Witnessing a Murder?: What Would You Do?

Related Situationist posts:

• The Bystander Effect at Penn State
• Bystanders in Child Abductions
• The Situation of Bystanders,
• The Situation of Gang Rape,
• The Situation of Helping,
• The Situational Effect of Groups,
• The Positive Situation of Crowds,
• The Situation of Helping,
• The Situation of Hazing, Torture, Gender, and Tears, and
  
• Journalists as Social Psychologists & Social Psychologists as Entertainers

Amy Cuddy on Power Posing

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From Time:

Using a few simple tweaks to body language, Harvard researcher Amy Cuddy discovers ways to help people become more powerful.

Related Situationist posts:

• Amy Cuddy on Body Language
• The Embodied Situation of Power
• The Situational Power of Appearance and Posture
• The Situation of Imitation and Mimickry
• Embodied Rationality
• The Situation of Body Image
• The Magnetism of Beautiful People
• Gender Quotas on Company Boards
• Fifth PLMS Conference Agenda

Helpful Summary of Wealth Inequality in U.S.

From Politizane:

Infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers. The reality is often not what we think it is.

Related Situationist posts:

• Kristina Olson on the Psychology of Inequality
• The Situation of Inequality
• Psychology of Inequality
• Laura Kubzansky on Stress and Resilience
• Ichiro Kawachi on Income Inequality and Population Health
• Malcolm Gladwell on the Situation of Equality Discourse
• John Palfrey’s PLMS Conference Reflections
• SALMS Liveblogs PLMS Conference
• Harvard Law Record on Tomorrow’s PLMS Conference
• Fifth PLMS Conference Agenda
• The Situational Effects of Wealth and Status
• Perceptions of Income Distribution and Preferences for Redistribution,
• Even monkeys know when they’re being treated unfairly
• A Discussion about (In)Equality
• The Interior Situational Reaction to Inequality
• The Young and the Lucky

Ryan Enos – SALMS Talk

SALMS hosted Ryan Enos at Harvard Law School on October 11, 2012, for a talk entitled “Mitt Romney Is Really, Really Good Looking: Do Attractiveness and Other Trivial Things Affect Elections?” The talk was part of the Mind Sciences & the Election series, which was cosponsored by American Constitution Society, HLS Republicans, HLS Democrats, and the Black Law Students Association. Click the link below to watch the video – enjoy!

Ryan Enos video

Related Situationist posts:

• Obama Emphasizes Situation: Romney Emphasizes Disposition
• Dr. Ryan Enos at HLS on the Role of Trivial Things on Elections
• The Facial Situation of Presidential Candidates
• Voting for a Face
• Botoxifying Empathy
• A Reminder: Smile
• Stereotyping Political Ideology
• The Situation of Smiling
• The Body Has a Mind of its Own
• The Situational Power of Appearance and Posture
• The Magnetism of Beautiful People
• Interpreting Facial Expressions
• Smile If You Love Your Future Relationships
• Can You Turn the World on With Your Smile?
• A Look Into the Way Culture Affects Facial Expression
• The Situation of Imitation and Mimickry
• The Situation of Trust
• The Situation of Body Image
• The Magnetism of Beautiful People
• The Situation of Hair Color

More posts on the situation of politics here.

Unconscious Processing Can Improve Decision-Making

From Carnegie Mellon:

When faced with a difficult decision, it is often suggested to “sleep on it” or take a break from thinking about the decision in order to gain clarity.

But new brain imaging research from Carnegie Mellon University, published in the journal “Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience,” finds that the brain regions responsible for making decisions continue to be active even when the conscious brain is distracted with a different task. The research provides some of the first evidence showing how the brain unconsciously processes decision information in ways that lead to improved decision-making.

“This research begins to chip away at the mystery of our unconscious brains and decision-making,” said J. David Creswell, assistant professor of psychology in CMU’s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences and director of the Health and Human Performance Laboratory. “It shows that brain regions important for decision-making remain active even while our brains may be simultaneously engaged in unrelated tasks, such as thinking about a math problem. What’s most intriguing about this finding is that participants did not have any awareness that their brains were still working on the decision problem while they were engaged in an unrelated task.”

For the study, Creswell, recent CMU graduate James K. Bursley and Northeastern University’s Ajay B. Satpute presented 27 healthy adults with information about cars and other items while undergoing neuroimaging. Then, before being asked to make decisions about the items, the participants had to complete a difficult distractor task — memorizing sequences of numbers — to prevent them from consciously thinking about the decision information.

