Posted by The Situationist Staff on January 4, 2013
Several of us on The Situationist are fans of the New England Patriots and their head coach, Bill Belichick. Belichick is widely regarded as one of the best, if not the best, football coaches around; he’s often called a “genius”. Why? His teams have won 3 Super Bowl championships, and he’s coached in five of the last 11 Super Bowls. And he seems consistently smarter than other coaches in his strategies and designs. It’s as if the Patriots begin each game with a sizable advantage in coaching.
But how much of Belichick’s success can be attributed to situation rather than ability and work ethic? The Washington Post‘s Norman Chad argues quite a bit in his piece Patriots Coach Bill Belichick may be the luckiest man on Earth:
* * *
Let us count the ways Belichick has been wildly fortunate in his NFL head-coaching career:
1. Most coaches would not even get a second chance, as Belichick did, after his four-losing-seasons-in-five stint with the Cleveland Browns from 1991-95.
2. He masterfully sidestepped the moribund New York Jets, who hired him in 2000, quitting one day after getting the job with his infamous, hand-scribbled note, “I resign as HC of the NYJ.”
3. During the second game of his second season as coach of the New England Patriots, Drew Bledsoe got hurt; otherwise, Tom Brady might still be on the sideline, texting Mark Sanchez about good-looking ladies in the stands.
4. The Tuck Rule Game in January 2002, in which Brady fumbled away the Patriots’ last chance against the Oakland Raiders, only to have referee Walt Coleman reverse the call via replay and reverse the course of NFL history for the next decade.
* * *
Belichick is now regarded as a football genius. But without Bledsoe’s misfortune and Brady’s magnificence, Belichick might’ve been Eric Mangini before Eric Mangini, glumly sitting in an ESPN studio dispensing gridiron bromides. Instead, Belichick — with 12 straight winning seasons in New England — has become the ninth-winningest coach in NFL history.
Belichick is a great example of what I call the “Frank Sinatra Principle.” The Sinatra principle states that two singers can be born on the same Hoboken, N.J., block in the same year with similar skills, but one becomes a treasured entertainment icon and the other works the Ramada Inn lounge in Fairborn, Ohio. And it is a result of luck or connections as much as talent and hard work.
* * *
Read the entire article here.
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Posted in Entertainment, Situationist Sports | Tagged: Bill Belichick, Frank Sinatra, Sinatra Principle | Leave a Comment »
Posted by The Situationist Staff on January 2, 2013
In the emerging field of tax psychology, the focus on regulation and overcoming tax evasion recently shifted towards searching for situational cues that elicit common goals compliance. Following this innovative behavioral economics quest, Situationist Contributor Julia M. Puaschunder found evidence (download paper here) for trust and reciprocity steering social common goods contributions.
In experiments at the Harvard Decision Science Laboratory, the same participants played an economic trust game followed by a common goods game. The more trust and reciprocity were practiced and experienced by player duos, the stronger they supported common goals together.
The findings portray trust and reciprocity as interesting tax ethics antecedents and hold widespread implications for governmental-citizen relations. Shifting attention from prevailing ‘cops-and-robbers’ attempts to fight tax fraud, new public policy managers are advised to establish a service-oriented client atmosphere. In a socially-favorable societal climate breeding trust and reciprocity, common goals are likely to be reached.
Download the full paper ‘Trust and Reciprocity Drive Social Common Goods Contribution Norms’ for free here.
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Image from Flickr.
Posted in Abstracts, Altruism, Choice Myth, Environment, Situationist Contributors | Leave a Comment »
Posted by The Situationist Staff on December 31, 2012
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.
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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.
Posted in Food and Drug Law, Politics, Video | Leave a Comment »
Posted by The Situationist Staff on December 28, 2012
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Posted in Law, Video | Leave a Comment »
Posted by The Situationist Staff on December 26, 2012
From TEDTalks:
Information designer Tom Wujec talks through three areas of the brain that help us understand words, images, feelings, connections. In this short talk from TEDU, he asks: How can we best engage our brains to help us better understand big ideas?
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Click here for a collection of posts on illusion.
