of them? No one knows you’ve got them, you can’t put them on display and visitors will think you have no friends! Call me old-fashioned but I like receiving cards from my dotty aunts who can barely remember my name, let alone that I live in Vancouver. Give me the barrel-chested Robin on a snow covered log and the white glitter snowscapes anyday.