Category: Psychology

Having Your Intellectual Property Stolen, Modifies Your Views on Piracy

(p. C18) Dear Dan,
My nephew has been downloading music and movies illegally from the Internet. Without sounding self-righteous, how can I get him to respect intellectual-property rights?
–Patricia
My own view on illegal downloads was deeply modified the day that my book on dishonesty was published–when I learned that it had been illegally downloaded more than 20,000 times from one overseas website. (The irony did not escape me.) My advice? Get your nephew to create something and then, without his knowing, put it online and download it many, many times. I suspect that will make it much harder for him to keep up his blithe attitude toward piracy.

For the full advice column by Dan Ariely, professor of behavioral economics at Duke , see:
DAN ARIELY. “ASK ARIELY; It’s Risky to Rely on Retirement Questionnaires.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., May 23, 2015): C18.
(Note: italics in original.)
(Note: the online version of the advice column has the date May 22, 2015.)

Voters Want Texas-Style Economic Dynamism

(p. A23) Surveys and interviews give us some sense of what’s going on. Voters have a lot of economic anxieties. But they also have a template in their heads for what economic dynamism looks like.
That template does not include a big role for government. Polls show that faith in government is near all-time lows. In a Gallup survey, voters listed dysfunctional government as the nation’s No. 1 problem. In fact, American voters’ traditional distrust has morphed and hardened. They used to think it was bloated and ineffective. Now they think it is bloated and ineffective and rigged to help those who need it least.
When many of these voters think of economic dynamism, they think of places like Texas, the top job producer in the nation over the past decade, and, especially, places like Houston, a low-regulation, low-cost-of-living place. In places like Wisconsin, voters in the middle class private sector support candidates who cut state pensions and pass right-to-work laws, so that economic governance can be more Texas-style.

For the full commentary, see:
David Brooks. “The Field Is Flat.” The New York Times (Fri., MARCH 27, 2015): A23.

Sears CEO Ed Telling Had an Introverted Fury

Writing of Ed Telling, the eventual entrepreneurial CEO of Sears:

(p. 488) Slowly, the introverted Field soldier from Danville moved up through the organization. He eventually managed the same Midwestern zone he was once made to ride. He found himself in the decadent city-state called the New York group, and it was there, in the strangely methodical fury with which he fell upon the corruption of the group and the profligacy of powerful store jockeys, that certain individuals around him began to feel inspired by his quiet power, as if he’d touched some inverted desire in each of them to do justice at his beckoning and to even numerous scores. He was possessed of a determination to promulgate change such as none of them had ever seen before, and certain hard-bitten bitten veterans like Bill Bass found themselves strangely moved.

Source:
Katz, Donald R. The Big Store: Inside the Crisis and Revolution at Sears. New York: Viking Adult, 1987.

“Animals Have Complex Minds and Rich Emotional Lives”

(p. D6) We now know that species from magpies to elephants can recognize themselves in the mirror, which some scientists consider a sign of self-awareness. Rats emit a form of laughter when they’re tickled. And dolphins, parrots and dogs show clear signs of distress when their companions die. Together, these and many other findings demonstrate what any devoted pet owner has probably already concluded: that animals have complex minds and rich emotional lives.

For the full review, see:
EMILY ANTHES. “Books; Does That Cat Have O.C.D.?.” The New York Times (Tues., JULY 8, 2014): D6.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date JULY 7, 2014.)

The book under review, is:
Braitman, Laurel. Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.

Our Personal Projects Can Create Compelling Idiogenic Motives

Brian Little, the author of the book mentioned below, was persuasively praised in Quiet, a book I liked a lot. (I have not yet read Little’s book.)