The results included three main findings. First, the team confirmed previous research demonstrating that a brief period of distraction — in this case two minutes — produced higher quality decisions about the cars and other items. But did this effect occur because the distraction period provided an opportunity for the brain to take a break from decision-making and then return to the problem with a fresh look? Or alternatively, does the brain continue to unconsciously process decision information during this distraction period? This research supports the latter unconscious processing explanation.

When the participants were initially learning information about the cars and other items, the neuroimaging results showed activation in the visual and prefrontal cortices, regions that are known to be responsible for learning and decision-making. Additionally, during the distractor task, both the visual and prefrontal cortices continued to be active — or reactivated — even though the brain was consciously focused on number memorization.

Third, the results showed that the amount of reactivation within the visual and prefrontal cortices during the distractor task predicted the degree to which participants made better decisions, such as picking the best car in the set.

“We all face difficult problems we need to solve on a regular basis,” Creswell said. “Whether it’s buying a new car, finding a new apartment to rent, or seeking out a new dating partner on social networking sites. This study provides some of the first clues for how our brains process this information for effective problem-solving and decision-making.”

Bursley (DC’12), who joined CMU’s Health and Human Performance Laboratory as a freshman, spent his undergraduate career working on this research and related studies. To support his work, he received a Small Undergraduate Research Grant (SURG) and Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF). Bursley also received a Rothberg Research Award in Human Brain Imaging, made possible by Carnegie Mellon alumnus and trustee Jonathan M. Rothberg (E’85), founder of four genetics companies aimed at improving human health.

“Carnegie Mellon was the perfect place to carry out this work because there’s a significant focus here on pursuing new directions in mind-brain research,” Bursley said. “This study is really a starting point. We also are using brain imaging to see if we find the same reactivation patterns in learning tasks that we saw here in decision-making.”

CMU’s Department of Psychology has helped to establish Carnegie Mellon as a world leader in brain sciences. The university recently launched a Brain, Mind and Learning initiative to build from its research excellence in psychology, computer science and computation to continue to solve real-world problems.

Related Situationist posts:

• Unconscious Situation of Choice
• Slow Choose the Jam
• Dan Kahneman on Fast and Slow Thinking
• The Situation of the Voting Booth
• The Situation of Reason
• Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV of “The Unconscious Situation of our Consciousness.”
• Firstiness

Mahzarin Banaji on The Cycle

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Situationist Contributor Mahzarin Banaji discusses her fantastic new book, Blind Spot, on the MSNBC show,  The Cycle. 

Related Situationist posts:

• Situationist Contributor Mahzarin Banaji Speaks at HLS
• Mahzarin Banaji on B.F. Skinner
• Mahzarin Banaji at Harvard Law School
• Mahzarin Banaji’s Situation
• The Situation of a Situationist – Mahzarin Banaji
• Banaji & Greenwald on Edge – Part V
• Firstiness

Go to Project Implicit here.  Take the Policy IAT here.

To review all of the previous Situationist posts discussing implicit associations click on the “Implicit Associations” category in the right margin, or, for a list of such posts, click here.

Amy Cuddy on Body Language

Situationist friend, Amy Cuddy, delivers a fascinating TedTalk on how body language affects how others see us and on how we see ourselves.  Cuddy shows how “power posing” — standing in a posture of confidence, even when we don’t feel confident — can affect testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain, and might even have an impact on our chances for success.

Related Situationist posts:

• The Embodied Situation of Power
• The Situational Power of Appearance and Posture
• The Situation of Imitation and Mimickry
• Embodied Rationality
• The Situation of Body Image
• The Magnetism of Beautiful People
• Gender Quotas on Company Boards
• Fifth PLMS Conference Agenda

The Situational Source of Illusions

From National Geographic’s Brain Games:

Interactive experiments, illusions, and mind tricks reveal the inner workings of the ultimate supercomputer—the human brain.

Review many more Situationist posts containing illusions here.

Jeremy Bailenson on Virtual Reality

From Pacific Standard (a brief excerpt from a long, worthwhile article about the work of Jeremy Bailenson):

A few years ago, a research psychologist at Stanford University named Jeremy Bailenson effectively proved the soundness of Anderson’s recruitment methods (pdf). A week before the 2004 presidential election, Bailenson asked a bunch of prospective voters to look at photographs of George W. Bush and John Kerry and then give their opinions of the candidates. What the voters didn’t know was that the photographs had been doctored: each voter’s own visage had been subtly morphed together with that of one of the candidates.