Posted in Illusions | Leave a Comment »
Posted by The Situationist Staff on December 23, 2012
If you find yourself, as many do, out of time to purchase thoughtful gifts, perhaps you are now contemplating giving a gift card or perhaps some cash. From CNN (summarizing recent research by Dan Ariely, among others), here’s a reason to opt for former option:
In our daily lives, a lot of purchases have the element of guilt along with them, Ariely said. If you give cash or a credit-card-sponsored gift card that can be used anywhere, your friend may be tempted to use it on groceries or gas or some other necessity that doesn’t make it feel very “present”-like anymore.
Ariely’s intuition is that if you give a gift card that must be used at a particular store, restaurant or entertainment venue, it may eliminate the guilt a person would feel about spending money to treat herself or himself. In fact, you’re essentially creating an experience for the person by coaxing them into going to a particular place that they might not otherwise go.
A spa gift certificate is a popular example, Ariely said. “If you can only spend it on things that you would otherwise not allow yourself to buy, then it’s more valuable,” he said.
Read the entire article here.
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Posted in Altruism, Positive Psychology | Leave a Comment »
Posted by The Situationist Staff on December 19, 2012
Situationist Contributor Mahzarin Banaji on B.F. Skinner, “the preeminent psychologist of the 20th century.”
Posted in Classic Experiments, Situationist Contributors, Video | Leave a Comment »
Posted by The Situationist Staff on December 17, 2012
In another outstanding study, Situationist Contributor Julia M. Puaschunder (with her collaborator Gary Schwarz at the University of Nottingham) suggests ways to implement intergenerational equity on a global scale.
An international survey presented respondents with public policy choices and asked to allocate tax units to different policies in the domains of culture, economics, education, foreign aid, infrastructure and environment.
Evaluating two policies with different outcome times – one more imminently and one that would benefit future generations – at once elicited more intergenerationally equitable outcomes than when deciding over bills with different impact times one at a time. When individuals judge alternative choices, presenting the viewpoints of two generations concurrently balanced intergenerational contributions.
Finding this intergenerational equilibrium pattern in Asia and the U.S. leverages the joint decision making advantage into a human-imbued nudge to overcome global common goods dilemmas. Based on the results, policy makers are advised to consider a multi-faceted decision schema and set up age-differentiated global governance consortia.
Download the full paper ‘The Future is Now: How Joint Decision Making Curbs Hyperbolic Discounting but Blurs Social Responsibility in The Intergenerational Equity Public Policy Domain” for free here.
Situationist Contributor Julia M. Puaschunder is an Associate of the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences Center for the Environment working on intergenerational equity constraints in the domains of environmental sustainability, overindebtedness and social welfare reform of an aging Western world population.
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Image from Flickr (by Will Barnet – Four Generations – Modern Art Galley of Vatican Museums)
Posted in Abstracts, Altruism, Choice Myth, Environment, Situationist Contributors | Leave a Comment »
Posted by The Situationist Staff on December 10, 2012
In two recent, fascinating field experiments, Situationist Contributor Julia M. Puaschunder demonstrated how social conscientiousness can be “nudged” by social forces: Social status drops trigger social responsibility.
In a field experiment in Harvard dormitories, social identity insignia (in the form of Harvard logo posters) connected to social norm cues (Sustainability at Harvard posters) promoting environmentalism fostered recycling compliance – once prior social status endowments were taken away. Building on prospect theory, the paper argues looming social status losses are compensated with socially-favored ethicality. Social status downs combined with social norm cues steer social responsibility.
A second study on energy conservation in Harvard libraries found a similar effect. Tent card signage, featuring the Harvard logo, was placed in Harvard Law School’s Langdell Library in combination with social norm instructions asking students to turn off their task-light when finished studying. When the social status endowing cards were removed, energy light consumption conscientiousness improved. Situational social status losses related to social norm reminders nudged library visitors towards pro-social environmentalism.
