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The Cheater’s Situation
Posted on May 25, 2013
From a very good 2011 NYTimes article by Benedict Carey, here are a few excerpts on some of the psychological dynamics behind cheating: [P]aradoxically, it’s often an obsession with fairness that leads people to begin cutting corners in the first place. “Cheating is especially easy to justify when you frame situations to cast yourself as […]
Posted in Conflict, Morality, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Frontier Tort – Selling Beer in Whiteclay
Posted on April 15, 2013
At Harvard Law School in the fall of 2012, the 80 students in Professor Hanson’s situationist-orient torts class participated in an experimental group project in their first-year torts class. The project required students to research, discuss, and write a white paper about a current policy problem for which tort law (or some form of civil […]
Posted in Deep Capture, Food and Drug Law, History, Marketing, Morality, Neuroscience, Politics, Situationist Contributors | Leave a Comment »
The Economic Situation of the Middle Class
Posted on May 2, 2012
From Harvard Gazzette: The American middle class has been battered by the loss of well-paying jobs for the 70 percent of the workforce without a college degree and failed by would-be protectors in government and private institutions, said panelists at the 35th Anniversary Forum of the Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement on Friday. Former […]
Posted in Deep Capture, Distribution, Ideology, Politics | Comments Off
The Power of Word Choice: “Lifestyle” Diseases
Posted on April 23, 2011
As readers will note, I’ve been blogging a lot about the situation of obesity recently and so I read Mark Bittman’s recent op-ed in the New York Times, “How to Save a Trillion Dollars,” with special attention. I agreed with a lot of what Bittman said about how changing our diets is one of the […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Preference, Principle, & Casuistry
Posted on April 2, 2011
From our sister blog, Law & Mind, here is an excellent post by Harvard Law LL.M. candidate David Simon. Simon summarizes a fascinating chapter by Situationist Contributors Eric Knowles and Peter Ditto (forthcoming in “Ideology, Psychology, and Law” (Jon Hanson, ed., 2011). * * * [T]he attribution of principle or its absence is more than […]
Posted in Book, Choice Myth, Legal Theory, Situationist Contributors | Leave a Comment »
The Situation of High Marginal Income Tax Rates and Motivation
Posted on October 5, 2010
A leading rationale against progressively higher income tax rates for top-earners is that high taxes will dissuade them from working hard, being innovative, or trying to be the best at whatever they do. This rationale has seemingly prevented a return of the very high marginal income tax rates used between 1951 and 1963, when taxable […]
Posted in Ideology, Law, Public Policy | 4 Comments »
Without the Filter
Posted on October 21, 2008
Governor Sarah Palin wants “to talk to Americans without the filter” of the “media elite.” As she explained in the vice-presidential debate, she aims to cut out the middleman in conveying information to the public: “I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you [Senator Joe Biden] want to hear, but I’m […]
Posted in Choice Myth, Deep Capture, Politics | Leave a Comment »
Bracelet-Based Policy Making
Posted on September 29, 2008
Ever wonder why so much time is spent comparing jewelry and telling personal anecdotes in presidential debates (see short video above), even as many of the larger policy questions remain largely unexplored? There are, of course, many reasons (some of which have been noted in previous Situationist posts), but Friday’s wrist-off reminded us of one […]
Posted in Abstracts, Behavioral Economics, Choice Myth, Education, Morality, Public Policy | 2 Comments »
The Situation of Constitutional Beliefs – Abstract
Posted on September 7, 2008
Joshua Furgeson, Linda Babcock, and Peter Shane have a new article that will be of interest to many readers of the Situationist: “Do a Law’s Policy Implications Affect Beliefs About Its Constitutionality? An Experimental Test,” 32 Law Hum. Behav. 219 (2008). Here’s the abstract. * * * Although a substantial empirical literature has found associations […]
Posted in Abstracts, Choice Myth, Ideology, Law, Legal Theory, Morality | Leave a Comment »
The Situation of Judges
Posted on May 15, 2008
Below we have mashed up three articles about the recent, highly contentious Wisconsin Supreme Court election — “Big money, nasty ads highlight Wisconsin judicial race” by Bill Mears for CNN, “Life, liberty and the pursuit of a fair judiciary” from The Economist, and “Gableman victorious” by Stacy Forster and Patrick Marley for the Milwaukee Journal […]
Posted in Choice Myth, Politics | Leave a Comment »
The Situationism of the Late Charles Tilly
Posted on May 4, 2008
Wikipedia on Charles Tilly: Examining political, social, and technological change in Europe from the Middle Ages to the present, Tilly attempted to explain the the unprecedented success of the nation-state as the dominant polity on Earth. According to his theory, military innovation in pre-modern Europe (especially gunpowder and mass armies) made war extremely expensive. As […]
Posted in Conflict, History, Video | Leave a Comment »
On Being a Mindful Voter
Posted on January 24, 2008
Situationist contributor Mahzarin Banaji has an eloquent editorial, “We Don’t Know What We Think,” in yesterday’s Atlanta Constitution. We excerpt portions of it below: * * * Our intense scrutiny of the presidential candidates has produced a relentless stream of questions, some thoughtful and relevant, others spectacularly irrelevant and even embarrassing: Why are you not […]
Posted in Implicit Associations, Politics | 2 Comments »
Deep Capture – Part VII
Posted on January 10, 2008
This is the seventh of a multi-part series on what Situationist Contributor David Yosifon and I call “deep capture.” The most basic prediction of the “deep capture” hypothesis is that there will be a competition over the situation (including the way we think) to influence the behavior of individuals and institutions and that those individuals, […]
Posted in Choice Myth, Deep Capture, Marketing, Politics, Public Policy | 5 Comments »
The Financial Squeeze: Bad Choices or Bad Situations?
Posted on November 2, 2007
Bob Sullivan wrote a terrific article last month on the sources of pressing debt loads for much of America’s middle class. It reviews and echoes some of the best research on how situational forces are attributed to the dispositions of the individuals and families feeling the squeeze of situation. We have excerpted Sullivan’s article below. […]
Posted in Choice Myth, Deep Capture | 7 Comments »
