MedWorm provides a medical RSS filtering service. Over 6000 RSS medical sources are combined and output via different filters. This feed contains the latest medical blog items that have been tagged with 'abstracts'. Sat, 03 Sep 2011 02:07:45 +0100 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5181871&cid=t_92652_107_f&fid=34860&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.corporeality.net%2Fmuseion%2F2011%2F08%2F31%2Fmundane-design-vs-fine-sci-art-as-two-realms-of-aesthetic-practice-in-science-communication%2F Here’s my abstract for a panel on the role of the humanities in science communication that Joan Leach in the Science Communication programme, U Queensland, is putting together for the PCST-12 meeting in Florence next spring: Mundane Design vs. Fine Sci-Art: Two Realms of Aesthetic Practice in Science Communication Sci-art has become an increasingly important dimension of science communication through printed media, museums, science centers and the web. Ranging from beautiful images on scientific journal covers to tissue-engineered wet-art installations, sci-art has become a recognised subgenre of the contemporary fine arts; it has entered art schools and caught the interest of gallery owners and art reviewers. It has also drawn the attention of major funding agencies, like the Well... Biomedicine on Display blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5181871 Wed, 31 Aug 2011 05:38:14 +0100 5181871 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5174676&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F08%2F29%2Fdo-doctors-lack-empathy%2F Shortly after I finished Simon Baron-Cohen’s new book, The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty, I spoke to one of my friends who had just had an extremely bad interaction with a doctor.  The friend had just received a frightening diagnosis and when she went to ask more questions, the doctor was blunt and emotionally-disengaged.  As I spoke to the friend, it occurred to me that, while there were some very important exceptions, I’d actually had a lot of similar experiences with doctors.  Might it be true that doctors have less empathy than other people? Coincidentally, with the help of the gnomes of the World Wide Web, I found an interesting recent article by Omar Sultan Haque and Adam Waytz in Scientific American, which describes two experiments by Jean Decety ... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5174676 Mon, 29 Aug 2011 04:01:58 +0100 5174676 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5159220&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F08%2F25%2Fthe-situation-of-human-rights%2F Ryan Goodman, Derek Jinks, Andrew Woods,  have recently posted their chapter, “Social Science and Human Rights“   (forthcoming in their edited book, “Understanding Social Action, Promoting Human Rights,” Oxford University Press, 2012) on SSRN * * * Over the last twenty years, the social scientific understanding of human behavior has taken a significant leap forward. Important advances in several fields have increased the complexity and accuracy of prevailing models of individual actors, group dynamics, and communication. Unfortunately, too few of the key insights of that scholarship have been incorporated into the theory or practice of human rights promotion. In this project, we collect research from a broad set of disciplines and analyze its implications for hu... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5159220 Thu, 25 Aug 2011 04:01:00 +0100 5159220 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5107616&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F08%2F09%2Fthe-situation-of-antitrust-law%2F Maurice E. Stucke recently posted his thoughtful paper, “Reconsidering Antitrust’s Goals” on SSRN.  Here’s the abstract. * * * Antitrust policy today is an anomaly. On the one hand, antitrust is thriving internationally. On the other hand, antitrust’s influence has diminished domestically. Over the past thirty years, there have been fewer antitrust investigations and private actions. Today the Supreme Court complains about antitrust suits, and places greater faith in the antitrust function being subsumed in a regulatory framework. So what happened to the antitrust movement in the United States? Two import factors contributed to antitrust policy’s domestic decline. The first is salience, especially the salience of the U.S. antitrust goals. In the past thirty yea... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5107616 Tue, 09 Aug 2011 05:54:43 +0100 5107616 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5096361&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F08%2F04%2Fpolicy-implications-of-implicit-social-cognition%2F Situationist Contributor Brian Nosek and Rachel Riskind recently posted their paper, “Policy Implications of Implicit Social Cognition” on SSRN.  Here is the abstract. * * * Basic research in implicit social cognition demonstrates that thoughts and feelings outside of conscious awareness or conscious control can influence perception, judgment and action. Implicit measures reveal that people possess implicit attitudes and stereotypes about social groups that are often distinct from their explicitly endorsed beliefs and values. The evidence that behavior can be influenced by implicit social cognition contrasts with social policies that implicitly or explicitly assume that people know and control the causes of their behavior. We consider the present state of evidence for implicit... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5096361 Thu, 04 Aug 2011 04:01:10 +0100 5096361 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5086282&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F07%2F31%2Fwhy-goalies-often-dive-to-the-right%2F APS Press Release: In the quarterfinal of the 2006 Soccer World Cup, England and Portugal played for 90 tense minutes and 30 minutes extra time without a single goal being scored. This led them to a penalty shoot-out; as one by one, players went against the opposing team’s goalie. After four shots by each team, Portugal was ahead 2-1. Portugal’s star Cristiano Ronaldo shot to English goalkeeper Paul Robinson’s left, but Robinson dove right. Portugal scored, won the game, and went on to the semifinal. When Robinson dove to his right, he was making a common choice for our right-oriented brains, according to a new study which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The researchers found that, in World Cup ... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5086282 Sun, 31 Jul 2011 16:31:57 +0100 5086282 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5050741&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F07%2F22%2Fthe-situation-of-fairness%2F Carlos Alós-Ferrer, Anja Achtziger, and Alexander Wagner, recently posted their paper “Social Preferences and Self-Control” on SSRN. We study the interaction of different motives and decision processes in determining behavior in the ultimatum game. We rely on an experimental manipulation called ego depletion which consumes self-control resources, thereby enhancing the influence of default reactions or, in psychological terms, automatic processes. We find that proposers make lower offers under ego depletion, i.e. self-centered monetary concerns are the default mode and not other-regarding considerations (fairness towards others). Responders are more likely to reject low offers under ego depletion, i.e. the affect-influenced reaction to reject unfair offers (reaction to unfairne... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5050741 Fri, 22 Jul 2011 04:01:22 +0100 5050741 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5050742&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F07%2F20%2Fclarifying-judicial-understanding-of-stereotyping%2F Kerri Lynn Stone recently posted her article, “Clarifying Stereotyping”  (59 Kansas Law Review 2011) on SSRN. Here’s the abstract. * * * People make comments all the time that include or invoke stereotypes. Sometimes those comments are indicative of their belief systems or values. Sometimes they are feeble – or genuine – attempts at humor or wit. Sometimes people speak rashly and in anger. Many times, people are misunderstood, and their true feelings are belied by a clumsy choice of words. Much of the law of employment discrimination necessarily implicates a searching probe into the often undisclosed – sometimes even to oneself – motivations, beliefs, and intentions that underlie an impel acts alleged to have been discriminatorily premised on someone’s race, ge... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5050742 Wed, 20 Jul 2011 04:01:51 +0100 5050742 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5050744&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F07%2F18%2Fthe-situation-of-the-climate-change-debate%2F Situationist Contributor Dan Kahan, Maggie Wittlin, Ellen Peters, Situationist Contributor Paul Slovic, Lisa Ouellette, Donald Braman, and Gregory Mandel, recently posted their paper, “The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change” on SSRN. Here’s the abstract. The conventional explanation for controversy over climate change emphasizes impediments to public understanding: Limited popular knowledge of science, the inability of ordinary citizens to assess technical information, and the resulting widespread use of unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess risk. A large survey of U.S. adults (N = 1540) found little support for this account. On the whole, the most scientifically literate and numerate subjects were slight... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5050744 Mon, 18 Jul 2011 20:31:20 +0100 5050744 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5008265&cid=t_92652_107_f&fid=34860&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.corporeality.net%2Fmuseion%2F2011%2F07%2F07%2Ffinal-call-for-presentations-at-the-sensuous-object-workshop-29-30-september%2F Here’s the final (and somewhat extended) call for presentations at the workshop ‘The Sensuous Object to be held at Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen, 29-30 September, 2011 ‘The Sensuous Object’ is an interdisciplinary, participatory workshop concerned with ways we actually engage with objects and aimed at researchers in all disciplines interested in the materiality of actual artefacts and ways of understanding objects through the senses (smell and touch, ambience, aesthetic, visual thinking, tacit knowledge, sound and seduction). 1. An actual, material object must be central and a present part of the workshop. This artefact should be or relate in some way to objects found in medical museums. You are welcome to arrange to choose an object from Medical Museion collec... Biomedicine on Display blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5008265 Thu, 07 Jul 2011 19:21:58 +0100 5008265 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4975960&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F06%2F26%2Fsusan-fiskes-new-book%2F Discussion about (In)Equality,” “The Interior Situational Reaction to Inequality,” (Source: The Situationist) The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4975960 Mon, 27 Jun 2011 02:36:47 +0100 4975960 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4968593&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F06%2F24%2Funequal-juries%2F Wendy Parker posted her article, “Juries, Race, and Gender: A Story of Today’s Inequality” (Wake Forest Law Review, Vol. 46, pp. 209-240, 2011), on SSRN.  Here’s the abstracst. The Civil Rights Act of 1991 was supposed to be a victory for employment discrimination plaintiffs – a dramatic expansion of their rights. Twenty years later, however, we are told that the news for employment discrimination plaintiffs has gone “from bad to worse.” This essay, a reflection on the twenty-year history of the 1991 Act, explores how just how bad it is. In doing so, this essay discovers some optimistic news (but not much): Plaintiffs today are more likely to win at trial than before the 1991 Act. This is likely because of the 1991 Act’s expanded right to a jury trial. Yet,... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4968593 Fri, 24 Jun 2011 04:01:35 +0100 4968593 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4934364&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F06%2F16%2Fthe-gendered-situation-of-math-humanities-and-romance%2F From the Boston Globe: Psychologists have found that being stereotyped can subconsciously alter behavior. For example, subtle stereotypes of women being weaker in math and science can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, undermining women’s math and science aptitude. According to a new study, though, even supposedly innocent aspects of daily life can have a similar effect. Women who were briefly exposed to romantic images or a third-party conversation about a romantic relationship were subsequently less interested in math and science, and more interested in the humanities, than if they had been exposed to content related to intelligence or friendship. Men leaned in the opposite direction — towards math and science, and away from humanities — after being exposed to romantic content. Lik... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4934364 Thu, 16 Jun 2011 14:27:52 +0100 4934364 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4921529&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F06%2F10%2Fperceptions-of-income-distribution-and-preferences-for-redistribution%2F This study examines how individuals form these perceptions and posits that systematic biases arise from the extrapolation of information extracted from reference groups. A tailored household survey provides original evidence on the significant biases in individuals’ evaluations of their own relative position in the distribution. Furthermore, the data supports the hypothesis that the selection process into the reference groups is the source of those biases. Finally, this study also assesses the practical relevance of these biases by examining their impact on attitudes towards redistributive policies. An experimental design incorporated into the survey provides consistent information on the own ranking within the income distribution to a randomly selected group of respondents. Confronting ... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4921529 Fri, 10 Jun 2011 04:10:49 +0100 4921529 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4911549&cid=t_92652_107_f&fid=34860&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.corporeality.net%2Fmuseion%2F2011%2F06%2F07%2Fmolecular-being-philosophy-between-genes-and-proteins%2F I have had a paper accepted for the annual joint conference of the Society for European Philosophy and Forum for European Philosophy. Here is the abstract: Molecular being – philosophy between genes and proteins In this paper, I will attempt to connect the sparking wires of post-genomic molecular biology and new materialist philosophy, particularly the so-called object-oriented ontology. Life is changing. The gene has, as historian of science Evelyn Fox Keller wrote some years ago, “had a glorious run in the twentieth century.” Since the publication of the working draft of the human genome in 2000 and the completed genome in 2003, however, it seems that the life sciences are at a juncture, requiring new concepts, terms and metaphors to grasp life in productive ways. It is increasingl... Biomedicine on Display blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4911549 Tue, 07 Jun 2011 10:06:38 +0100 4911549 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4841889&cid=t_92652_136_f&fid=37846&url=http%3A%2F%2Fhealthinfoispower.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F05%2F18%2F2011-asco-annual-meeting-abstracts-including-ovarian-cancer-made-publicly-available-today%2F More than 30,000 cancer specialists from around the world will gather at the 2011 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting to discuss the latest innovations in research, quality, practice and technology in cancer. More than 30,000 cancer specialists from around the world will gather at the 2011 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) [...] (Source: Libby's H*O*P*E*) Libby's H*O*P*E* blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4841889 Wed, 18 May 2011 22:43:10 +0100 4841889 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4789347&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F05%2F05%2Fthe-unconscious-situation-of-date-rape%2F This article takes seriously the proposition that many men are telling the truth when they say that they honestly believed that a woman in a date rape case had consented when she in fact did not do so. The article argues, however, that the men are generally truthful at a conscious level, while being aware unconsciously that the truth is otherwise. Furthermore, the absence of conscious awareness is the result of self-deception. Drawing on research in philosophy and cognitive psychology, this article defines the various forms of self-deception and explains how they work in date rape cases. Date rape liability often involves a negligence analysis: Should the man have known of the woman’s non-consent? Yet the penalties imposed for negligent date rape are often quite severe, more so than ... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4789347 Thu, 05 May 2011 04:01:33 +0100 4789347 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4775440&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F05%2F03%2Fshared-human-experiences%2F Matt Motyl and his co-authors recently posted their excellent article, titled “Subtle Priming of Shared Human Experiences Eliminates Threat-Induced Negativity Toward Arabs, Immigrants, and Peace-Making” on SSRN (forthcoming  (April 20, 2011). Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. * * * Many studies demonstrate that mortality salience can increase negativity toward out-groups but few have examined variables that mitigate this effect. The present research examined whether subtly priming people to think of human experiences shared by people from diverse cultures increases perceived similarity of members of different groups, which then reduces MS-induced negativity toward out-groups. In Study 1, exposure to pictures of people from diverse cultures engaged in common human act... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4775440 Tue, 03 May 2011 04:01:18 +0100 4775440 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4742472&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F04%2F22%2Funconscious-racial-attitudes%2F This article is the introduction to a law review symposium on unconscious racism and social science and statistical evidence of bias as bases for race discrimination claims, focusing concretely on discrimination in employment and housing. The article starts with an example of unconscious racism in the bail-setting court in Philadelphia. Two drunk-driving cases about a week apart were identical in all respects except the races of the defendants, but the judge, who was not an overt or self-perceived racist, showed empathy to the white drunk driver while his reaction to the black one was dominated by fear. Unconscious racism specifically, and the biases and motivations of alleged discriminators in general, were not of much interest in civil rights law or litigation until the Supreme Court beg... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4742472 Fri, 22 Apr 2011 04:01:57 +0100 4742472 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4734223&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F04%2F19%2Fthe-informational-situation-of-voters%2F We present a model of an election with uninformed voters and experimentally test the effect of political information. Our results suggest that the lack of information in the American electorate typically biases election results toward the Republican Party. When uninformed citizens receive political information, they systematically shift away from the Republican Party. * * * Download the paper for free here. Related Situationist posts: Reporting Social Facts vs. Pining for Jim Crow: No Comparison Between Reid and Lott Racial Attitudes in the Presidential Race “The Situation of Pollworkers and Voting Booths – Abstract,” “The Racial Situation of Voting,” “The Interior Situation of Undecided Voters,” “On Being a Mindful Voter,” “Implicit Associations in the 2008 Presi... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4734223 Tue, 19 Apr 2011 04:01:26 +0100 4734223 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4719937&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F04%2F15%2Fthe-illusion-of-health%2F From Time: If a box of chocolate cookies had an “organic” label, would you feel less guilty about eating them? Would you think they were more nutritious, or tastier? Economists who study social psychology refer to something called the “halo effect,” a bias in judgment that causes you to assume that one positive attribute comes packaged with a bunch of others. For example, you might perceive your attractive coworker as being more capable as well. According to a new study by Jenny Wan-chen Lee, a graduate student at Cornell University’s Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, the halo effect extends to food too: if people are told a food is “organic,” they’re also biased to believe it’s more nutritious and better tasting. Lee&#8... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4719937 Fri, 15 Apr 2011 04:01:42 +0100 4719937 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4704722&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F04%2F13%2Fmemory-biases-as-source-of-prejudice%2F From Miller-McCune: A recent poll finding nearly half of Mississippi Republicans disapprove of interracial marriage is a disturbing reminder of the continuing prejudice faced by minority groups in 21st-century America. Why is such bias seemingly immune to eradication, and why does it seem to be more prevalentamong social conservatives? A fascinating new study from Italy suggests at least part of the answer can be traced to the way we process information and form political attitudes. Psychologists Luigi Castelli and Luciana Carraro of the University of Padua present evidence that our perception of minority groups is often distorted due to inaccurate recall of information. This phenomenon, they add, is more pronounced among social conservatives. Presented with a series of facts abou... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4704722 Wed, 13 Apr 2011 04:01:12 +0100 4704722 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4696698&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F04%2F10%2Fthe-disorderly-situation-of-stereotyping%2F From Los Angeles Times: Picture yourself in a well-kept room — pictures neatly hung on walls, books organized on a shelf, floors clear of junk. Now sit yourself in a room with crooked pictures, scattered books and dirty laundry on the floor. Feeling any different? In the second room, you might be more apt to keep your distance from a person of another race, believe that Muslims are aggressive or think that gay people are creative, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science. The idea, said researchers from Tilburg University in the Netherlands, is that people in messy environments tend to compensate for that disorder by categorizing people in their minds according to well-known stereotypes. Testing the relationship between disorder and discrimination in real-life situa... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4696698 Sun, 10 Apr 2011 04:01:36 +0100 4696698 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4684441&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F04%2F07%2Fbody-image-and-materialism%2F From PsychOrg: Psychological research has consistently shown that women feel unhappy with their body after looking at images of thin, idealized models, which are typically represented in the media. However, today’s consumer culture and media promote not only the ideal of perfect beauty, but also that of the material affluent lifestyle, both of which are commonly depicted together, and highlight the benefits of beauty and of owning material goods to one’s personal success and fame. A new study from the British Journal of Social Psychology is the first to examine the impact of materialistic messages and values – the desire for financial success and an affluent lifestyle on women’s feelings about their own body. Lead author Eleni-Marina Ashikali: “Not all women a... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4684441 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 05:02:16 +0100 4684441 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4658583&cid=t_92652_136_f&fid=37846&url=http%3A%2F%2Fhealthinfoispower.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F03%2F30%2F2011-aacr-annual-meeting-select-ovarian-cancer-presentations-abstracts-available-online%2F The 102nd American Association For Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting will be held from Saturday, April 2 through Wednesday, April 6, 2011, at the Orange County Convention Center located in Orlando, Florida.  Select ovarian cancer presentations and abstracts are available online. The 102nd American Association For Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting will be held from [...] (Source: Libby's H*O*P*E*) Libby's H*O*P*E* blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4658583 Wed, 30 Mar 2011 20:23:54 +0100 4658583 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4653385&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F03%2F30%2Fthe-situational-effects-of-iqbal%2F This article examines the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. 1937 (2009) from a social-psychological perspective, and empirically studies Iqbal’s disparate effect on claims of race discrimination. In Twombly and then Iqbal, the Court recast Rule 8 into a plausibility standard. Under Iqbal, federal judges must evaluate whether each complaint contains sufficient factual matter “to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” When doing so, Iqbal requires judges to draw on their “judicial experience and common sense.” Courts apply Iqbal at the pleading stage, before evidence has been presented, when judging the plausibility of all claims, including claims of discrimination by members of stereotyped groups. Decades of social-psychological researc... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4653385 Wed, 30 Mar 2011 04:01:14 +0100 4653385 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4605882&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F03%2F18%2Fbelonging%2F From Eureka Alert: Along with the excitement and anticipation that come with heading off to college, freshmen often find questions of belonging lurking in the background: Am I going to make friends? Are people going to respect me? Will I fit in? Those concerns are trickier for black students and others who are often stereotyped or outnumbered on college campuses. They have good reason to wonder whether they will belong – worries that can result in lower grades and a sense of alienation. But when black freshmen participated in an hour-long exercise designed by Stanford psychologists to show that everyone – no matter what their race or ethnicity – has a tough time adjusting to college right away, their grades went up and the minority achievement gap shrank by 52 percent. And years late... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4605882 Fri, 18 Mar 2011 05:34:54 +0100 4605882 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4566148&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F03%2F10%2Fthe-rhetorical-situation-of-law-and-the-situation-of-rhetoric%2F This article will describe the shift in the Supreme Court’s rhetoric over time, with an eye toward trying to understand why this shift has occurred and what the implications of this shift are for those who have suffered discrimination and wish to pursue their rights in court. In addition, this article will consider non-legal sources to determine whether such a shift is warranted by a decrease in race and gender discrimination in American society. * * * Download the paper for free here. Related Situationist posts: Responding to Subtle Racial Harassment “What Are the Legal Implications of Implicit Biases?,” “Confronting the Backlash against Implicit Bias,” “The Situation of Situation in Employment Discrimination Law – Abstract.” Patrick Shin at Harvard Law School Liabil... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4566148 Thu, 10 Mar 2011 04:01:10 +0100 4566148 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4495254&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F02%2F19%2Fresponding-to-subtle-racial-harassment%2F This article traces the development of racial harassment jurisprudence, explaining the development of the traditional model, which does not recognize subtle bias. It concludes with an analysis of an alternative jurisprudential model that “sees” subtle racism. * * * Download the article for free here. Related Situationist posts: “What Are the Legal Implications of Implicit Biases?,” “Confronting the Backlash against Implicit Bias,” and “The Situation of Situation in Employment Discrimination Law – Abstract.” (Source: The Situationist) The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4495254 Sat, 19 Feb 2011 04:01:27 +0100 4495254 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4489735&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F02%2F18%2Fmemory-and-morality%2F Francesca Gino and Sreedhari Desai recently posted their paper, “Memory Lane and Morality: How Childhood Memories Promote Prosocial Behavior” on SSRN.  Here’s the abstract. * * * Four experiments demonstrated that recalling memories from one’s own childhood lead people to experience feelings of moral purity and to behave prosocially. In Experiment 1, participants instructed to recall memories from their childhood were more likely to help the experimenter with a supplementary task than were participants in a control condition, and this effect was mediated by self-reported feelings of moral purity. In Experiment 2, the same manipulation increased the amount of money participants donated to a good cause, and self-reported feelings of moral purity mediated this relationshi... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4489735 Fri, 18 Feb 2011 04:01:23 +0100 4489735 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4477823&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F02%2F15%2Flaw-competition-self-interest%2F Over at the new Law & Mind Blog, several Harvard Law students have been blogging about a chapter by Mitchell Callan and Situationist Contributor Aaron Kay. In the first post on the topic (copied below), 1L student Becky Ding summarizes the chapter (forthcoming in Ideology, Psychology, and Law, edited by Situationist Contributor Jon Hanson). * * * In Association between Law, Competitiveness, and the pursuit of self-interest, Mitchell Callan and Aaron Kay discuss how law and the way our legal system functions affect and shape our thinking and interpersonal relations. In particular, it fosters the assumption that people are self-interested, competitive and untrustworthy. Callan and Kay supports their theory through theories and research results from various social cognition studies. Calla... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4477823 Tue, 15 Feb 2011 04:01:54 +0100 4477823 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4455307&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F02%2F09%2Fnegotiating-the-situation%2F Lu-in Wang,  has posted an intriguing situationist paper, titled “Negotiating the Situation: The Reasonable Person in Context ” (forthcoming Lewis & Clark Law Review, Vol. 14, p. 1285, 2010) on SSRN.  Here’s the abstract. * * * This Essay argues that our understanding of the reasonable person in economic transactions should take into account an individual’s race, gender, or other group-based identity characteristics – not necessarily because persons differ on account of those characteristics, but because of how those characteristics influence the situations a person must negotiate. That is, individuals’ social identities constitute features not just of themselves, but also of the situations they inhabit. In economic transactions that involve social interac... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4455307 Wed, 09 Feb 2011 04:12:00 +0100 4455307 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4419210&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F02%2F01%2Fcan-meditation-make-us-more-compassionate%2F Last Friday, Sindya Bhanoo had an interesting little post on one of the New York Times blogs concerning recent research on the impact of meditation on the brain. As is often the case in these mainstream media reports, I was left wanting more about the studies and less about the personal interest hook (in this case, the story of Sindya’s husband’s experiences meditating), but that was remedied easily enough by utilizing the wonders of the internet. To me, the most interesting referenced article was a 2008 study by Antoine Lutz, Julie Brefczynski-Lewis, Tom Johnstone, and Richard Davidson on the regulation of our emotional neural circuitry through compassion meditation. Here is the abstract: Recent brain imaging studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have impl... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4419210 Tue, 01 Feb 2011 04:01:59 +0100 4419210 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4419211&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F01%2F31%2Fsituationism-in-the-news-14%2F From Boston Globe (by Kevin Lewis): The Brand-Name Ego Boost: Researchers found that using a generic (vs. brand name) product undermines self-esteem. In one experiment, university students were asked to type out a resume, ostensibly for a recruiting event. Students used an Apple iMac to type their resumes and were told that the keyboard and mouse were new. Some students, though, were told that the keyboard and mouse were generic parts — to save money. The students who used the generic keyboard reported expecting a lower salary.  More . . . Lower stress through writing: Researchers at the University of Chicago have shown that expressive writing before a test can boost scores.  More . . . Higher ground: Everyone assumes that heaven is high above the ground somewhere, while hell is down... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4419211 Mon, 31 Jan 2011 04:06:43 +0100 4419211 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4304932&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F01%2F03%2Fthe-gendered-situation-of-recommendation-letters%2F From Rice University: A recommendation letter could be the chute in a woman’s career ladder, according to ongoing research at Rice University. The comprehensive study shows that qualities mentioned in recommendation letters for women differ sharply from those for men, and those differences may be costing women jobs and promotions in academia and medicine. Funded by the National Science Foundation, Rice University professors Michelle Hebl and Randi Martin and graduate student Juan Madera, now an assistant professor at the University of Houston, reviewed 624 letters of recommendation for 194 applicants for eight junior faculty positions at a U.S. university. They found that letter writers conformed to traditional gender schemas when describing candidates. Female candidates were descri... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4304932 Mon, 03 Jan 2011 04:01:35 +0100 4304932 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4258927&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F12%2F15%2Fthe-inherited-situation-of-racial-inequality%2F Discussion about (In)Equality,” “The Interior Situational Reaction to Inequality,” “The Situation of Mortgage Defaults,” “The Situation of the Mortgage Crisis,” and “The Interior Situation of Intergenerational Poverty.” (Source: The Situationist) The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4258927 Wed, 15 Dec 2010 04:01:14 +0100 4258927 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4249093&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F12%2F11%2Fpushback-from-the-left%2F Situationist Contributor Jerry Kang recently posted his thoughtful essay, “Implicit Bias and the Pushback from the Left” (St. Louis University Law Journal, Vol. 54, p. 1139, 2010) on SSRN.  Here’s the abstrct. * * * Over the past three decades, the mind sciences have provided remarkable insights about how our brains process social categories. For example, scientists have discovered that implicit biases – in the form of stereotypes and attitudes that we are unaware of, do not consciously intend, and might reject upon conscious self-reflection – exist and have wide-ranging behavioral consequences. Such findings destabilize our self-serving self-conceptions as bias-free. Not surprisingly, there has been backlash from the political Right. This Article examines so... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4249093 Sat, 11 Dec 2010 04:01:35 +0100 4249093 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4205980&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F11%2F27%2Fwarming-world-or-just-world%2F From UCBerkeley News: Dire or emotionally charged warnings about the consequences of global warming can backfire if presented too negatively, making people less amenable to reducing their carbon footprint, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley. “Our study indicates that the potentially devastating consequences of global warming threaten people’s fundamental tendency to see the world as safe, stable and fair. As a result, people may respond by discounting evidence for global warming,” said Robb Willer, UC Berkeley social psychologist and coauthor of a study to be published in the January issue of the journal Psychological Science. “The scarier the message, the more people who are committed to vi... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4205980 Sat, 27 Nov 2010 04:48:29 +0100 4205980 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4190234&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F11%2F23%2Fthe-situation-of-perceived-intentionality%2F This study tests the hypothesis that alcohol magnifies the intentionality bias by disrupting effortful cognitive abilities. Using a 2 × 2 balanced placebo design in a natural field experiment disguised as a food-tasting session, participants received either a high dose of alcohol (target BAC = .10%) or no alcohol, with half of each group believing they had or had not consumed alcohol. Participants then read a series of sentences describing simple actions (e.g., “She cut him off in traffic”) and indicated whether the actions were done intentionally or accidentally. As expected, intoxicated people interpreted more acts as intentional than did sober people. This finding helps explain why alcohol increases aggression. For example... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4190234 Tue, 23 Nov 2010 05:59:37 +0100 4190234 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4164557&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F11%2F15%2Fthe-situation-of-creating-a-consumer-financial-protection%25c2%25a0bureau%2F In the wake of the worst economic crisis in the United States since the Great Depression, there has been a drive to reconfigure the regulatory state and renegotiate the relationship between Americans, business, and government. In a new article, just posted on SSRN, I argue that the ultimate formulation of that relationship turns, to a significant degree, on our basic attributional tendencies, particularly where we look to assign causal responsibility when things go wrong. Who or what engendered the shanty town that appeared in Sacramento, California in 2008?  Who blackened the pelican and closed the beach of Pensacola?  What lies behind the rise in diabetes in elementary school students? The answers that we give drive our remedial responses and our prophylactic measures—and in doing so... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4164557 Mon, 15 Nov 2010 04:01:08 +0100 4164557 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4162958&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F11%2F12%2Fthe-legal-policy-situation-of-continued-inequality%2F Judge Michael Wolff posted his article “Stories of Civil Rights Progress and the Persistence of Inequality and Unequal Opportunity 1970-2010” (forthcoming in William Mitchell Law Review) on  SSRN.  Here is the abstract. * * * In this article, Missouri Supreme Court Judge Michael A. Wolff, who also is distinguished visiting professor at St. Louis University School of Law, outlines the judicial and legislative victories and failures of civil rights advocates over the last forty years at both the federal and state level. He details the reform efforts through personal anecdotes of many of his own cases that he pursued as a legal services lawyer and has seen as a judge. Judge Wolff’s stories focus on the rights that legal services programs fought for and obtained and the battles... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4162958 Fri, 12 Nov 2010 04:01:01 +0100 4162958 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4142822&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F11%2F07%2Fjudges-are-like%2F This week I have been trying to catch up on some tasks that have been on my list since early in the semester.  One has been to post some of my recent papers on SSRN.  To this end, I have just put up Color Commentators of the Bench, which may be of interest to certain Situationist readers.  The abstract appears below: Featuring prominently in the last four sets of Supreme Court confirmation hearings, the judge-as-umpire analogy has become the dominant frame for understanding the role of the Justice and may also now act as a significant constraint on judicial behavior. Strong criticisms from legal academics and journalists attacking the realism of the analogy have had little destabilizing effect. This Essay argues that the best hope for shifting the public conception of the work of a Just... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4142822 Sun, 07 Nov 2010 04:01:15 +0100 4142822 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4125070&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F11%2F02%2Fthe-psychology-of-guns-and-race%2F I have just posted my forthcoming article, Quick on the Draw: Implicit Bias and the Second Amendment, on SSRN.  The abstract appears below: African Americans face a significant and menacing threat, but it is not the one that has preoccupied the press, pundits, and policy makers in the wake of several bigoted murders and a resurgent white supremacist movement. While hate crimes and hate groups demand continued vigilance, if we are truly to protect our minority citizens, we must shift our most urgent attention from neo-Nazis stockpiling weapons to the seemingly benign gun owners among us—our friends, family, and neighbors—who show no animus toward African Americans and who profess genuine commitments to equality. Our commonsense narratives about racism and guns—centered on a conceptio... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4125070 Tue, 02 Nov 2010 04:01:19 +0100 4125070 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4119102&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F10%2F28%2Fthe-corporate-situation-of-universities%2F The Utne Reader recently had a post summarizing and linking to a “spate of recent stories that reveal how a trio of heavies—Big Oil, Big Agriculture, and Big Pharma—are pulling strings at U.S. universities.”  Here’s a sample: * * * • The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on “The Secret Lives of Big Pharma’s ‘Thought Leaders,’” also known as key opinion leaders, or KOLs: the influential academic physician-researchers who are paid by drug companies to basically shill for their brands—but not overtly, of course. That would be unseemly. Instead, they deftly blend their conflicting roles and realize substantial payouts for their credibility-lending efforts. “The KOL is a combination of celebrity spokesperson, neighborhood gossip, and the popular kid in... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4119102 Fri, 29 Oct 2010 01:39:28 +0100 4119102 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4105774&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F10%2F26%2Fthe-stressful-situation-of-disease%2F In this study, researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham recruited 148 African and European-America children about eight years of age. Children were seen up to five times during a period of nine years. At each study visit, cortisol was measured in the children’s blood samples. Unemployment, poverty, female-headed households with children and vacant houses were used to determine neighborhood environments. Researchers adjusted for differences, including age, weight, gender and other personal factors. Overall, children who lived in disadvantaged neighborhoods had lower levels of cortisol. When the researchers looked closer at the role of race on the results, they found that the association between neighborhood and decreased cortisol was greatest in African-American children... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4105774 Tue, 26 Oct 2010 04:01:20 +0100 4105774 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4098074&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F10%2F23%2Fsituationism-in-the-blogosphere-%25e2%2580%2593-september%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of our favorite non-Situationist situationist blogging during September 2010 (they are listed in alphabetical order by source). * * * From BPS Research Digest: “Power leads us to dehumanise others” “Think how terrible you’d feel if a decision you made led to the death of another person. How then does a political leader cope with the burden of making decisions which lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands? According to a new journal article, they cope through dehumanising those over whom they have power. By this account, dehumanising – seeing others as less than human – isn’t always a bad thing. It serves a function, allowing leaders and certain professionals, such as doctors, to cope wi... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4098074 Sat, 23 Oct 2010 04:38:43 +0100 4098074 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4074162&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F10%2F15%2Fthe-situation-of-false-confessions-2%2F Deborah Davis and Richard Leo recently posted their paper, “Three Prongs of the Confession Problem: Issues and Proposed Solutions” on SSRN.  (forthcoming in The Future of Evidence (Epstein, Jules, ed.) on SSRN.  Here’s the abstract. * * * Many cases could not be successfully prosecuted without a confession, and, in the absence of a confession, many would be much more costly to investigate and to develop other evidence sufficient to convict. Responding to this pressure to reliably elicit confessions from their suspects, the police have developed sophisticated psychological techniques to accomplish two goals: to induce suspects to submit to questioning without an attorney, and to induce them to confess. Unfortunately, these methods are sufficiently powerful to induce fals... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4074162 Fri, 15 Oct 2010 05:55:15 +0100 4074162 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4001715&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F09%2F26%2Fthe-captured-situation-of-justice%2F Michael S. Kang and Joanna Shepherd recently posted the important paper “The Partisan Price of Justice: An Empirical Analysis of Campaign Contributions and Judicial Decisions” on  SSRN.  Here’s the abstract. * * * Do campaign contributions affect judicial decisions by elected judges in favor of their contributors’ interests? Although the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co. relies on this intuition for its logic, it has been until now largely a proposition that has gone empirically untested. No longer. Using a dataset of every state supreme court case in all fifty states over a four-year period, we find that elected judges are more likely to decide in favor of business interests as the amount of campaign contributions that they have r... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4001715 Sun, 26 Sep 2010 04:01:32 +0100 4001715 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3999052&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F09%2F24%2Fthe-situation-of-halfalogues%2F From EurekAlert: “Yeah, I’m on my way home.” “That’s funny.” “Uh-huh.” “What? No! I thought you were – ” “Oh, ok.” Listening to someone talk on a cell phone is very annoying. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds out why: Hearing just one side of a conversation is much more distracting than hearing both sides and reduces our attention in other tasks. Lauren Emberson, a psychology Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University, came up with the idea for the study when she was taking the bus as an undergraduate student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. “I was commuting for 45 minutes by bus every day and I really felt like... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3999052 Fri, 24 Sep 2010 04:01:53 +0100 3999052 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3994027&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F09%2F22%2Fperforming-under-pressure%2F Situationist friend Sian Beilock’s highly anticipated new book, Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To, is now out.  As someone who has had both great successes and great failures under pressure, I’ve been very excited to read Choke since Sian first mentioned it to me.  What exactly happened in that 8th-grade piano recital when my mind went blank halfway through that Bach three-part invention?  Mom, I finally have an answer . . . Here’s a description of the book: It happens to all of us. You’ve prepared for days, weeks, even years for the big day when you will finally show your stuff—in academics, in your career, in sports—but when the big moment arrives, nothing seems to work. You hit the wrong note, drop the ball, get stumpe... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3994027 Wed, 22 Sep 2010 04:01:56 +0100 3994027 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3983437&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F09%2F20%2Fthe-social-situation-of-contagious-outbreaks%2F This study may be unique in demonstrating that social position affects one’s risk of acquiring disease. Consequently, epidemiologists and social scientists are modeling networks to evaluate novel disease surveillance and infection control strategies.” * * * Fowler and Christakis are coauthors of the book, Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, as well as the article on which this post is based: “Social Network Sensors for Early Detection of Contagious Outbreaks” (PLoS ONE, online publication Sep 15, 20100). For a sample of related Situationist posts, see “The Situation of Social Networks,” “The Social Situation of Breaking Up,” “Social Networks,” “Common Cause: Combating the Epidemics of Obesity and Evil,�... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3983437 Mon, 20 Sep 2010 06:08:14 +0100 3983437 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3976539&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F09%2F17%2Fandrew-papachristos-explains-why-criminals-obey-the-law-video%2F Last fall, the HLS Student Association for Law and Mind Sciences (SALMS) hosted a fascinating talk by Professor  Andrew Papachristos entitled “Why Do Criminals Obey the Law: The Influence of Law and Social Networks on Active Gun Users.”  You can read the abstract for the talk and watch the video below. * * * Our findings suggest that while criminals as a whole have negative opinions of the law and legal authority, the sample of gun offenders (just like non-criminals) are more likely to comply with the law when they believe in (a) the substance of the law, and (b) the legitimacy of legal actors, especially the police. Moreover, we find that opinions of compliance to the law are not uniformly distributed across the sample population. In other words, not all criminals are alik... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3976539 Fri, 17 Sep 2010 04:01:00 +0100 3976539 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3965506&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F09%2F14%2Fsituationist-corruption%2F Molly J. Walker Wilson recently posted her article, “Behavioral Decision Theory and Implications for the Supreme Court’s Campaign Finance Jurisprudence” (Cardozo Law Review, Vol. 31, p. 679, 2010) on SSRN.  Here’s the abstract. * * * America stands at a moment in history when advances in the understanding of human decision-making are increasing the strategic efficacy of political strategy. As campaign spending for the presidential race reaches hundreds of millions of dollars, the potential for harnessing the power of psychological tactics becomes considerable. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has characterized campaign money as “speech” and has required evidence of corruption or the appearance of corruption in order to uphold restrictions on campaign expenditures. Ulti... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3965506 Tue, 14 Sep 2010 04:01:47 +0100 3965506 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3938391&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F09%2F07%2Fthe-situation-of-property-ownership%2F Patricia Kanngiesser, Nathalia Gjersoe, and Bruce M. Hood recently published a fascinating paper, titled “The Effect of Creative Labor on Property-Ownership Transfer by Preschool Children and Adults,” in the August 16, 2010 issue of Psychological Science.  Here’s the abstract. * * * Recognizing property ownership is of critical importance in social interactions, but little is known about how and when this attribute emerges. We investigated whether preschool children and adults believe that ownership of one person’s property is transferred to a second person following the second person’s investment of creative labor in that property. In our study, an experimenter and a participant borrowed modeling-clay objects from each other to mold int... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3938391 Tue, 07 Sep 2010 04:01:43 +0100 3938391 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3929289&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F09%2F03%2Fhappiness-and-legal-policy-abstract%2F Peter Huang recently posted his interesting paper, “Happiness Studies and Legal Policy” (forthcoming Annual Review of Law & Social Science) on SSRN.  Here’s the abstract. * * * Social scientists have conducted numerous empirical and experimental studies of self-reported happiness. This review focuses on two fundamental areas of research in happiness and law, namely alternative measures of happiness and various policies to foster happiness. There are many aspects, concepts, dimensions, and visions of happiness. Empirical findings often depend critically on which particular measure of happiness is analyzed. Happiness studies have applications to national well-being indices; policy evaluation; civil judicial and jury decision-making about liability and damages in cases ... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3929289 Fri, 03 Sep 2010 04:01:02 +0100 3929289 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3915084&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F08%2F31%2Fthe-situation-of-forgiveness%2F Ryan Fehr, Michele Gelfand, and Monisha Nag, recently posted their paper, “The Road to Forgiveness: A Meta-Analytic Synthesis of its Situational and Dispositional Correlates” on SSRN. Here’s the abstract. * * * Forgiveness has received widespread attention among psychologists from social, personality, clinical, developmental and organizational perspectives alike. Despite great progress, the forgiveness literature has witnessed few attempts at empirical integration. Toward this end, we meta-analyze results from 175 studies and 26,006 participants to examine the correlates of interpersonal forgiveness (i.e. forgiveness of a single offender by a single victim). A tripartite forgiveness typology is proposed, encompassing victims’ cognitions, affect, and constraints followin... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3915084 Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:01:03 +0100 3915084 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3907656&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F08%2F27%2Fsituationism-in-the-blogosphere-july-part-ii%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of our favorite non-Situationist situationist blogging during July 2010 (they are listed in alphabetical order by source). * * * From Jury Room: “Deliberations: Jurors think and feel as they make decisions” “Our legal system assumes jurors will make their decisions without bias. This assumption echoes the ancient words of  Aristotle: “the law is reason, free from passion”. Yet, most of us realize that decision-making encompasses both reason and passion. So how do you take that into consideration as you prepare and then present your case?” Read more . . . From Psyblog: “How to Banish Bad Habits and Control Temptations” “Anyone who has ever found themselves trying to turn on the bathroom light seconds a... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3907656 Fri, 27 Aug 2010 04:24:37 +0100 3907656 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3891788&cid=t_92652_132_f&fid=35006&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnsaunders.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F08%2F23%2Fabstract-word-clouds-using-r%2F A recent question over at BioStar asked whether abstracts returned from a PubMed search could easily be visualised as “word clouds”, using Wordle. This got me thinking about ways to solve the problem using R. Here’s my first attempt, which demonstrates some functions from the RCurl and XML packages. First, install a couple of packages: snippets, which provides the cloud() function for plotting a word cloud and tm, a text-mining library: install.packages('snippets',,'http://www.rforge.net/') install.packages('tm') Next, the code to search PubMed, fetch abstracts and generate a list of words: library(RCurl) library(XML) library(snippets) library(tm) # esearch url <- "http://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/esearch.fcgi? q <- "db=pubmed&term=sa... What You're Doing Is Rather Desperate blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3891788 Mon, 23 Aug 2010 06:29:57 +0100 3891788 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3889145&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F08%2F21%2Fsituationism-in-the-blogosphere-july-part-i%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of our favorite non-Situationist situationist blogging during July 2010 (they are listed in alphabetical order by source). * * * From BPS Research Digest: “It’s the way they move – politicians’ personalities inferred from their motion patterns” “People form impressions about the personality of politicians simply from the way they move, according to a new study. This isn’t your typical body-language investigation into double-armed hand-shakes, bitten lips and fidgety fingers. Rather Markus Koppensteiner and Karl Grammer devised a new system for mathematically describing the movement patterns of forty real German politicians giving speeches in parliament.” Read more . . . From Brain Blogger: �... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3889145 Sat, 21 Aug 2010 04:01:03 +0100 3889145 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3865321&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F08%2F14%2Fintuitions-of-punishment%2F Owen Jones and Robert Kurzban recently posted their paper, “Intuitions of Punishment” (forthcmoing in the University of Chicago Law Review) on SSRN.  Here’s the abstract. * * * Recent work reveals, contrary to wide-spread assumptions, remarkably high levels of agreement about how to rank order, by blameworthiness, wrongs that involve physical harms, takings of property, or deception in exchanges. In The Origins of Shared Intuitions of Justice we proposed a new explanation for these unexpectedly high levels of agreement. Elsewhere in this issue, Professors Braman, Kahan, and Hoffman offer a critique of our views, to which we reply here. Our reply clarifies a number of important issues, such as the interconnected roles that culture, variation, and evolutionary processes pl... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3865321 Sat, 14 Aug 2010 05:21:54 +0100 3865321 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3854584&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F08%2F11%2Fthe-situation-of-morality%2F Selin Kesebir and Jonathan Haidt recnetly posted their terrific chapter, “Morality” (from Handbook of Social Psychology, 5th ed., 2010) (January 10, 2010) on SSRN.  Here’s the abstract. * * * This chapter assesses the state of the art in moral psychology from a social-psychological perspective. We begin with the story of the “great narrowing” — the historical process in which morality got reduced from virtue-based conceptions of the good person down to quandaries about what people should do. We argue for a return to a broader conception of the moral domain that better accommodates the diverse and often group-focused moralities found around the world. Our review of the empirical research is organized under three principles: 1) Intuitive primacy (but not dictatorship... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3854584 Wed, 11 Aug 2010 04:01:22 +0100 3854584 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3807443&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F08%2F01%2Ftolerating-hostility-in-the-workplace%2F From EurekaAlert: She never gets invited to lunch with the rest of her co-workers. He always gets publicly criticized for his mistakes. But according to research by Kansas State University psychologists, neither of these workers is likely to leave the job. Meridith Selden, a K-State doctoral graduate in psychology, and her adviser, Ron Downey, K-State professor of psychology, studied workplace hostility. They found that among workers reporting hostility in the current position, almost half — 45 percent of them — had no definite plans to leave their current job. In addition, 59 percent indicated that they either liked or did not dislike their current job. And this research took place well before the economic downturn. “They might like the job, just not certain elements of ... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3807443 Sun, 01 Aug 2010 04:01:28 +0100 3807443 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3802458&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F07%2F30%2Fattributional-divide-top-10%2F This article, the first of a multipart series, argues that a major rift runs across many of our major policy debates based on our attributional tendencies: the less accurate dispositionist approach, which explains outcomes and behavior with reference to people’s dispositions (i.e., personalities, preferences, and the like), and the more accurate situationist approach, which bases attributions of causation and responsibility on unseen influences within us and around us. Given that situationism offers a truer picture of our world than the alternative, and given that attributional tendencies are largely the result of elements in our situations, identifying the relevant elements should be a major priority of legal scholars. With such information, legal academics could predict which indiv... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3802458 Fri, 30 Jul 2010 04:01:43 +0100 3802458 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3753892&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F07%2F15%2Fsituationism-in-the-blogosphere-june-part-i%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of our favorite non-Situationist situationist blogging during June 2010 (they are listed in alphabetical order by source). * * * From BPS Research Digest: “Does greater competition improve performance or increase cheating?” “What happens when you recruit dozens of students to perform a maze-based computer task and then you ratchet up the competitive pressure? Does their performance improve or do they just cheat more?” Read more . . . From Beautiful Minds: “What do Narcissists Sound Like?” “Narcissists love themselves. Even in psychology experiments. This is a problem for psychologists trying to study narcissists in the laboratory because narcissists are likely to present themselves in the best possible light, ... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3753892 Thu, 15 Jul 2010 04:01:08 +0100 3753892 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3724486&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F07%2F05%2Fthe-situation-of-touch%2F From Situationist Contributor John Bargh’s ACME Lab: Sitting in a hard chair can literally turn someone into a hardass. Holding a heavy clipboard leads to weighty decisions. Rubbing rough surfaces makes us prickly. So found researchers studying the interaction between physical touch and social cognition. The experiments included would-be car buyers who, when seated in a cushy chair, were less likely to drive a stiff bargain. The findings don’t just suggest tricks for salesman, but may illuminate how our brains develop. “The way people understand the world is through physical experiences. The first sense they develop is touch,” said study co-author Josh Ackerman, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology psychologist. As they grow up, those physical experiences shape how people co... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3724486 Mon, 05 Jul 2010 04:48:24 +0100 3724486 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3702997&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F06%2F28%2Fthe-situation-of-presidential-death-threats%2F Gregory Scott Parks, and Danielle Heard recently posted their fascinating paper, titled “‘Assassinate the Nigger Ape’: Obama, Implicit Imagery, and the Dire Consequences of Racist Jokes,” on SSRN.  Here is the abstract. * * * In 1994, Congress passed legislation stating that Presidents elected to office after January 1, 1997, would no longer receive lifetime Secret Service protection. Such legislation was unremarkable until the first Black President – Barack Obama – was elected. From the outset of his campaign until today, and likely beyond, President Obama has received unprecedented death threats. These threats, we argue, are at least in part tied to critics and commentators’ use of symbols, pictures, and words to characterize the Obama as a primate... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3702997 Mon, 28 Jun 2010 04:01:39 +0100 3702997 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3683693&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F06%2F22%2Fthe-situation-of-subjects%2F Joe Henrich, Stephen Heine,  and Ara Norenzayan recently posted their paper, “The Weirdest People in the World?” on SSRN.  Here’s the abstract. * * * Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world’s top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers – often implicitly – assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these “standard subjects” are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is substantial variability in experimental re... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3683693 Tue, 22 Jun 2010 04:01:57 +0100 3683693 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3679812&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F06%2F21%2Fsituationism-in-the-blogosphere-%25e2%2580%2593-may-part-ii%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of our favorite non-Situationist situationist blogging during May 2010 (they are listed in alphabetical order by source). * * * From Experiments in Philosophy: “Sex on the Bench: Do Women and Men Have Different Moral Values?” “With Barack Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan, the United States Supreme Court is likely to have more women than ever before. Some wonder whether the changing gender ratios could impact the Court’s decisions. Research on sex differences in moral judgments-including judicial judgments-suggests an affirmative answer.” Read more . . . From Frontal Cortex: “Anchoring” “In the last few months, the globalized world has endured two very different crises. […] In both instances, off... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3679812 Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:01:46 +0100 3679812 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3671806&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F06%2F17%2Fthe-social-situation-of-breaking-up%2F Rose McDermott, Nicholas Christakis, and James Fowler have recently posted their fascinating paper “Breaking Up is Hard to Do, Unless Everyone Else is Doing it Too: Social Network Effects on Divorce in a Longitudinal Sample Followed for 32 Years” on SSRN.   Here’s the abstract. * * * Divorce is the dissolution of a social tie, but it is also possible that attitudes about divorce flow across social ties. To explore how social networks influence divorce and vice versa, we utilize a longitudinal data set from the long-running Framingham Heart Study. We find that divorce can spread between friends, siblings, and coworkers, and there are clusters of divorcees that extend two degrees of separation in the network. We also find that popular people are less likely to get divorced... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3671806 Thu, 17 Jun 2010 04:01:27 +0100 3671806 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3641084&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F06%2F08%2Fsituationism-in-the-blogosphere-%25e2%2580%2593-may-part-i%2F This study, published in last month’s Journal of Social Psychology, which erased the usual gender gap in high-school chemistry tests. All it took was a change in the illustrations in a textbook.” Read more . . . From BPS Research Digest: “How to increase voter turnout” “The political parties don’t agree on much but what they do all agree on is that the more people who exercise their right to vote, the better. Psychology can help. A new study shows that phone calls to encourage people to vote can be made more effective by a simple strategy – that is, by asking the would-be voter to spell out what time they plan to vote, where they will be coming from prior to voting and what they will have been doing beforehand.” Read more . . . From Brain Blogger: “Societal... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3641084 Tue, 08 Jun 2010 04:01:20 +0100 3641084 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3633516&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F06%2F06%2Fthe-palliative-function-of-ideology%2F Jaime Napier is an Assistant Professors of Psychology at Yale University. Her primary research interest is the effects of societal injustice, including how members of advantaged and disadvantaged groups diverge in their perceptions and explanations of injustice; how political and religious ideologies may ameliorate the outrage associated with perceived injustice; and the consequences of accepting or rationalizing injustice on individual subjective well-being and self-esteem. At the third annual conference on Law and Mind Sciences, which took place in March of 2009, Napier’s fascinating presentation was titled “The Palliative Function of Ideology.” Here’s the abstract: In this research, we drew on system-justification theory and the notion that conservative ideology ... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3633516 Sun, 06 Jun 2010 04:01:59 +0100 3633516 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3621772&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F06%2F02%2Fracial-bias-clouds-ability-to-feel-others-pain%2F From EurekAlert!: When people witness or imagine the pain of another person, their nervous system responds in essentially the same way it would if they were feeling that pain themselves. Now, researchers reporting online on May 27th in Current Biology, . . . have new evidence to show that that kind of empathy is diminished when people (black or white) who hold racial biases see that pain is being inflicted on those of another race. The good news is that people continue to respond with empathy when pain is inflicted on people who don’t fit into any preconceived racial category—in this case, those who appear to have violet-colored skin. “This is quite important because it suggests that humans tend to empathize by default unless prejudice is at play,” said Salvatore Maria ... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3621772 Wed, 02 Jun 2010 04:01:48 +0100 3621772 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3610386&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F05%2F29%2Fthe-affective-situation-of-ethics-and-mediation%2F Ellen Waldman recenly posted her thoughtful article, “Mindfulness, Emotions, and Ethics: The Right Stuff?” (Nevada Law Journal, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2010) on SSRN.  Here’s the abstract. * * * What role do emotions play in ethical decision-making? Philosophers have long debated the question, disagreeing about both the nature of “the good” and how best to achieve it. Rationalists ground one’s capacity for virtue in logic and deliberate cognition, while moral intuitionists look to one’s capacity for feeling deeply. Immanuel Kant, for example, maintained that right conduct flowed from a sense of duty that functioned independently of emotion. Conversely, David Hume argued that all right action involved sentiment and that reason, stripped of passion, could ... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3610386 Sat, 29 May 2010 04:01:29 +0100 3610386 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3595664&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F05%2F25%2Fthe-situation-of-being-green%2F Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong recently posted their article, titled “Do Green Products Make Us Better People?” (forthcoming Psychological Science) on SSRN. * * * Consumer choices not only reflect price and quality preferences but also social and moral values as witnessed in the remarkable growth of the global market for organic and environmentally friendly products. Building on recent research on behavioral priming and moral regulation, we find that mere exposure to green products and the purchase of them lead to markedly different behavioral consequences. In line with the halo associated with green consumerism, people act more altruistically after mere exposure to green than conventional products. However, people act less altruistically and are more likely to cheat and steal a... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3595664 Tue, 25 May 2010 04:01:44 +0100 3595664 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3590392&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F05%2F23%2Fthe-person-situation-debate-in-philosophy%2F Situationist Contributor John Jost recently co-authored a brief comment, titled “Virtue ethics and the social psychology of character: Philosophical lessons from the person–situation debate,” which will be of interest to many of our readers.  Here are the opening paragraphs. * * * A venerable tradition of ethical theory drawing on Aristotle’s Ethics still flourishes alongside consequentialist (utilitarian) and deontological (Kantian) alternatives. The Aristotelian notion is that if humans develop in themselves and inculcate in others certain settled dispositions to reason and act in characteristic ways—bravely, honestly, generously—they will behave in ways that secure and preserve eudaimonia (happiness or well-being) for themselves and others (Burnyeat, 1980; Hursthous... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3590392 Sun, 23 May 2010 04:01:15 +0100 3590392 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3589021&cid=t_92652_136_f&fid=37846&url=http%3A%2F%2Fhealthinfoispower.wordpress.com%2F%3Fp%3D4100 Yesterday, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) made available more than 4,000 medical abstracts which are publicly posted online at www.abstract.asco.org. A hyperlink to the 2010 ASCO Annual Meeting ovarian cancer abstracts is provided below.  The ASCO Annual Meeting will be held June 4-8, 2010 at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois. Yesterday, the American [...] (Source: Libby's H*O*P*E*) Libby's H*O*P*E* blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3589021 Sat, 22 May 2010 00:08:58 +0100 3589021 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3585686&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F05%2F21%2Finequality-and-the-unequal-situation-of-mental-and-physical-health%2F Press release from University of Michigan: * * * When people are under chronic stress, they tend to smoke, drink, use drugs and overeat to help cope with stress. These behaviors trigger a biological cascade that helps prevent depression, but they also contribute to a host of physical problems that eventually contribute to early death. That is the claim of University of Michigan social scientist James S. Jackson and colleagues in an article published in the May 2010 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The theory helps explain a long-time epidemiological puzzle: why African Americans have worse physical health than whites but better psychiatric health. “People engage in bad habits for functional reasons, not because of weak character or ignorance,” says Jackson, direc... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3585686 Fri, 21 May 2010 04:01:42 +0100 3585686 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3577465&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F05%2F19%2Fsituationism-in-the-blogosphere-%25e2%2580%2593-april-part-i%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of our favorite non-Situationist situationist blogging during April 2010 (they are listed in alphabetical order by source). * * * From Big Think: “New Study: Insurers Take Both Sides in the War on Obesity” “The other day I pointed out the conflicting motives of corporations that sell soda, snacks and fast food: They promote “wellness” because they want manageable health-care costs, but they also promote their products. And those are linked to just those long-term “lifestyle” diseases that push health-care costs up. Now comes this study in the American Journal of Public Health, which documents the mixed motives of another set of corporations—companies that sell health and life insurance.” Read ... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3577465 Wed, 19 May 2010 04:01:07 +0100 3577465 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3560300&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F05%2F13%2Fthe-spatial-situation-of-crime-and-criminal-law%2F No pressure (except for you, grandma — loyal reader number 1), but I have a new article out in the most recent issue of the Cardozo Law Review.  The abstract for The Geography of Criminal Law is below. * * * When Westerners explain the causes of actions or outcomes in the criminal law context, they demonstrate a strong tendency to overestimate the importance of dispositional factors, like thinking, preferring, and willing, and underestimate the impact of interior and exterior situational factors, including environmental, historical, and social forces, as well as affective states, knowledge structures, motives, and other unseen aspects of our cognitive frameworks and processes. One of the situational factors that we are particularly likely to overlook is physical space—that is, la... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3560300 Thu, 13 May 2010 16:00:57 +0100 3560300 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3546907&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F05%2F09%2Fobesity-and-bullying%2F Christian Nordqvist wrote a nice summary of recent research for  Medical News Today on the relationship of obesity with bullying.  Here are a few excerpts. * * * A new study published in the journal Pediatrics reports that obese children have a higher risk of being bullied, regardless of race, socioeconomic status, social skills, academic achievement or gender. The study, titled “Weight status as a predictor of being bullied in third through sixth grades” was carried out by Julie C. Lumeng, M.D., . . . and her colleagues. * * * The aim of this study was to establish the link between childhood obesity and being the victim of bullying in 3rd, 5th, and 6th grades. * * * Researchers studied 821 children who were . . . . recruited at birth in 10 study sites around the USA. The res... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3546907 Sun, 09 May 2010 04:01:33 +0100 3546907 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3529855&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F05%2F04%2Fthe-situation-of-cooperation%2F From The National Science Foundation: Humans are incredibly cooperative, but why do people cooperate and how is cooperation maintained? A new research study by UCLA anthropology professor Robert Boyd and his colleagues from the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico suggests cooperation in large groups is maintained by punishment. The finding challenges previous cooperation/punishment models that argue punishment is uncoordinated and unconditional. Boyd and his team report their research in the April 30 issue of the journal Science. . . . To understand the study, let’s start with a small group of friends. In small groups, individuals often have personal connections with other group members and cooperation typically is maintained by a “you help me, I’ll help you” reciproci... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3529855 Tue, 04 May 2010 04:01:25 +0100 3529855 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3515460&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F04%2F29%2Fsituationism-in-the-news-12%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of the Situationist news over the last several weeks. * * * From CNN: “Psychologists: Memorials can trigger more suicides” “When college students take their lives, as apparently happened recently at Cornell University, the instinctual reaction, to mourn publicly and officially, may be the wrong thing to do, psychologists say.” Read more . . . From Nature News: “Children who form no racial stereotypes found” “Prejudice may seem inescapable, but scientists now report the first group of people who seem not to form racial stereotypes. Children with a neurodevelopmental disorder called Williams syndrome (WS) are overly friendly because they do not fear strangers. Now, a study shows that these children also do not develop... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3515460 Thu, 29 Apr 2010 04:01:40 +0100 3515460 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3511604&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F04%2F28%2Fliability-for-unconscious-discrimination%2F Patrick Shin recently posted his excellent article, titled “Liability for Unconscious Discrimination? A Thought Experiment in the Theory of Employment Discrimination Law” (forthcoming Hastings Law Journal) on SSRN.  Here’s the abstract. * * * A steadily mounting body of social science research suggests that ascertaining a person’s conscious motives for an action may not always provide a complete explanation of why he did it. The phenomenon of unconscious bias presents a worrisome impediment to the achievement of fair equality in the workplace. There have been numerous deeply insightful articles discussing various aspects of this problem and canvassing its implications for antidiscrimination law. My purpose in this paper is to focus directly on what might be called a mo... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3511604 Wed, 28 Apr 2010 04:01:33 +0100 3511604 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3502850&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F04%2F24%2Fsituationism-in-the-blogosphere-%25e2%2580%2593-march-part-ii%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of our favorite non-Situationist situationist blogging during March 2010 (they are listed in alphabetical order by source). * * * From Neuronarrative: “When You Expect Rapid Feedback, the Fire to Perform Gets Hotter” “Let’s say that you’re preparing for an extremely important test that you and roughly 100 other classmates will be taking in a week.  A few days before the test, you find out that your instructor will be going on a trip not long after the test is over and will be providing written and verbal feedback to the students within a day of the test.” Read more . . . From Neurophilosophy: “Magnetic manipulation of the sense of morality” “When making moral judgements, we rely on our ability to make infer... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3502850 Sat, 24 Apr 2010 18:30:06 +0100 3502850 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3482949&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F04%2F19%2Fde-capturing-the-fda%2F Harvard Law Student, Jason Iuliano, recently posted his forthcoming article, “Killing Us Sweetly: How to Take Industry Out of the FDA” (forthcoming Journal of Food Law and Policy) on SSRN.  Here’s the abstract. * * * For more than a century, the Food and Drug Administration has purported to protect the public health. During that time, it has actually been placing corporate profits above consumer safety. Nowhere is this corruption more evident than in the approval of artificial sweeteners. FDA leaders’ close ties to the very industry they were supposed to be regulating present a startling picture. Ignoring warnings from both independent scientists and their own review panels, FDA decision makers let greed guide their actions. They approved carcinogenic sweeteners such ... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3482949 Mon, 19 Apr 2010 04:01:50 +0100 3482949 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3479740&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F04%2F17%2Fembodied-rationality%2F Barbara Spellman and  Simone Schnall recently posted their fascinating paper, Embodied Rationality, on SSRN.  Here’s the abstract. * * * In the last decade, many cognitive and social psychology researchers have been inspired by the notion of “embodied cognition” – that cognition is grounded in actual bodily states, and that cognition takes place in the service of action. Consider two examples: (1) when wearing a backpack people perceive hills to be steeper than when not wearing one; (2) when holding a cup containing a hot drink people rate another person as more warm and friendly than when holding a cup containing a cold drink. Findings such as these suggest that behavioral law and economics’s emphasis on “irrationality” in decision making could bene... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3479740 Sat, 17 Apr 2010 04:20:27 +0100 3479740 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3460412&cid=t_92652_155_f&fid=38406&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FThe1xObjective%2F%7E3%2FJcXz2_STmh8%2F Below is a case report I was invloved with in which the patient was found to have a Mycobacterium haemophilum brain abscess.  Interesting case! Atypical Mycobacteria Masquerading in the CNS Filed... Catch the rest of the story after the break... (Source: The 1x Objective) The 1x Objective blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3460412 Mon, 12 Apr 2010 14:59:26 +0100 3460412 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3457881&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F04%2F11%2Fthe-neuro-situation-of-violence-and-empathy%2F This study, published in the most recent issue of the Revista de Neurología, concludes that the prefrontal and temporal cortex, the amygdala and other features of the limbic system (such as insulin and the cingulated cortex) play “a fundamental role in all situations in which empathy appears”. Moya Albiol says these parts of the brain overlap “in a surprising way” with those that regulate aggression and violence. As a result, the scientific team argues that the cerebral circuits – for both empathy and violence – could be “partially similar”. “We all know that encouraging empathy has an inhibiting effect on violence, but this may not only be a social question but also a biological one – stimulation of these neuronal circuits in one direction ... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3457881 Sun, 11 Apr 2010 04:01:26 +0100 3457881 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3448931&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F04%2F08%2Fsituationism-in-the-blogosphere-%25e2%2580%2593-march-part-i%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of our favorite non-Situationist situationist blogging during March 2010 (they are listed in alphabetical order by source). * * * From BPS Research Digest: “Scary health messages can backfire” “A short while ago there was a shocking advert on British TV that used slow motion to illustrate the bloody, crunching effects of a car crash. The driver had been drinking. Using these kind of scare tactics for anti drink-driving and other health issues makes intuitive sense. The campaigners want to grab your attention and demonstrate the seriousness of the consequences if their message is not heeded. However, a new study makes the surprising finding that for a portion of the population, scare tactics can back-fire, actually undermi... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3448931 Thu, 08 Apr 2010 04:01:15 +0100 3448931 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3435097&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F04%2F03%2Fthe-situation-of-situationist-stanley-milgram%2F Nestar John Charles Russell is publishing an article, titled “Milgram’s obedience to authority experiments: Origins and early evolution.”  Here’s the abstract. Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority experiments remain one of the most inspired contributions in the field of social psychology. Although Milgram undertook more than 20 experimental variations, his most (in)famous result was the first official trial run–the remote condition and its 65% completion rate. Drawing on many unpublished documents from Milgram’s personal archive at Yale University, this article traces the historical origins and early evolution of the obedience experiments. Part 1 presents the previous experiences that led to Milgram’s conception of his rudimentary research idea and then... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3435097 Sat, 03 Apr 2010 04:01:30 +0100 3435097 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3408452&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F03%2F26%2Fthe-situation-of-bottled-water%2F From the Story of Stuff: The Story of Bottled Water, releasing March 22, 2010, employs the Story of Stuff style to tell the story of manufactured demand—how you get Americans to buy more than half a billion bottles of water every week when it already flows from the tap. Over five minutes, the film explores the bottled water industrys attacks on tap water and its use of seductive, environmental-themed advertising to cover up the mountains of plastic waste it produces. The film concludes with a call to take back the tap, not only by making a personal commitment to avoid bottled water, but by supporting investments in clean, available tap water for all. * * * * * * For a sample of related Situationist posts, see ““Flow” and the Situation of Water,” and the links that post... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3408452 Fri, 26 Mar 2010 04:01:37 +0100 3408452 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3390826&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F03%2F22%2Fsituationism-in-the-blogosphere-february-part-ii-2%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of our favorite non-Situationist situationist blogging during February 2010 (they are listed in alphabetical order by source). * * * From Law and Mind: “The Law’s Relationship to Self-Interested, Competitive, and Trusting Behavior” “In “Associations between Law, Competitiveness, and the Pursuit of Self-Interest,” Mitchell Callan and Aaron Kay present and analyze their research regarding whether the existence of law, “implicitly fosters the assumptions that people are self-interested, competitive, and cannot be trusted.” Read more . . . From Mind Hacks: “Subliminal cigarette marketing” “The Tobacco Documents Library is an online database of millions of tobacco industry documents made public through court case... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3390826 Mon, 22 Mar 2010 04:01:49 +0100 3390826 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3378561&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F03%2F18%2Fhanson-kysar-to-deliver-the-2010-monsanto-lecture%2F Situationist Contributor Jon Hanson and Yale Law Professor Doug Kysar are co-delivering the 2010 Monsanto Lecture on Tort Law and Jurisprudence tomorrow at Valparaiso University School of Law.  Their lecture is titled “Abnormally Dangerous: Inequality Dissonance and the Making of Tort Law.”  Here’s the abstract. * * * At the conceptual heart of tort law rests a choice between negligence and strict liability as the default standard of care for unintentional wrongs. The prevailing American view holds that strict liability should be reserved for rare cases in which an activity poses significant hazards even after a defendant has taken all reasonable care. The types of explanations for that preference have shifted over time from a classical liberal rationale to an economic... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3378561 Thu, 18 Mar 2010 04:01:06 +0100 3378561 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3370494&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F03%2F16%2Ftort-laws-distributional-injustice%2F Anita Bernstein, posted her recent review essay, titled “Distributive Justice Through Tort (And Why Sociolegal Scholars Should Care)” (forthcoming 35 Law of Social Inquiry) on  SSRN.  Here’s the abstract. * * * Drawing on two books central to an emerging sociolegal literature about tort-Fault Lines: Tort Law as Cultural Practice, a collection of chapters edited by David M. Engel and Michael McCann, and Torts, Egalitarianism and Distributive Justice, a monograph by Tsachi Keren-Paz–this essay argues that tort law in the United States redistributes wealth in ways that ought to trouble sociolegal scholars and enlist their reformist energy. Read together, the two volumes offer considerable description and critique of a distributive injustice, and lead to important proposa... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3370494 Tue, 16 Mar 2010 04:04:11 +0100 3370494 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3350350&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F03%2F10%2Fmahzarin-banaji-at-harvard-law-school%2F On Thursday, March 11th, the HLS Student Association for Law and Mind Sciences (SALMS) is hosting a talk by Harvard psychology professor Mahzarin Banaji entitled “Mind Bugs and the Science of Ordinary Bias.”  Here’s the description. * * * How deep are the bounds on human thinking and feeling and how do they shape social judgment?  Our focus has been on the mechanics of unconscious mental processes, with attention to those that operate without conscious awareness, intention, or control.  Most recently, we have worked with a task that reveals unconscious preferences in a rather blunt manner, showing that they can sit, at one level, in contradiction with consciously endorsed preferences.  We use the tool largely for theory testing, focusing on questions about the natur... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3350350 Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:01:51 +0100 3350350 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3346521&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F03%2F09%2Fsituationism-in-the-blogosphere-2%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of our favorite non-Situationist situationist blogging during February 2010 (they are listed in alphabetical order by source). * * * From Ambigamy: “Consciously unconscious: Reflections on the annual social psychology conference” “I just got back from the annual Social Psychology meeting in Las Vegas. Are you following this amazing field? It’s not hard to follow, what with the wealth of marvelously accessible books with monosyllabic titles like Blink, Switch, Nudge, and Sway, not to mention The Hidden Brain, Predictably Irrational, The political brain, On being certain, How we decide, and well, really too many to mention.” Read more . . . From Brain Blogger: “I Feel Your Pain” – The Neural Basis of Empathy” ... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3346521 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 04:01:53 +0100 3346521 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3327045&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F03%2F03%2Fthe-sound-situation-of-beer-drinkers%2F CONCLUSIONS: The impact of environmental music on consumption was discussed and the “arousal” hypothesis and the negative effect of loud music on social interaction were used to explain our results. * * * For a sample of related Situationist posts, see “Just Me and My Friend, Sony,” “Alcohol, Hotdogs, Sexism, and Racism,” “What Our Exterior Situation Reveals About Our Interior Situation,” “Susan Boyle and the Situation of Sound,” “The Situation of Music,” “The Situation of the Dreaded ‘Freshman 15′,” “The Science of Songs Stuck in Your Head,” and “Investing in Vice,” (Source: The Situationist) The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3327045 Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:12:34 +0100 3327045 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3314676&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F02%2F27%2Fthe-neuro-situation-of-responsibility%2F Nicole Vincent recently posted her interesting paper, “Neuroimaging and Responsibility Assessments” on SSRN.  Here’s the abstract. * * * Could neuroimaging evidence help us to assess the degree of a person’s responsibility for a crime which we know that they committed? This essay defends an affirmative answer to this question. A range of standard objections to this high-tech approach to assessing people’s responsibility is considered and then set aside, but I also bring to light and then reject a novel objection — an objection which is only encountered when functional (rather than structural) neuroimaging is used to assess people’s responsibility. * * * Download the paper for free here.   To read a sample of related Situationist posts see, “Your Brain and Mo... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3314676 Sat, 27 Feb 2010 04:01:53 +0100 3314676 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3306913&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F02%2F25%2Fthe-interior-situational-reaction-to-inequality%2F In this study, we’re starting to get an idea of where this inequality aversion comes from,” he says. “It’s not just the application of a social rule or convention; there’s really something about the basic processing of rewards in the brain that reflects these considerations.” The brain processes “rewards”—things like food, money, and even pleasant music, which create positive responses in the body—in areas such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and ventral striatum. In a series of experiments, former Caltech postdoctoral scholar Elizabeth Tricomi (now an assistant professor of psychology at Rutgers University)—along with O’Doherty, Camerer, and Antonio Rangel, associate professor of economics at Caltech—watched how t... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3306913 Thu, 25 Feb 2010 06:21:34 +0100 3306913 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3298393&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F02%2F23%2Fthe-situation-of-suspicion%2F This article examines this claim by exploring in depth the cognitive biases and abilities that serve respectively as obstacles to, and opportunities for, police making accurate judgments about individualized suspicion. The article concludes that requiring police consciously to justify their intuitions can improve their accuracy, that the greatest accuracy comes from constructing institutions in a way that combines the best of unconscious intuition with more systematic critique, and that police training can be improved in various ways to enhance cognitive accuracy about the individualized suspicion judgment. * * * For a sample of related Situationist posts, see “The Legal Situation of the Underclass,” “Jennifer Eberhardt’s “Policing Racial Bias” – Video,” and “Th... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3298393 Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:01:00 +0100 3298393 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3294660&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F02%2F22%2Fsituationism-in-the-news-11%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of the Situationist news over the last several weeks. * * * From Miller-Mccun: “Get Politically Engaged, Get Happy?” “As the United States gears up for midyear elections, getting involved in a campaign might not only be a great opportunity to participate in democracy — it might make you feel better.” Read more . . . From Miller-Mccun: “Threats, Anxieties Ingredients of Conservativism” “Over the past year, a conservative right-wing movement has found a loud political voice in the United States. Strongly anti-government, the movement seems largely oriented around a message that anything the Obama administration wishes to accomplish is an attack on American tradition, and it is up to them to stop this radical soci... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3294660 Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:01:52 +0100 3294660 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3287805&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F02%2F19%2Fthe-situation-of-stereotype-threat%2F Randy Khalil has a nice article, “‘Stereotype threat’ negatively affects students,” in Wednesday’s Daily Princetonian.  Here are some excerpts. * * * Princeton students fall victim to the “stereotype threat,” according to a study led by Adam Alter GS ’09. The “stereotype threat” is the phenomenon in which reminding people of negative stereotypes associated with their group identity can encourage the fulfillment of those stereotypes. “When reminded of their group membership, for example, white people struggle athletically, black people struggle academically, women struggle mathematically and men struggle linguistically,” Alter explained in an e-mail. Alter wanted to find out if the way that people are reminded of their group membership determi... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3287805 Fri, 19 Feb 2010 04:01:37 +0100 3287805 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3280032&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F02%2F17%2Fsituationism-in-the-blogosphere-%25e2%2580%2593-january-part-ii%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of our favorite non-Situationist situationist blogging during January 2010 (they are listed in alphabetical order by source). * * * From Neuroscience Marketing: “Green Marketing: Light Up Sales” “Green marketing” usually refers to using an environmental pitch to sell a product. A car creates less pollution, a paper product is made from recycled content, and so on. Results of appealing to environmental sentiment have been mixed.” Read more . . . From Neurophilosophy: “Desire influences visual perception” “WE tend to assume that we see our surroundings as they really are, and that our perception of reality is accurate. In fact, what we perceive is merely a neural representation of the world, the brain’s best ... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3280032 Wed, 17 Feb 2010 04:01:01 +0100 3280032 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3272966&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F02%2F15%2Fthe-situation-of-scientific-consensus%2F Situationist Contributor Dan Kahan, Hank Jenkins-Smith, and Donald Braman, have just posted another fascinating paper, “Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus” on SSRN.  Here’s the abstract. * * * Why do members of the public disagree – sharply and persistently – about facts on which expert scientists largely agree? We designed a study to test a distinctive explanation: the cultural cognition of scientific consensus. The “cultural cognition of risk” refers to the tendency of individuals to form risk perceptions that are congenial to their values. The study presents both correlational and experimental evidence confirming that cultural cognition shapes individuals’ beliefs about the existence of scientific consensus, and the process by which they for... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3272966 Mon, 15 Feb 2010 04:01:09 +0100 3272966 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3267005&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F02%2F12%2Fthe-broader-situation-a-case-study-of-cop-car-cameras%2F As part of my new commitment to posting more of my work on SSRN, I’ve just put up another forthcoming article that may be of interest to some readers.  It offers a law and mind sciences (situationist / critical realist) perspective on Yale Law School’s Cultural Cognition Project (CCP) using a great recent article by CCP scholars Dan M. Kahan, David A. Hoffman, and Donald Braman as a case study.  That article has been referenced in two recent New York Times pieces (including one that listed it as among the most important ideas of 2009). If your interest is not yet piqued, I should also mention that the new SSRN post also has police chases and scandalous pictures of Angelina Jolie . . . or, well, at least one of those things. The link is here; the abstract is found below. * * * The C... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3267005 Fri, 12 Feb 2010 04:01:51 +0100 3267005 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3262666&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F02%2F11%2Fsituationism-in-the-news-10%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of the Situationist news over the last several weeks. * * * From USA Today: “Psychologists: Propaganda works better than you think” “Science seldom interacts with the legal world, more’s the pity. But the latest big Supreme Court decision, Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, has some scientists talking about the difference between the legal view of human psychology and what the evidence shows.” Read more . . . From Guardian: “We can make you behave” “What have we learned from the financial crisis? That’s the question on everyone’s lips here at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, where we are taking part in a panel discussion with some of the world’s leading behavioural t... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3262666 Thu, 11 Feb 2010 04:01:39 +0100 3262666 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3254518&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F02%2F09%2Fsystem-justification-and-the-meaning-of-life%2F Situationist Contributor John T. Jost and his co-authors Lindsay E. Rankin and Cheryl J. Wakslak recently published a fascinating article, titled “System Justification and the Meaning of Life: Are the Existential Benefits of Ideology Distributed Unequally Across Racial Groups?” 22, Social Justice Research 312 (2009).  Here’s the abstract. * * * In this research, we investigated the relations among system justification, religiosity, and subjective well-being in a sample of nationally representative low-income respondents in the United States. We hypothesized that ideological endorsement of the status quo would be associated with certain existential and other psychological benefits, but these would not necessarily be evenly distributed across racial groups. Results reveale... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3254518 Tue, 09 Feb 2010 04:01:36 +0100 3254518 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3251258&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F02%2F08%2Frace-and-implicit-american-ness%2F In case you missed it, here is a worthwhile CNN International interview of Thierry Devos and Debbie Ma about their study, titled “Is Barack Obama American Enough to Be the Next President?: The Role of Ethnicity and National Identity in American Politics” (pdf  here).  The study’s introduction is as follows. * * * Recent research has demonstrated a tenacious propensity to more readily ascribe the American identity to Whites than to ethnic minorities . . . . Interest in this American = White effect is timely given that a front runner in the 2008 presidential election is African American. The aim of the present research was to determine the role of ethnicity and national identity in the perception of political candidates, as well as identify correlates (behavioral, attitu... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3251258 Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:01:10 +0100 3251258 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3246942&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F02%2F06%2Fthe-situation-of-corruption%2F We thought our readers be interested in an article by Eduardo Salcedo-Albarán, Isaac De León-Beltrán, and Mauricio Rubio’s, titled “Feelings, Brain and Prevention of Corruption“  (3 International Journal of Psychology Research 2008) now available on SSRN. * * * In this paper we propose an answer for the question: why, sometimes, people don’t perceive corruption as a crime? To answer this question we use a neurological and a psychological concept. As humans, we experience our emotions and feelings in first person, but the neuropsychological mechanism known as “mirror neurons” makes possible to simulate emotions and feelings of others. It means that our emotions and feelings are linked with emotions and feelings of others. When mirror areas in the brain are activ... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3246942 Sat, 06 Feb 2010 04:56:44 +0100 3246942 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3243860&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F02%2F05%2Fsituationism-in-the-blogosphere-%25e2%2580%2593-january-part-i%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of our favorite non-Situationist situationist blogging during January 2010 (they are listed in alphabetical order by source). * * * From BPS Research Digest: “Morbid warnings on cigarette packs could encourage some people to smoke” “Every now and again a finding comes along that provides perfect ammunition for psychologists confronted by the tiresome claim that psychology is all ‘common sense.’ Researchers have found that death-related health warnings on cigarette packs are likely to encourage some people to smoke. The surprising result is actually consistent with ‘Terror-management Theory’, according to which thoughts of mortality cause us to cling more strongly to our cultural beliefs and to pursu... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3243860 Fri, 05 Feb 2010 04:01:43 +0100 3243860 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3239637&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F02%2F04%2Fthe-embodied-cognition-bonanza%2F I am excited to be back after a two-month stint guest blogging at Concurring Opinions and I thought I’d jump right in on the matter of “embodied cognition.” Tuesday morning, I opened up the New York Times to find yet another popular article taking up the topic.  While I continue to be happy to see “embodied cognition fever” catching among the nation’s journalists, I worry ever-so-slightly that the rush to bring the fascinating research to the public may ultimately have negative consequences. I have been interested in embodied cognition for a while and have had students in my Law and Mind Science course read some of the work in the field the last two years I taught the seminar.  That led me to present some of my thoughts about the implications of the work for law last year at ... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3239637 Thu, 04 Feb 2010 04:28:43 +0100 3239637 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3235912&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F02%2F03%2Fbarry-schwartz-on-the-situation-of-incentives%2F Barry Schwartz is the Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore College. Barry Schwartz studies the relationship between economics and psychology, delivering startling insights into modern life. In his 2004 book The Paradox of Choice, Schwartz tackles one of the great mysteries of modern life: Why is it that societies of great abundance — where individuals are offered more freedom and choice (personal, professional, material) than ever before — are now witnessing a near-epidemic of depression? Conventional wisdom tells us that greater choice is for the greater good, but Schwartz argues the opposite: He makes a compelling case that the abundance of choice in today’s western world is actually making us miserable. Infinite choice is paralyzing, Schwart... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3235912 Wed, 03 Feb 2010 04:01:04 +0100 3235912 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3235913&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F02%2F02%2Fthe-constructed-situation-of-race%2F Christian Sundquist’s interesting article,  “The Meaning of Race in the DNA Era: Science, History and the Law” (27 Temple Journal of Science, Technology & Environmental Law 231-265 (2008)) is now available on SSRN. Here’s the abstract. * * * The meaning of “race” has changed dramatically over time. Early theories of race assigned social, intellectual, moral and physical values to perceived physical differences among groups of people. The perception that race should be defined in terms of genetic and biologic difference fueled the “race science” of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, during which time geneticists, physiognomists, eugenicists, anthropologists and others purported to find scientific justification for denying equal treatment to non-whi... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3235913 Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:28:50 +0100 3235913 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3227858&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F02%2F01%2Fthe-nerdy-gendered-situation-of-computer-science%2F From University of Washington News (by Joel Schwarz): * * * In real estate, it’s location, location, location. And when it comes to why girls and women shy away from careers in computer science, a key reason is environment, environment, environment. The stereotype of computer scientists as nerds who stay up all night coding and have no social life may be driving women away from the field, according to a new study published this month. This stereotype can be brought to mind based only on the appearance of the environment in a classroom or an office. “When people think of computer science the image that immediately pops into many of their minds is of the computer geek surrounded by such things as computer games, science fiction memorabilia and junk food,” said Sapna Cheryan... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3227858 Mon, 01 Feb 2010 05:29:02 +0100 3227858 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3223341&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F01%2F30%2Fsituationism-in-the-news-9%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of the Situationist news over the last several weeks. * * * From BBC News: “What’s my brain’s motivation?” “For an actor, the performance conditions weren’t exactly ideal: flat on her back in a large machine, under strict instructions to lie as still as possible, speaking in short bursts interspersed with the shrill sound of a magnetic resonance imaging scanner. […] Professor Sophie Scott of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London wanted to know what happens physically in an actor’s head when they pretend to be someone else. Rivals on the dating scene could make one feel closer to God, according to new research that suggests one’s religiousness may be more closely re... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3223341 Sat, 30 Jan 2010 04:13:24 +0100 3223341 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3216661&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F01%2F28%2Fthe-evolutionary-situation-of-behavior%2F Thomas Brennan and Andrew Lo recently published their interesting paper, titled “The Origin of Behavior,” on SSRN.  Here’s the abstract. * * * We propose a single evolutionary explanation for the origin of several behaviors that have been observed in organisms ranging from ants to human subjects, including risk-sensitive foraging, risk aversion, loss aversion, probability matching, randomization, and diversification. Given an initial population of individuals, each assigned a purely arbitrary behavior with respect to a binary choice problem, and assuming that offspring behave identically to their parents, only those behaviors linked to reproductive success will survive, and less reproductively successful behaviors will disappear at exponential rates. This framework gen... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3216661 Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:00:54 +0100 3216661 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3212393&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F01%2F27%2Fdan-kahan-on-the-situation-of-risk-perceptions%2F Situationist Contributor Dan Kahan was recently interviewed for the National Science Foundation website.  In the interview, which you can watch the on the video below, Kahan discusses how people’s values shape perceptions of the HPV vaccine.  Here’s the abstract. * * * The “cultural cognition thesis” argues that individuals form risk perceptions based on often-contested personal views about what makes a good society. Now, Yale University Law professor Dr. Dan Kahan and his colleagues reveals how people’s values shape their perceptions of one of the most hotly debated health care proposals in recent years: vaccinating elementary-school girls, ages 11-12, against human papillomavirus (HPV), a widespread sexually transmitted disease. * * * * * * For a sam... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3212393 Wed, 27 Jan 2010 04:01:46 +0100 3212393 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3204952&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F01%2F25%2Fsituationism-in-the-news-8%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quote from some of the Situationist news over the last several weeks. * * * From ABC News: “Smoking dangers seducing youth to light up” “New research suggests that telling smokers cigarettes will kill them won’t necessarily convince them to quit. […] Matthew Rockloff from Queensland Central University says entire cultures are in some ways an attempt to imbue life with some sense of meaning so that people do not have to deal with the inevitable head-on.” Read more . . . From The Med Guru: “Physical appearance reveals one’s persona” “A new research suggests that the physical appearance of a person is the road map of his mind, a rough sketch of his persona revealing his personality traits. The study gave credibility to the ... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3204952 Mon, 25 Jan 2010 06:17:36 +0100 3204952 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3185436&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F01%2F19%2Fmartha-fineman-on-the-situation-of-gender-and-equality%2F Martha Fineman recently posted on  SSRN her fasinating chapter, titled “Evolving Images of Gender and Equality: A Feminist Journey” examining the changing conceptions of gender and equality and the unjustified privileging of autonomy over equality in American culture. * * * This chapter, which will be included in Transcending the Boundaries of Law, M.A. Fineman, Ed (Routledge 2010) brings a historical and analytic gaze on the concept of equality in the US legal system. Beginning with the establishment of Portia Law School for women and court decisions like Muller v. Oregon, I discuss the tension between seeking equality as sameness of treatment and seeking positive improvements in the lives of women. While women have officially attained legal equality with men, in terms of be... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3185436 Tue, 19 Jan 2010 06:09:25 +0100 3185436 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3178836&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F01%2F16%2Flaw-and-economics-primer%2F Situationist Contributor Jon Hanson, Kathleen Hanson, and Melissa Hart, have recently posted their outstanding introduction to law and economics (to be published in Dennis Patterson’s forthcoming volume, “Compantion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory) on SSRN.  The chapter includes a brief discussion of the emergence of economic behavioralism and situationism, and it is now available to download for free here.  Here’s the abstract. * * * This chapter provides an introduction to the history, uses, methods, strengths, and limits of law and economics. It begins by examining the role of positive and normative approaches to law and economics. To examine the positivist thesis – that the law does in fact tend toward efficiency – the chapter discussed and analyze... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3178836 Sat, 16 Jan 2010 04:01:52 +0100 3178836 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3175958&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F01%2F15%2Fsituationism-in-the-blogosphere-%25e2%2580%2593-december-part-ii%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of our favorite non-Situationist situationist blogging during December 2009 (they are listed in alphabetical order by source). * * * From Mind Hacks: “Fan violence: take a swing when you’re winning” “Popular sporting occasions have long been associated with violence and it was long assumed that assaults were more likely to be initiated by losing fans taking out their frustration. This has been contradicted by recent research that suggests it is fans of the winning team whom are more likely to be violent.” Read more . . . From Neuronarrative: “What’s More Potent, Testosterone or the Power of Belief?” “When most people think of testosterone, words like “aggression,” “dominance,” and “violence” usu... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3175958 Fri, 15 Jan 2010 05:10:11 +0100 3175958 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3159803&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F01%2F11%2Fglobal-climate-change-and-the-situation-of-denial%2F Situationist Contributor John T. Jost together with Irina Feygina and Rachel E. Goldsmith have recently completed a fascinating article examining the motivations behind some people’s unwillingness to take climate change seriously.  The article, titled “System Justification, the Denial of Global Warming, and the Possibility of ‘System-Sanctioned Change’” will be published later this year in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Here’s the abstract. * * * Despite extensive evidence of climate change and environmental destruction, polls continue to reveal widespread denial and resistance to helping the environment. It is posited here that these responses are linked to the motivational tendency to defend and justify the societal status quo in the face of ... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3159803 Mon, 11 Jan 2010 04:01:16 +0100 3159803 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3156524&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F01%2F09%2Ftaking-the-situation-of-consumers-seriously%2F Situationist Contributor David Yosifon recently posted his superb article, “The Consumer Interest in Corporate Law,” (43 UC Davis Law Review 253-313 (2009)) on SSRN.  It’s an important, well written, and very situationist analysis of the influence of corporate law and corporations on consumers. Here’s the abstract. * * * This Article provides a comprehensive assessment of the consumer interest in dominant theories of the corporation and in the fundamental doctrines of corporate law. In so doing, the Article fills a void in contemporary corporate law scholarship, which has failed to give sustained attention to consumers in favor of exploring the interests of other corporate stakeholders, especially shareholders, creditors, and workers. Utilizing insights derived fr... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3156524 Sat, 09 Jan 2010 04:01:49 +0100 3156524 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3149133&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F01%2F07%2Fsituationism-in-the-blogosphere-%25e2%2580%2593-december-part-i%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of our favorite non-Situationist situationist blogging during December 2009 (they are listed in alphabetical order by source). * * * From Brain Blogger: “Sex, Violence and The Male Warrior Hypothesis” “Throughout the history of human civilization, wars have a common feature of being practiced primarily by males. This group aggression by males is a persistent trait of human behavior, seen across different continents among civilizations that have developed independent of each other.” Read more . . . From Brain Blogger: “White Bears – The Paradox of Mental Suppression” “Whatever you do, don’t think of a white bear. Go on, close your eyes, relax, but don’t think of a white bear… So, what happened? Most likely,... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3149133 Thu, 07 Jan 2010 04:01:47 +0100 3149133 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3139098&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F01%2F04%2Flaw-and-economics-primer%2F Situationist Contributor Jon Hanson, Kathleen Hanson, and Melissa Hart, have recently posted their outstanding introduction to law and economics (to be published in Dennis Patterson’s forthcoming volume, “Compantion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory) on SSRN.  The chapter includes a brief discussion of the emergence of economic behavioralism and situationism.  Here’s the abstract. * * * This chapter provides an introduction to the history, uses, methods, strengths, and limits of law and economics. It begins by examining the role of positive and normative approaches to law and economics. To examine the positivist thesis – that the law does in fact tend toward efficiency – the chapter discussed and analyzes the famous Hand Formula developed by Judge Learne... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3139098 Mon, 04 Jan 2010 04:01:52 +0100 3139098 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3133653&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F12%2F31%2Fnicole-stephens-on-%25e2%2580%259cchoice-social-class-and-agency%25e2%2580%259d%2F Nicole Stephens is a Ph.D. student in Social Psychology at Stanford University. Her research focuses on the ways in which sociocultural contexts – such as those delineated by social class, race, and gender – shape the experience and the consequences of choice. In one line of research, she examines how people of different social classes define and respond to choice. In a second line of research, she examines how the common American belief that individual choice drives all actions blinds people to the sociocultural sources of inequality. At the third annual conference on Law and Mind Sciences, which took place im March of 2009, Stephens’s fascinating presentation was titled “Choice, Social Class, and Agency.” Here’s the abstract: Across disciplines we tend to assu... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3133653 Thu, 31 Dec 2009 04:01:24 +0100 3133653 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3115155&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F12%2F23%2Fjuliet-schor-%25e2%2580%259ccolossal-failure-the-output-bias-of-market-economies%25e2%2580%259d%2F With the disappointing Copenhagen Climate Summit just behind us and with the most consumption-heavy holiday before us, there is no better time to hear Juliet’s Schor’s analysis of, and insights regarding, how we are living and what we might do differently. Juliet Schor is Professor of Sociology at Boston College. Before joining Boston College, she taught at Harvard University for 17 years, in the Department of Economics and the Committee on Degrees in Women’s Studies. Schor’s latest book is Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (2004). Born to Buy is both an account of marketing to children from inside the agencies and firms and an assessment of how these activities are affecting children. Schor is author of the national best-seller, T... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3115155 Wed, 23 Dec 2009 05:44:30 +0100 3115155 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3108417&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F12%2F21%2Fsituationism-in-the-blogosphere-%25e2%2580%2593-november-part-iii%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of our favorite non-Situationist situationist blogging during November 2009 (they are listed in alphabetical order by source). * * * From Neuronarrative: “Thinking You’re in Control Can Lead to an Impulsive Demise” “[…] A new study in the journal Psychological Science investigated the dynamics underlying why we repeatedly convince ourselves that we’ve overcome impulsiveness and can stop avoiding our worst temptations.  This particular tendency toward self-deception is called restraint bias, and four experiments were conducted under this study to test the hypothesis that it’s rampant in our bias-prone species.” Read more . . . From Psyblog: “Our Minds Are Black Boxes – Even to Ourselves” “We all have intui... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3108417 Mon, 21 Dec 2009 04:01:09 +0100 3108417 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3100873&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F12%2F18%2Fcultural-cognition-as-a-conception-of-the-cultural-theory-of-risk%2F Situationist Contributor Dan Kahan posted his recent paper, “Cultural Cognition as a Conception of the Cultural Theory of Risk,” on SSRN.  Here’s the abstract. * * * Cultural cognition refers to the tendency of individuals to form beliefs about societal dangers that reflect and reinforce their commitments to particular visions of the ideal society. Cultural cognition is one of a variety of approaches designed to empirically test the cultural theory of risk associated with Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky. This commentary discusses the distinctive features of cultural cognition as a conception of cultural theory, including its cultural worldview measures; its emphasis on social psychological mechanisms that connect individuals’ risk perceptions to their cultural out... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3100873 Fri, 18 Dec 2009 04:43:37 +0100 3100873 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3089368&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F12%2F15%2Fthe-situation-of-legal-ethics%2F Kath Hall recently poster her situationist paper, “Why Good Intentions are Often Not Enough: The Potential for Ethical Blindness in Legal Decision-Making” on SSRN.  