Based on these findings, the Harvard Law School installed similar tent cards in Langdell Library study areas. The results have attracted attention of British Prime Minister David Cameron’s Cabinet Team on Behavioral Insights. The U.S. Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education distributed the learning. Follow-up studies in the organizational context have been inspired by the unprecedented idea to use social status endowments to gain social responsibility.
Here’s the abstract to the paper titled ‘Ethical Decision Making under Social Uncertainty’:
Decision making research has been revolutionized by prospect theory. In laboratory experiments, prospect theory captures human to code outcome perspectives as gains or losses relative to an individual reference point, by which decisions are anchored. Prospect theory’s core finding that monetary losses loom larger than gains has been generalized in many domains; yet not been tested for social status changes. Social status striving has been subject to social sciences’ research for a long time but until today we have no clear picture of how social status prospects relative to an individual reference point may influence our decision making and action. Understanding human cognition in the light of social status perspectives, however, could allow turning social status experiences into ethicality nudges. The perceived endowment through social status may drive social responsibility. Ethicality as a socially-appreciated, noble societal contribution offers the prospect of social status gains given the societal respect for altruism and pro-social acts. An Überethical filling of current legal gaps or outperforming legal regulations grant additional social status elevation opportunities. Building on prospect theory, two field observations of environmentally conscientious recycling behavior and sustainable energy consumption tested if social status losses are more likely to be answered with ethicality than social status gains. Social status losses are found as significant drivers of socially responsible environmental conscientiousness. Testing prospect theory for social status striving advances socio-economics and helps understanding the underlying mechanisms of social identity theories. Pegging social status to ethicality is an unprecedented approach to use social forces as a means for accomplishing positive societal change. Future studies may target at elucidating if ethicality in the wake of social status losses is more a cognitive, rational strategy or emotional compensation for feelings of unworthiness after social status drops.
Download the full paper, ‘Ethical Decision Making under Social Uncertainty,’ for free here.
Situationist Contributor Julia M. Puaschunder is an Associate of the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences Center for the Environment working on intergenerational equity constraints in the domains of environmental sustainability, overindebtedness and social welfare reform of an aging Western world population.
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Posted in Abstracts, Altruism, Choice Myth, Environment, Situationist Contributors | Leave a Comment »
Posted by The Situationist Staff on December 7, 2012
We are thrilled to introduce a new Situationist Contributor, Dr. Julia Puaschunder.
Julia M. Puaschunder is an Associate of the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences. At the Harvard University Center for the Environment, she conducts research on intergenerational equity. Trained as a behavioral economist with Doctorates in Social and Economic Sciences as well as Natural Sciences and Masters in Business, Public Administration and Philosophy/Psychology, she has 12 years of experience in applied social sciences empirical research.
Julia Puaschunder has launched and administered research projects in Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Germany, Indonesia, Switzerland and the United States. She has conducted international and interdisciplinary research projects for the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research, European Commission, Fulbright Commission, Max Kade Foundation New York, and the U.S. Department of Education. Julia Puaschunder was a scholar at The Australian National University, Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich and The Open Society Institute & Soros Foundation NY. Her invited presentations included Harvard University and Princeton University. In 2011, she served as a participant in a U.S. White House conference call on environmental justice.
Julia Puaschunder is a long-term reader of The Situationist, and we are delighted that she will now be a Contributor too.
Posted in Situationist Contributors | Tagged: Situationist Contributor | Leave a Comment »
Posted by The Situationist Staff on December 5, 2012
Social psychologist and Situationist friend Dave Nussbaum has another outstanding situationist post over on Random Assignments. Here’s how it starts.
One of the obstacles that keeps the poor from rising out of poverty is the tendency to make costly financial decisions – like buying lottery tickets, taking out high interest loans (PDF), and failing to enroll in assistance programs – that only make their situation worse. In the past, these poor decisions have been attributed either to low income individuals’ personalities or issues in their environment, such as poor education or substandard living conditions. New research published this month in Science by Booth Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science Anuj Shah points to a new answer: living with scarcity changes people’s psychology.