In this and two follow-up experiments, Bailenson found what Rudy Rucker, the novelist who wrote Software, would have predicted: voters were significantly more likely to support the candidate who had been made to look like them. What’s more, not a single voter detected that it was, in part, his or her own face staring back.

In another experiment (pdf), Bailenson outfitted college students with head-mounted virtual-reality displays and then sat them across a digital table from an artificial-intelligence agent—a computer program with a human face. The students then listened as the “agent” delivered a short persuasive speech. When the agent was programmed to mimic a student’s facial movements on a four-second delay—a tilt of the chin, a look to the left, a downward glance—the students found it more likeable and compelling. And like the prospective voters, the students showed no sign that they knew they were being mimicked. Nothing, it seems, is more persuasive than a mirror.

Read entire article here.

From Google Talks (Bailenson discusses his work and book with Jim Blasovich, Infinite Reality):

Summary from Google Talks:

The coming explosion of immersive digital technology, combined with recent progress in unlocking how the mind works, will soon revolutionize our lives in ways only science fiction has imagined. In Infinite Reality, Jeremy Bailenson (Stanford University) and Jim Blascovich (University of California, Santa Barbara)—two of virtual reality’s pioneering authorities whose pathbreaking research has mapped how our brain behaves in digital worlds—take us on a mind-bending journey through the virtual universe.

Infinite Reality explores what emerging computer technologies and their radical applications will mean for the future of human life and society. Along the way, Bailenson and Blascovich examine the timeless philosophical questions of the self and “reality” that arise through the digital experience; explain how virtual reality’s latest and future forms—including immersive video games and social-networking sites—will soon be seamlessly integrated into our lives; show the many surprising practical applications of virtual reality, from education and medicine to sex and warfare; and probe further-off possibilities like “total personality downloads” that would allow your great-great-grandchildren to have a conversation with “you” a century or more after your death.

Related Situationist posts:

• Virtual Bias
• Virtual Infection, Disease Dynamics, and Human Behavior
• The Situation of First-Person Shooters
  
• The Facial Situation of Presidential Candidates
• The Situation of Trust
• Voting for a Face
• Botoxifying Empathy

Image from Pacific Standard.

Why Bystanders Walk By

Related Situationist posts:

• The Bystander Effect at Penn State
• Bystanders in Child Abductions
• The Situation of Bystanders,
• The Situation of Gang Rape,
• The Situation of Helping,
• The Situational Effect of Groups,
• The Positive Situation of Crowds,
• The Situation of Helping,
• The Situation of Hazing, Torture, Gender, and Tears, and
  
• Journalists as Social Psychologists & Social Psychologists as Entertainers.

Robert Lustig on Effects and Politics of Sugar

Dr. Robert Lustig (Sugar: The Bitter Truth) speaks at Yale’s Peabody Museum on the policy and politics of the “Sugar Pandemic.” Hosted by the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity.

Related Situationist posts:

• The Situation of How We Became Fat – Part 3
• The Situation of How We Became Fat – Part 2
• The Situation of How We Became Fat – Part 1
• Michael Pollan on the Political Situation of Food
• Marion Nestle on The Situation of Our Food
• Dr. David Kessler Waxes Situationist
• The Situation of our Food – Part I
• The Situation of Our Food – Part II
• The Situation of Our Food – Part III
• The Situation of our Food – Part IV
• The Situation of Our Food – Part V

For more on the situation of eating, see Situationist contributors Adam Benforado, Jon Hanson, and David Yosfion’s law review article Broken Scales: Obesity and Justice in America.  For a listing of numerous Situaitonist posts on the situational sources of obesity, click here.

Gary Wells on Improving the Accuracy of Eyewitness Identification

Related Situationist posts:

• The Situation of Eyewitness Identification
• The Norfolk Four and the Situation of False Confessions
• Memory Biases as Source of Prejudice
  
• The Situation of False Confessions

Mahzarin Banaji on B.F. Skinner

Situationist Contributor Mahzarin Banaji on B.F. Skinner, “the preeminent psychologist of the 20th century.”

The Situation of How We Became Fat – Part 3

Part 3 of the BBC’s Remarkable Three-Part Series “The Men Who Made Us Fat”:

Jacques Peretti examines assumptions about what is and is not healthy. He also looks at how product marketing can seduce consumers into buying supposed ‘healthy foods’ such as muesli and juices, both of which can be high in sugar.

He speaks with Simon Wright, an ‘organic consultant’ for Sainsbury’s in the 1990s, who explains how the food industry cashed in on the public’s concerns around salmonella, BSE and GM crops. By 1999 the organic industry was worth over £605M, a rise of 232% within two years.

