Bow-Chika-Wow-WAR!!!!

From the BPS research blog:

Across four experiments Lei Chang and his team showed that pictures of attractive women or women's legs had a raft of war-relevant effects on heterosexual male participants, including: biasing their judgments to be more bellicose towards hostile countries; speeding their ability to locate an armed soldier on a computer screen; and speeding their ability to recognise and locate war-related words on a computer screen. Equivalent effects after looking at pictures of attractive men were not found for female participants.

The effects on the male participants of looking at attractive women were specific to war. For example, their ability to locate pictures of farmers, as opposed to soldiers, was not enhanced. Moreover, the war-priming effects of attractive women were greater than with other potentially provocative stimuli, such as the national flag. Finally, the men's faster performance after looking at women's legs versus flags was specific to war-related words, as opposed to merely aggressive words.

Now I wonder if level of attraction can alter the strength of effect.....

Poverty Marshmallows

If you don't eat him now, you will get another later. (photo credit)

The New Republic has an interesting article linking the psychology of self-control to the issue of escaping poverty (with some delightful trolls in the comments section). Most people will recognise this field in psychology by the famous Marshmallow study, where the self-control of kids are put through a test of delayed gratification. I am a huge fan of these studies and have become far more excited now that these concepts are being tied to poverty reduction.

I won't delve too deeply into this as I believe the article is able to explain the whole idea a lot more eloquently. However, I would like to share some additional links to the excellent PsyBlog, that talks about a range of studies on the topic as well as some coping mechanisms to be taken advantage of. link, Link, LINK!

Are good intentions necessary?

Over at Practical Wisdom, Kenneth Sharpe and Barry Schwartz discuss, using the example of microfinance, how bad intentions can destroy good ideas.

What could be better than the spreading of a good idea? But not so fast. What has spread to these profit-centered, public companies is the technique of microcredit, but not the intention behind it. Compelled to satisfy shareholders, these new microcredit institutions have been charging interest rates that are as usurious as the ones that Grameen Bank replaced. The form may be the same, but the underlying intention, the telos, is completely different. And the result is that individuals are being driven into bankruptcy, and villages driven back into poverty, as they try to keep up with their loan payments.

"These institutions are using quite coercive methods to collect," said V. Vasant Kumar, a minister for rural development. "They aren't looking at sustainability or ensuring the money is going to income-generating activities. They are just making money."

As Yunus himself pointed out in an op-ed in the New York Times on January 14, commercialization has been a terrible wrong turn for microcredit. The volatility of the financial markets from which the commercial companies get their funds, together with the demand from shareholders for ever-increasing profits, ends up transferring financial risks to the poor-those who can least afford to assume them.

So, is a good idea all we need for good results? What about the current Behavioural Economics trend being adopted by governments (e.g. the UK's 'Nudge Unit')? Is it enough to simply condition people to behave in a desirable way or should we be encouraging actual changes in intentions?

Psychology of Persuasion

Photo credit

PsyBlog has completed its excellent long running series on the psychology of persuasion.

Now you can use these tips to go forth and spread terribly conceptualised policies, convince your donors that more money will solve that failing project or maybe even convince the local community that your way, is always the right. Whatever ails you, these tools will help. Because at the end of the day, no matter the discourse, you ARE always right. So why not use these wonderful tips to ensure that your peers and the world 'realise' this.

News nibbles

So I don't quite feel up for much comprehensive ranting this week. Not to say that there isn't anything to be said about the Abyei talks being held 'hostage' or the hot new idea to just give Abyei to the South in exchange for a financial package.
Instead allow me to share some links with you:

Humans are taking back the internet with this latest search engine that only produces verified (by actual people) websites. It filters out all those trashy websites that are loaded with adverts and try to trick you out of your money. A search with the keyword 'porn' reveals everything but what one was hoping to find.

In line with Britain's new Big Society vision, the Maidenhead and Windsor council has been tinkering with the idea of offering rewards for doing good deeds that benefit society. A strategy of positive reinforcement to better the behavior of society, that has not been received positively by everyone. Religious leaders complained, "First they separate the church and state, and monopolised crime and punishment. Now they want to monopolise good deeds and rewards. What happened to the promise of a small government!". Those on benefits claimed that they would need these rewards made available as welfare for those suffering from a altruistic deficiency that prevents them from giving a shit.