The basic idea is that when resources are scarce – when people are short on time, or money, or food – each decision about how best to use those resources takes on greater urgency than when resources are abundant. This focus can have positive effects in the short term, but it comes at the expense of neglecting other, less urgent demands. For example, when they are under the press of urgent expenses like rent and groceries, people may neglect to do routine maintenance on their car and end up with costly (and avoidable) repairs down the road.
Shah, along with colleagues Sendhil Mullainathan of Harvard and Eldar Shafir of Princeton, published five studies in which he studied the effects of scarcity on decision making in various games in which people were paid according to their performance. In each of the studies some people received ample resources with which to play, while others received very few. Moreover, in some studies the players had the opportunity to borrow additional resources with interest. The researchers then observed how scarcity affected the players’ borrowing behavior, their performance, and the psychological processes at play.
Across the studies Shah found that for people who had very few resources, the games took on more urgency. They became more focused on the task at hand in order to make the best use of their scarce resources, but that this added focus came at a price, including mental fatigue, costly borrowing decisions, and poor overall performance.
For example, in an Angry Birds-type of game, in which the object was to knock down as many targets as possible, players who could take only three shots per round spent more time aiming each shot than players who had fifteen shots. This added focus improved performance, but it had downsides. When players were given the opportunity to “borrow” a shot, by giving up two shots in a later round of the game, players who had fewer in shots made counterproductive borrowing decisions that hurt their overall performance.
Read the rest of Dave’s post, discussing possible implications of the research, here.
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Posted in Blogroll, Choice Myth, Distribution, Marketing, Social Psychology | Tagged: cognitive dissonance, replication, Social Psychology | 1 Comment »
Posted by The Situationist Staff on December 2, 2012
Press Release from Tilburg University:
A culture permeated by ‘flawed science’ surrounded social psychologist Diederik Stapel. This is one reason why his academic misconduct went undetected for so long. The investigation into his practices and the discussion that followed have served as a catalyst for positive change, however. The fraud case has raised international awareness of the importance of scientific integrity. The discussion is now focusing more than ever on replication, data archiving and the general research culture.
This is the conclusion of the Levelt, Noort and Drenth Committees as published in their joint final report on the Stapel case. The report was presented to the Rectors of the universities concerned on November 28. The Committees investigated the periods during which Stapel committed scientific fraud and the publications involved. The Committees identified 55 publications in which it is certain that Stapel committed fraud during his time in Groningen and Tilburg. In addition, eleven older publications by Stapel published when he worked in Amsterdam and Groningen show indications of fraud. The earliest dates from 1996. A total of ten doctoral dissertations supervised by Stapel are ‘contaminated’ (seven in Groningen and three from recent years in Tilburg).
Although Stapel is fully and solely responsible for this extensive case of academic fraud, the Committees are also critical of the research culture in which this academic misconduct was allowed to go undetected. The Committees describe this as “a general culture of careless, selective and uncritical handling of research and data.” They conclude that “…from the bottom to the top there was a general neglect of fundamental scientific standards and methodological requirements.” The Committees point the finger not only at Stapel’s peers, but also at editors and reviewers of international journals.
The three Committees received all possible assistance for their investigation. They conclude that the discussion surrounding the case has led to a series of measures to prevent academic fraud and to investigate suspicions of fraud more effectively. “By establishing committees and issuing reports, organizations such as KNAW (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences), VSNU (Association of Universities in the Netherlands), and the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA) all have contributed to the debate about breaches of scientific integrity and their prevention,” according to the Committees. The recommendations presented by the Schuyt Committee (KNAW) similarly contribute to promoting scientific integrity.
In Stapel’s field, Social Psychology, many initiatives have already been taken to improve research practices. For example, the Association of Social Psychological Researchers ASPO is very active in the field of continuing education, data storage and replication.
An English translation of the final report ‘Flawed Science’ by the Levelt, Noort, and Drenth committees is avaliable online (pdf).
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Posted in Morality, Social Psychology | 3 Comments »
Posted by The Situationist Staff on November 29, 2012
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.
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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.
Posted in Choice Myth, Deep Capture, Distribution, Education, Food and Drug Law, Ideology, Marketing, Politics, Video | 2 Comments »
Posted by The Situationist Staff on November 28, 2012
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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.