How did the mainstream food producers compete? Peretti speaks with Kath Dalmeny, former policy director at the Food Commission, who explains some of the marketing strategies used by mainstream food producers to keep our custom.

The programme also explores the impact of successive government initiatives and health campaigns, such as the proposal of ‘traffic light labelling’, the introduction of which the food industry lobbied hard against.

But in 2012, when we have an Olympic Games sponsored by McDonalds and Coca Cola, has anything changed?

Related Situationist posts:

• The Situation of How We Became Fat – Part 2
• The Situation of How We Became Fat – Part 1
• Michael Pollan on the Political Situation of Food
• Marion Nestle on The Situation of Our Food
• Dr. David Kessler Waxes Situationist
• The Situation of our Food – Part I
• The Situation of Our Food – Part II
• The Situation of Our Food – Part III
• The Situation of our Food – Part IV
• The Situation of Our Food – Part V

For more on the situation of eating, see Situationist contributors Adam Benforado, Jon Hanson, and David Yosfion’s law review article Broken Scales: Obesity and Justice in America.  For a listing of numerous Situaitonist posts on the situational sources of obesity, click here.

The Situation of How We Became Fat – Part 2

Part 2 of the BBC’s Remarkable Three-Part Series “The Men Who Made Us Fat”:

Jacques Peretti investigates how the concept of ‘supersizing’ changed our eating habits forever. How did we – once a nation of moderate eaters – start to want more?

Speaking to Mike Donahue, former McDonalds Vice President, Peretti explores the history behind the idea of supersizing. 40 years ago, McDonalds hired David Wallerstein, a former cinema manager who had introduced the idea of selling larger popcorn servings in his Chicago cinema. Wallerstein realised that people would eat more but they didn’t like the idea of appearing gluttonous by going back for seconds. By increasing the portion sizes and the cost, he could sell more food. In 1972, he introduced the idea to McDonalds and their first large fries went on sale.

By the 1980s, we were eating more – and eating more often. Perretti speaks with industry professionals to examine the story behind the introduction of value meals, king-size snacks and multi-buy promotions. How did the advertising industry encourage us to eat more often?

The programme also explores the developments in dietary advice – by 2003, the Chief Medical Officer was warning of an ‘obesity time bomb.’ Peretti speaks to obesity expert Professor Philip James, who made recommendations in his 1996 report that the food industry should cease targeting children in their advertisements. He also speaks with Professor Terry Wilkin, who led a pioneering study into childhood weight gain; and former Labour MP David Hinchliffe, who chaired the 2003 Parliamentary Select Committee on Health.

Related Situationist posts:

• The Situation of How We Became Fat – Part 1
• Michael Pollan on the Political Situation of Food
• Marion Nestle on The Situation of Our Food
• Dr. David Kessler Waxes Situationist
• The Situation of our Food – Part I
• The Situation of Our Food – Part II
• The Situation of Our Food – Part III
• The Situation of our Food – Part IV
• The Situation of Our Food – Part V

For more on the situation of eating, see Situationist contributors Adam Benforado, Jon Hanson, and David Yosfion’s law review article Broken Scales: Obesity and Justice in America.  For a listing of numerous Situaitonist posts on the situational sources of obesity, click here.

The Situation of How We Became Fat – Part 1

From Introduction of BBC’s Remarkable Three-Part Series “The Men Who Made Us Fat”:

Around the world, obesity levels are rising. More people are now overweight than undernourished. Two thirds of British adults are overweight and one in four of us is classified as obese. In the first of this three-part series, Jacques Peretti traces those responsible for revolutionising our eating habits, to find out how decisions made in America 40 years ago influence the way we eat now.

Peretti travels to America to investigate the story of high-fructose corn syrup. The sweetener was championed in the US in the 1970s by Richard Nixon’s agriculture secretary Earl Butz to make use of the excess corn grown by farmers. Cheaper and sweeter than sugar, it soon found its way into almost all processed foods and soft drinks. HFCS is not only sweeter than sugar, it also interferes with leptin, the hormone that controls appetite, so once you start eating or drinking it, you don’t know when to stop.

Endocrinologist Robert Lustig was one of the first to recognise the dangers of HFCS but his findings were discredited at the time. Meanwhile a US Congress report blamed fat, not sugar, for the disturbing rise in cardio-vascular disease and the food industry responded with ranges of ‘low fat’, ‘heart healthy’ products in which the fat was removed – but the substitute was yet more sugar.