(p. 7) When we’re in danger of exhausting ourselves by exercising free traits that go against the grain of our fixed traits, he recommends the use of “restorative niches” in which to recover. After a morning of acting as a pseudo-extrovert on the lecture stage, Little confides, he restores his introverted nature by spending time alone in the men’s room. Alas, on one occasion an opposing personality came along to spoil his solitude. Little describes his biogenic fixed-trait response to the intruder: “I could feel my autonomic nervous system kicking in. He sat down in the cubicle next to me. I then heard various evacuatory noises — very loud, utterly unmuffled. We introverts really don’t do this; in fact, many of us flush during as well as after. Finally I heard a gruff, gravelly voice call out, ‘Hey, is that Dr. Little?’ He was an extravert — he wanted to chat!”
. . .
“Me, Myself, and Us” is most insightful when Little goes beyond polarized divisions — to explore, for example, the effects on our personalities of what he calls our “personal projects.” “Beyond the influence of the biogenic and sociogenic sources of motivation, there is another compelling influence on our daily behavior that I call idiogenic motives. They represent the plans, aspirations, commitments and personal projects that we pursue in the course of daily life.”

For the full review, see:
ANNIE MURPHY PAUL. “‘Who Do You Think You Are?” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., DEC. 28, 2014): 7.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date DEC. 26, 2014, and has the title “‘Me, Myself, and Us,’ by Brian R. Little.”)

The book under review is:
Little, Brian R. Me, Myself, and Us: The Science of Personality and the Art of Well-Being. New York: PublicAffairs, 2014.

Successful Billionaire Mathematician Would Have Lost Math Contests, But Was Good at Slow Pondering

(p. D1) James H. Simons likes to play against type. He is a billionaire star of mathematics and private investment who often wins praise for his financial gifts to scientific research and programs to get children hooked on math.
But in his Manhattan office, high atop a Fifth Avenue building in the Flatiron district, he’s quick to tell of his career failings.
He was forgetful. He was demoted. He found out the hard way that he was terrible at programming computers. “I’d keep forgetting the notation,” Dr. Simons said. “I couldn’t write programs to save my life.”
After that, he was fired.
His message is clearly aimed at young people: If I can do it, so can you.
. . .
(p. D2) “I wasn’t the fastest guy in the world,” Dr. Simons said of his youthful math enthusiasms. “I wouldn’t have done well in an Olympiad or a math contest. But I like to ponder. And pondering things, just sort of thinking about it and thinking about it, turns out to be a pretty good approach.”

For the full story, see:
WILLIAM J. BROAD. “Seeker, Doer, Giver, Ponderer; A Billionaire Mathematician’s Life of Ferocious Curiosity.” The New York Times (Tues., JULY 8, 2014): D3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JULY 7, 2014.)

Perceptual Diversity Puzzle: Is It White-and-Gold or Blue-and-Black?

WhiteAndGoldOrBlueAndBlackDress2015-03-15.jpg

“The dress in a photo from Caitlin McNeill’s Tumblr site.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) The mother of the bride wore white and gold. Or was it blue and black?

From a photograph of the dress the bride posted online, there was broad disagreement. A few days after the wedding last weekend on the Scottish island of Colonsay, a member of the wedding band was so frustrated by the lack of consensus that she posted a picture of the dress on Tumblr, and asked her followers for feedback.
“I was just looking for an answer because it was messing with my head,” said Caitlin McNeill, a 21-year-old singer and guitarist.
. . .
Less than a half-hour after Ms. McNeil’s original Tumblr post, Buzzfeed posted a poll: “What Colors Are This Dress?” As of Friday afternoon, it had (p. B5) been viewed more than 28 million times. (White and gold was winning handily.)
. . .
Politicians were eager to stake out their positions. “I know three things,” wrote Senator Christopher Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, on Twitter. “1) the ACA works; 2) climate change is real; 3) that dress is gold and white.”
Sorry, senator. The dress, as we all now know, is blue and black. It goes for 50 pounds at Roman Originals, a British retailer.
. . .
Various theories were floated about why the dress looks different to different people. (No, if you see the darker hues of blue and black it doesn’t mean that you are depressed.)
Duje Tadin, associate professor for brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, says it may be because of variations in the number of photoreceptors called cones in the retina that perceive the color blue. The human eye has about six million cones that are sensitive to green, red or blue. Signals from the cones go to the brain, which interprets them as color.
“It’s puzzling,” conceded Dr. Tadin. “When it comes to color, blue is always the weird one. We have the fewest number of blue cones.” He added, “If you don’t have very many blue cones, you may see it as white, or if you have plenty of blue cones, you may see more blue.”
. . .
The one thing scientists could agree on was that this is a very unusual illusion. People who see the dress one way do not eventually begin to see it the other way, as is common with many optical illusions. “This clearly has to do with individual differences in how we perceive the world,” said Dr. Tadin. “There’s something about this particular image that just captures those differences in a remarkable way.