Posted in Choice Myth, Deep Capture, Environment, Food and Drug Law, History, Marketing, Video | Leave a Comment »
Posted by The Situationist Staff on November 25, 2012
Mother Jones has a superb new article on the deeply captured situation of sugar. It begins as follows:
ON A BRISK SPRING Tuesday in 1976, a pair of executives from the Sugar Association stepped up to the podium of a Chicago ballroom to accept the Oscar of the public relations world, the Silver Anvil award for excellence in “the forging of public opinion.” The trade group had recently pulled off one of the greatest turnarounds in PR history. For nearly a decade, the sugar industry had been buffeted by crisis after crisis as the media and the public soured on sugar and scientists began to view it as a likely cause of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Industry ads claiming that eating sugar helped you lose weight had been called out by the Federal Trade Commission, and the Food and Drug Administration had launched a review of whether sugar was even safe to eat. Consumption had declined 12 percent in just two years, and producers could see where that trend might lead. As John “JW” Tatem Jr. and Jack O’Connell Jr., the Sugar Association’s president and director of public relations, posed that day with their trophies, their smiles only hinted at the coup they’d just pulled off.
Their winning campaign, crafted with the help of the prestigious public relations firm Carl Byoir & Associates, had been prompted by a poll showing that consumers had come to see sugar as fattening, and that most doctors suspected it might exacerbate, if not cause, heart disease and diabetes. With an initial annual budget of nearly $800,000 ($3.4 million today) collected from the makers of Dixie Crystals, Domino, C&H, Great Western, and other sugar brands, the association recruited a stable of medical and nutritional professionals to allay the public’s fears, brought snack and beverage companies into the fold, and bankrolled scientific papers that contributed to a “highly supportive” FDA ruling, which, the Silver Anvil application boasted, made it “unlikely that sugar will be subject to legislative restriction in coming years.”
The story of sugar, as Tatem told it, was one of a harmless product under attack by “opportunists dedicated to exploiting the consuming public.” Over the subsequent decades, it would be transformed from what the New York Times in 1977 had deemed “a villain in disguise” into a nutrient so seemingly innocuous that even the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association approved it as part of a healthy diet. Research on the suspected links between sugar and chronic disease largely ground to a halt by the late 1980s, and scientists came to view such pursuits as a career dead end. So effective were the Sugar Association’s efforts that, to this day, no consensus exists about sugar’s potential dangers. The industry’s PR campaign corresponded roughly with a significant rise in Americans’ consumption of “caloric sweeteners,” including table sugar (sucrose) and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). This increase was accompanied, in turn, by a surge in the chronic diseases increasingly linked to sugar. Since 1970, obesity rates in the United States have more than doubled, while the incidence of diabetes has more than tripled.
Read the entire article and related items here.
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Posted in Deep Capture, Food and Drug Law, History, Ideology, Life, Marketing, Public Relations | 1 Comment »
Posted by Adam Benforado on November 23, 2012
A new essay in PLOS Biology returns to the path-breaking research of Stanley Milgram and Situationist Contributor Phil Zimbardo and asks whether the studies demonstrate the power of blind conformity or something else. In particular, the authors, Alex Haslam and Stephen Reicher, are interested in the possibility that social identification might be driving the dynamic. As Haslam explains, “Decent people participate in horrific acts not because they become passive, mindless functionaries who do not know what they are doing, but rather because they come to believe — typically under the influence of those in authority — that what they are doing is right.”
Here is the abstract of the paper:
Understanding of the psychology of tyranny is dominated by classic studies from the 1960s and 1970s: Milgram’s research on obedience to authority and Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment. Supporting popular notions of the banality of evil, this research has been taken to show that people conform passively and unthinkingly to both the instructions and the roles that authorities provide, however malevolent these may be. Recently, though, this consensus has been challenged by empirical work informed by social identity theorizing. This suggests that individuals’ willingness to follow authorities is conditional on identification with the authority in question and an associated belief that the authority is right.
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Posted in Abstracts, Ideology, Morality, Situationist Contributors, Social Psychology | 3 Comments »