Meanwhile, in 1970s Britain, food manufacturers used advertising campaigns to promote the idea of snacking between meals. Outside the home, fast food chains offered clean, bright premises with tempting burgers cooked and served with a very un-British zeal and efficiency. Twenty years after the arrival of McDonalds, the number of fast food outlets in Britain had quadrupled.

Related Situationist posts:

• Michael Pollan on the Political Situation of Food
• Marion Nestle on The Situation of Our Food
• Dr. David Kessler Waxes Situationist
• The Situation of our Food – Part I
• The Situation of Our Food – Part II
• The Situation of Our Food – Part III
• The Situation of our Food – Part IV
• The Situation of Our Food – Part V

For more on the situation of eating, see Situationist contributors Adam Benforado, Jon Hanson, and David Yosfion’s law review article Broken Scales: Obesity and Justice in America.  For a listing of numerous Situaitonist posts on the situational sources of obesity, click here.

Michael Pollan on the Political Situation of Food

Host Harry Kreisler welcomes writer Michael Pollan for a discussion of the agricultural industrial complex that dominates consumer choices about what to eat. He explores the origins, evolution and consequences of this system for the nations health and environment. He highlights the role of science, journalism, and politics in the development of a diet that emphasizes nutrition over food. Pollan also sketches a reform agenda and speculates on how a movement might change Americas eating habits. He also talks about science writing, the rewards of gardening, and how students might prepare for the future.

Related Situationist posts:

• Marion Nestle on The Situation of Our Food
• Dr. David Kessler Waxes Situationist
• The Situation of our Food – Part I
• The Situation of Our Food – Part II
• The Situation of Our Food – Part III
• The Situation of our Food – Part IV
• The Situation of Our Food – Part V

For more on the situation of eating, see Situationist contributors Adam Benforado, Jon Hanson, and David Yosfion’s law review article Broken Scales: Obesity and Justice in America.  For a listing of numerous Situaitonist posts on the situational sources of obesity, click here.

Marion Nestle on The Situation of Our Food

Related Situationist posts:

• Dr. David Kessler Waxes Situationist
• The Situation of our Food – Part I
• The Situation of Our Food – Part II
• The Situation of Our Food – Part III
• The Situation of our Food – Part IV
• The Situation of Our Food – Part V

For more on the situation of eating, see Situationist contributors Adam Benforado, Jon Hanson, and David Yosfion’s law review article Broken Scales: Obesity and Justice in America.  For a listing of numerous Situaitonist posts on the situational sources of obesity, click here.

The Good, the Bad, and the Baby

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From 60 Minutes:

The above video is from “The Baby Lab” which aired on Nov. 18, 2012.

Related Situationist posts:

• The Neuro-Situation of Altruism
• Selfishness versus Altruism
• The Situation of Altruism
• The Situation of Altruism – Part 2
• The Situation of “Who We Help”
• The Situation of Altruism
• Psychology of Inequality
• The Interior Situational Reaction to Inequality
• The Religious Situation of Compassion and Generosity
• The Financial Situation of Empathy
• Racial bias clouds ability to feel others’ pain
• Students’ Situations Leave Them Less Empathetic (Situationist)
• The Interior Situation of Complex Human Feelings
• The Neuro-Situation of Violence and Empathy
• It’s Hard to Step into Someone Else’s Shoes
• The Situation of Morality and Empathy
• The Situation of Caring
• New Study Looks at the Roots of Empathy

Baumeister on the Situation of Self-Regulation

From YoungMinds:

How do we learn self-control as children?What bolsters will power? What undermines it?Is self-control a skill that can be practiced and taught?How can we encourage young people to perform to their potential?

Related Situationist posts:

• Self-Control and Crime
• Bargh and Baumeister and the Free Will Debate – Part II
• The Situation of Self-Regulation
• The Situation of Willpower
• Friends on the Brain
• The Situation of Temptation
• David Vitter, Eliot Spitzer, John Edwards, Jon Ensign, and Now Mark Sanford: The Disposition Is Weaker than the Situation,
• Bargh and Baumeister and the Free Will Debate — Part I & Part II
• The Death of Free Will and the Rise of Cheating
• Interview of Eric Kandel
• Coalition of the Will-less
• Dan Dennett – “Free Will, Responsibility, and the Brain”
• Dan Dennett at Harvard Law on ‘Free Will, Responsibility, and the Brain’
• Interview with Professor Joshua Greene
• Daniel Dennett on the Situation of our Brain
• Dan Dennett on our Interior Situation
• The Death of Free Will and the Rise of Cheating