Category: ideas

“Simply exposing people to scientific claims that free will is an illusion can lead them to misbehave, for instance, cheating more or helping others less. So, it matters whether these scientists are justified in concluding that free will is an illusion.”

Yes, men believe they’re funnier than women. Women think men are funnier too. But a study shows that’s all in the eye, not the funny bone, of the beholder.

We’re not going to give up our cell phones. So how can we tame them into a manageable part of life?

“Most of us think of ourselves as pretty honest, seeing corruption as something that involves other people. But new research shows that anyone can be corrupted at the drop of a hat.”

“Human beings are notoriously terrible at knowing when we’re no longer hungry. Instead of listening to our stomach – a very stretchy container – we rely on all sorts of external cues, from the circumference of the dinner plate to the dining habits of those around us.”

“Researchers have long believed that it was a gradual process, evolving from couples to clans to larger communities. A new analysis, however, indicates that primate societies expanded in a burst, most likely because there was safety in numbers.”

“All too often the scholar believes he is just offering an objective vision of the world, his own self comfortably absent from the text. But then the reader turns a corner, and the writer’s neuroses are laid out for all to see, the writer himself often remaining unaware he’s been stripped so bare.”

“It’s often dangerous to generalize, but under threat, I would say that Americans are more ‘down the line.’ They don’t hide their hopes and fears. They applaud ambition and openly reward success. Brits are more comfortable with life’s losers. We embrace the underdog until it’s no longer the underdog.”

“Crowds, we are often told, are dumb. They obliterate reason, sentience and accountability, turning individuals into helpless copycats. For those who wanted to sound scientific, the term to drop was “deindividuation”: the loss of identity and moral responsibility that can occur in a group. But do crowds really make us more stupid?”