For the full story, see:
JONATHAN MAHLER. “The Dress That Melted the Internet.” The New York Times (Sat., FEB. 28, 2015): B1 & B5.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date FEB. 27, 2015, and has the title “The White and Gold (No, Blue and Black!) Dress That Melted the Internet.”)

Machiavelli Experienced “Flow” Writing The Prince

(p. 8) “Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are,” Machiavelli wrote in “The Prince.”
. . .
After the reveling, back in his study at a heavy desk much like the one in Palazzo Vecchio, he would spend the evening on the work that would come to define him. “For four hours,” he wrote, “I feel no boredom, I forget every worry, I don’t dread poverty, nor has death any terrors for me.”

For the full story, see:
ONDINE COHANE. “Footsteps; Following the Rise and Fall of Machiavelli.” The New York Times, Travel Section (Sun., DEC. 7, 2014): 8.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date DEC. 4, 2014, and has the title “Footsteps; In Tuscany, Following the Rise and Fall of Machiavelli.”.)

Machiavelli’s classic is:
Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 1992 (based on a translation first published in 1910).

Conscientiousness and Openness Matter More than Intelligence

(p. 2) In a 2014 paper, the Australian psychology professor Arthur E. Poropat cites research showing that both conscientiousness (which he defines as a tendency to be “diligent, dutiful and hardworking”) and openness (characterized by qualities like creativity and curiosity) are more highly correlated with student performance than intelligence is. And, he notes, ratings of students’ personalities by outside observers — teachers, for instance — are even more strongly linked with academic success than the way students rate themselves. The strength of the personality-performance link is good news, he writes, because “personality has been demonstrated to change over time to a far greater extent than intelligence.”

For the full commentary, see:
ANNA NORTH. “Should Schools Teach Personality?” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., JANUARY 11, 2015): 2.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date JANUARY 10, 2015.)

Relevant articles by Poropat are:
Poropat, Arthur E. “A Meta-Analysis of the Five-Factor Model of Personality and Academic Performance.” Psychological Bulletin 135, no. 2 (March 2009): 322-38.
Poropat, Arthur E. “Other-Rated Personality and Academic Performance: Evidence and Implications.” Learning and Individual Differences 34 (August 2014): 24-32.

Former Nebraskan Writes that Football Breaks the Soul

(p. C1) The poet Erin Belieu was born in Nebraska. It’s a place where, she once wrote,

football is to life what sleep deprivation is

to Amnesty International, that is,
the best researched and the most effective method
of breaking a soul.

Ms. Belieu got out, soul entirely unbroken. She’s spent the past two decades composing smart and nettling books of poems, beginning with “Infanta” (1995), which was chosen for the National Poetry Series by Hayden Carruth. I’ve admired her three previous books, but her new one, “Slant Six,” seems to me better by an order of magnitude. It’s got more smoke, more confidence, more wit and less tolerance for obscurity. Her crisp free verse has as many subcurrents as a magnetic field.

For the full review, see:
DWIGHT GARNER. “From a Slim Book, Many Observations.” The New York Times Book Review (Weds., DEC. 10, 2014): C1 & C4.
(Note: italics in original.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date DEC. 9, 2014, and has the title “From a Slim Book, Many Observations.” The name of the interviewer, presumably the author of the italicized passage above, is not given in either the online or print versions.)

The book under review is:
Belieu, Erin. Slant Six. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2014.