Danger room has an article uncovering a real-life supervillian, Ibrahim Al-Asiri. The diabolical mastermind that brought us the explosive underpants and more recently, the explosive print cartridge. He may not have nuclear weapons or freeeking lasers but he did manage to convince his brother to shove a bomb up his ass.

The US military has begun their process of 'Hippy-fying' their troops by releasing the T2 Mood tracker, a smart phone application that is "designed to yield information that can assist doctors and therapists in addressing common responses to combat, such as post-traumatic stress and depression". Everyday, the user can update his emotion and mood and that information is collected and analysed by therapist who then know exactly how to address the soldier. Chinese hackers have begun breaking into the system and targeting emotionally vulnerable soldiers with disparaging and hateful messages.

The US Navy has declared war on Algae - in a further attempt to appear like a bunch of tree-huggers, the US Navy has decided to feed its war machines with the ocean's plants. Green Peace and Sea Shepherd have awakened their sleeper cells to take down the plant loving/hating seamen.

That is all.

More analysis on violence and poverty

Don't you love when a topic you were thinking about is seemingly continued by someone else? Well, following on from yesterday's post on Blattman's statement that "Poor and underemployed young men don't seem to be a source of social instability", I came across a blogpost of an article by Vaughan Bell over at Mindhacks (An incredible psychology blog that I steal ideas from all the time) that touches on the same issue......."It’s about how murder is one of our most social acts."

"Murder is not antisocial. If you want a demonstration that we are governed by society even when breaking its rules, homicide is one of the best and grimmest examples. Studies show that victim and offender tend to resemble each other to a striking degree – the young murder the young and the old murder the old, rich and poor rarely kill each other, gang bangers prey on other gang members, and you are likely to be personally acquainted with the person who later ends your life. Socially conservative it may be, but homicide remains a deeply social act."

Ok that bit isn't really related, but its still pretty cool.

"Murder, is not, however, an equal opportunities reaper and you are considerably more likely to be dispatched if you are poor and marginalised. It was not always the case though. Historical records show that homicide was used equally by all levels of society but has become increasingly less democratic over time as access to formalised systems of dispute resolution have become more widely available. The fact that the legal system is preferentially used by those with money is perhaps not surprising, although the fact the distribution of justice is unjust should give us pause for thought."

Interesting, but what happens when those formalised systems of dispute resolution collapse or are made unavailable despite one's economic status - as is the case in countries where these youths are seen to cause social instability?

"Nowhere is this contrast more striking than in Latin America. Although the region has the highest murder rates in the world the generalisation tell us little – the devil is really in the detail. A 2008 study led by the Venezuelan sociologist Roberto Briceño-León found that poverty in the region predicted little of the homicide rate on its own. It was inequality that explained the trend: in areas where wealth and extreme poverty coexist, violence occurs more frequently."

Don't you just love the smell of discourse in the morning?
So the issue of defining the indicators of violence still needs to be addressed so that all these various studies can actually go through some sort of cross-analysis, but one can still get rather excited about the topic nonetheless. Also, we need to see more mixing of these various academic subjects. A lot of them are asking the same questions, but it sometimes feels like there is some sort of barrier preventing the sharing of findings.......I bet its ego...

Oh and while we are on the subject, here is a new study that shows that men under acute stress struggle to process and interpret the emotions that other people's faces are conveying.

"Under stress, men tend to withdraw socially while women seek emotional support,"

This could potentially lead to a disruption in empathy and could therefore cause less inhibition towards violently attacking others.

Rationality and determinism at the Frontal Cortex

Over at The Frontal Cortex, there is a brilliant analysis of an old and a new study that reinvents the idea and purpose of rationality and reasoning.

"That voice in your head spewing out eloquent reasons to do this or do that doesn’t actually know what’s going on, and it’s not particularly adept at getting you nearer to reality. Instead, it only cares about finding reasons that sound good, even if the reasons are actually irrelevant or false. (Put another way, we’re not being rational – we’re rationalizing.)"

Being on a thought provoking roll, he also has an excellent post on the debate between free will and scientific determinism that is definitely worth a read. Lets hope he keeps it up.

Why money makes you unhappy

Jonah Lehrer of Frontal Cortex, which has now moved to Wired, has an interesting post about a recent study on how "simply looking at money makes us less interested in relishing the minor pleasures of life"

good thing everything is on credit these days....