Here’s the abstract. * * * This chapter takes as its starting point the question of how otherwise experienced and principled lawyers can make blatantly unethical decisions. As recent research has shown, lawyers can become involved in legitimizing inhuman conduct just as they can in perpetuating accounting fraud or hiding client scandal. To an outsider looking at these circumstances, it invariably appears that the lawyers involved consciously acted immorally. Within the common framework of deliberative action, we tend to see unethical behaviour as the result of conscious and controlled mental processes. Whilst... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3089368 Tue, 15 Dec 2009 04:15:25 +0100 3089368 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3056721&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F12%2F04%2Fsheena-iyengar-on-the-multiple-choice-problem%2F Sheena Iyengar is a professor in the Management Division of the Columbia Business School. One of the world’s experts on choice, Professor Iyengar received a dual degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, consisting of a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School of Business and a B.A. in psychology with a minor in English from the College of Arts and Sciences. In 1997 she completed her Ph.D. in social psychology from Stanford University. Her dissertation, entitled “Choice and its Discontents,” received the prestigious Best Dissertation Award for 1998 from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology.  Since then, she has published many articles in academic journals and her research has been commonly cited in the popular media.  Iyengar is at work on a book exp... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3056721 Fri, 04 Dec 2009 04:01:30 +0100 3056721 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3052201&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F12%2F03%2Fsituationism-in-the-blogosphere-november-2009-part-ii%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of our favorite non-Situationist situationist blogging during November 2009 (they are listed in alphabetical order by source). * * * From Nicholas Herrera Psychology Today Blog: “Attributional Biases and Violent Soccer Play” “On November 5, 2009, during a soccer match between the University of New Mexico and Brigham Young University, UNM defender Elizabeth Lambert behaved badly. […] People seem to think that Lambert’s actions on the field reflect a deep-seated anger, moral defect, or unconscious conflict. […] These simple explanations are comforting, because they reaffirm what most people already believe: Good people do good things and bad people do bad things. However, they neglect the findings of social psycholo... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3052201 Thu, 03 Dec 2009 04:01:07 +0100 3052201 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3052410&cid=t_92652_155_f&fid=38406&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FThe1xObjective%2F%7E3%2F3yzNwClgfBs%2F COX-2 is an inducible enzyme involved in prostaglandins metabolism that has been associated with cellular resistance to apoptosis both in normal and malignant epithelial cells. Over-expression of... Catch the rest of the story after the break... (Source: The 1x Objective) The 1x Objective blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3052410 Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:46:25 +0100 3052410 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3044824&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F12%2F01%2Fthe-situation-of-negotiation%2F This study demonstrates that social neuroscience may provide a new way of understanding micro-processes in cross-cultural negotiations and conflict resolution. * * * You can download the paper for free here.  For a sample of related Situationist posts, see “Social Neuroscience and the Study of Racial Biases,” “Law & the Brain,” “The Situation of Risk Perceptions – Abstract,”and to review previous Situationist posts on cultural cognition, click here. (Source: The Situationist) The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3044824 Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:01:23 +0100 3044824 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3039858&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F11%2F30%2Fmotivated-judicial-reasoning%2F In her recent book, Law, Politics, and Perception: How Policy Preferences Influence Legal Reasoning (2009), Eileen Braman examines how policy preferences and legal authority interact to influence judicial decision making.  Here’s the book’s abstract. * * * Are judges’ decisions more likely to be based on personal inclinations or legal authority? The answer, Eileen Braman argues, is both. Law, Politics, and Perception brings cognitive psychology to bear on the question of the relative importance of norms of legal reasoning versus decision markers’ policy preferences in legal decision-making. While Braman acknowledges that decision makers’ attitudes—or, more precisely, their preference for policy outcome... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3039858 Mon, 30 Nov 2009 04:01:56 +0100 3039858 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3036985&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F11%2F29%2Fracial-attitudes-in-the-presidential-race%2F From Project Implicit Blog: An article by Project Implicit researchers published this month in Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy reports evidence that both implicit and explicit race attitudes were related to intended vote in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. 1,057 registered voters completed a study conducted at Project Implicit’s research website during the week before the presidential election. The participants completed multiple measures of racial attitudes including self-reported feelings of warmth toward Blacks and Whites, a measure of “symbolic” racism, two implicit measures of racial attitudes – a brief version of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and the Affective Misattribution Procedure (AMP), and reported their intended vote. Analyses suggested that parti... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3036985 Sun, 29 Nov 2009 04:01:50 +0100 3036985 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3035939&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F11%2F28%2Fmeasuring-implicit-attitudes%2F From University of Washington News * * * Study supports validity of test that indicates widespread unconscious bias In the decade since the Implicit Association Test was introduced, its most surprising and controversial finding is its indication that about 70 percent of those who took a version of the test that measures racial attitudes have an unconscious, or implicit, preference for white people compared to blacks. This contrasts with figures generally under 20 percent for self report, or survey, measures of race bias. A new study (pdf here) validates those findings, showing that the Implicit Association Test, a psychological tool, has validity in predicting behavior and, in particular, that it has significantly greater validity than self-reports in the socially sensitive topics of race,... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3035939 Sat, 28 Nov 2009 04:01:17 +0100 3035939 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3033636&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F11%2F27%2Fsituationism-in-the-blogosphere-%25e2%2580%2593-october-2009-part-iii%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of our favorite non-Situationist situationist blogging during October 2009 (they are listed in alphabetical order by source). * * * From Neuronarrative: “When the Powerful Feel Incompetent, the Rest of Us Feel Their Wrath” “[…]It’s no surprise that power and aggression often move along the same track. In particular, the threat of losing power is like striking a match near the aggression gun powder keg.  Studies have shown that the perceived need to protect one’s power kicks ego defenses into high gear, loaded with enough aggression to regret for a lifetime.” Read more . . . From Neuronarrative: “Once You Start Trusting a Source, Beware the Trust Trap” “If you follow a news commentator closely, reading every... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3033636 Fri, 27 Nov 2009 04:01:33 +0100 3033636 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3019085&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F11%2F23%2Fa-mental-budget-for-the-holidays%2F From EurekaAlert: If you feel like you’re in a losing battle with a triple-chocolate cake, a “mental budget” can help, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. “There are some behaviors that consumers try to limit but have trouble doing so,” write authors Parthasarathy Krishnamurthy . . . and Sonja Prokopec . . . . “Even as one aims to curtail consumption of sugars and fat, one ends up consuming the tiramisu or the triple-chocolate cake. Such discrepancies between one’s goals and actual behaviors represent instances of self-control failure.” Overconsumption is a serious issue in the United States. For example, National Institutes of Health statistics show that two-thirds of American adults are overweight, with associated ... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3019085 Mon, 23 Nov 2009 04:01:57 +0100 3019085 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3012451&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F11%2F20%2Fthe-situation-of-emotional-distress-claims%2F Betsy Grey has recently posted her intriguing paper, “Neuroscience and Emotional Harm in Tort Law: Rethinking the American Approach to Free-Standing Emotional Distress Claims” on SSRN.  Here’s the abstract. * * * American tort law traditionally distinguishes between “physical” and “emotional” harm for purposes of liability, with emotional harm treated as a second class citizen. The customary view is that physical injury is more entitled to compensation because it is considered more objectively verifiable and perhaps more important. The current draft of the Restatement of the Law (Third) of Torts maintains this view. Even the name of the Restatement project itself – “Liability for Physical and Emotional Harm” – emphasizes this distinction. Advances... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3012451 Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:01:30 +0100 3012451 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3008171&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F11%2F19%2Faaron-kay-%25e2%2580%259cthe-psychological-power-of-the-status-quo%25e2%2580%259d%2F Situationist Contributor Aaron Kay is an Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Professor Kay’s research has focused on the integration of implicit social-cognitive processes with the study of broad social issues. In his primary line of work, he investigates the myriad ways by which people cope with, adapt to, and rationalize social inequalities. At the moment, this research program addresses questions such as: (1) How do people rationalize and justify their good fortune and bad fortune, others’ good fortune and bad fortune, and the social systems that dictate these outcomes? (2) What are the psychological tools employed in aiding people to cope with the internal conflict produced from participating in social systems that are, in many obje... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3008171 Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:20:31 +0100 3008171 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3003845&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F11%2F18%2Fthe-situation-of-mortgage-defaults%2F This article suggests that most homeowners choose not to strategically default as a result of two emotional forces: 1) the desire to avoid the shame and guilt of foreclosure; and 2) exaggerated anxiety over foreclosure’s perceived consequences. Moreover, these emotional constraints are actively cultivated by the government and other social control agents in order to encourage homeowners to follow social and moral norms related to the honoring of financial obligations – and to ignore market and legal norms under which strategic default might be both viable and the wisest financial decision. Norms governing homeowner behavior stand in sharp contrast to norms governing lenders, who seek to maximize profits or minimize losses irrespective of concerns of morality or social responsibilit... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3003845 Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:01:17 +0100 3003845 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2999617&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F11%2F17%2Fthe-situation-of-the-invisible-hand%2F Yesterday, Paul Rosenberg published an intriguing situationist piece at Open Left about the context and meaning of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand.”   Here are some excerpts. * * * What if Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” argument doesn’t mean what we think it means?  What if it doesn’t mean that everything else but the “free market” can and should be ignored?  What if if Smith actually depended on social and historical context in order to make his argument in the first place? What if it was an argument deeply dependent on what . . . The Situationist blog calls “the situation”? In fact, that’s exactly what happened! Recently, Berkeley economist Brad DeLong posted “Yet Another Note on Adam Smith’s &#8216... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2999617 Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:01:50 +0100 2999617 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2993811&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F11%2F15%2Fsituationism-in-the-blogosphere-%25e2%2580%2593-october-2009-part-ii%2F Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of our favorite non-Situationist situationist blogging during October 2009 (they are listed in alphabetical order by source). * * * From Deliberations: “When They Don’t See What You See” “A recent study highlights what might be the most important thing lawyers and clients miss about how juries will react to their cases.  The same evidence that makes you angry at the other side might make jurors angry at you.” Read more . . . From Everyday Sociology: “Equality in Justice: Cognitive Dissonance and Fame” “Two cases involving the rape of a young girl have been in the news: one involving Roman Polanski’s arrest and the other about Elizabeth Smart’s court testimony. While these cases have the “adult... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2993811 Sun, 15 Nov 2009 04:01:23 +0100 2993811 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2989220&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F11%2F13%2Fthe-situation-of-lawyers-complicity%2F This article seeks to fill that gap. Drawing on research from behavioral and social psychology, it suggests that lawyers’ apparent lapses in judgment may be caused by cognitive biases arising from partisan kinship between lawyer and client. The article uses identity theory to distinguish particular situations in which attorney judgment is likely to be compromised, and it recommends strategies to enhance attorney independence and minimize judgment errors. * * * You can download the article for free here.  For a sample of related Situationist posts, see “Gatekeepers Inside Out – Abstract,” “The Situation of Lawyers and Practicing Law,” “Law, Chicken Sexing, Torture Memo, and Situation Sense,” “The Situation of John Yoo and the Torture Memos,�... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2989220 Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:01:09 +0100 2989220 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2981161&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F11%2F11%2Fthe-toll-of-discrimination-on-black-women%2F From Eureka Alert: African-American women experiencing discrimination no longer feel masters of their own destiny Racial discrimination is a major threat to African American women’s mental health. It undermines their view of themselves as masters of their own life circumstances and makes them less psychologically resilient and more prone to depression. These findings (1) by Dr. Verna Keith, from Florida State University in the US and her colleagues, are published online in Springer’s journal Sex Roles. Dr. Keith and her team used data from the National Survey of American Life: Coping with Stress in the 21st Century to analyze the relationship between perceived discrimination and depressive symptoms among 2,300 African American adult women. They also looked at whether personal ... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2981161 Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:01:24 +0100 2981161 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2977592&cid=t_92652_155_f&fid=38406&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FThe1xObjective%2F%7E3%2FHux5HOhYZPg%2F JD Choate, KA Robstad, CE Sheehan, JS Ross and DM Jones Department of Pathology, Albany Medical College, Albany, NY Background: Bmi-1 protein expression plays a vital role in cell cycle regulation... Catch the rest of the story after the break... (Source: The 1x Objective) The 1x Objective blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2977592 Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:14:17 +0100 2977592 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2977593&cid=t_92652_155_f&fid=38406&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FThe1xObjective%2F%7E3%2FHm0ogccjnDI%2F The lipocalin family is a diverse group of secreted soluble proteins that bind hydrophobic ligands and act as small molecule transporters. Lipocalin-2, also known as neutrophil gelatinase-associated... Catch the rest of the story after the break... (Source: The 1x Objective) The 1x Objective blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2977593 Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:52:11 +0100 2977593 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2974046&cid=t_92652_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F11%2F09%2Fthe-situational-power-of-appearance-and-posture%2F From EurekaAlert: First impressions do matter when it comes to communicating personality through appearance, according to new research by psychologists Laura Naumann of Sonoma State University and Sam Gosling of The University of Texas at Austin. Despite the crucial role of physical appearance in creating first impressions, until now little research has examined the accuracy of personality impressions based on appearance alone. . . . “In an age dominated by social media where personal photographs are ubiquitous, it becomes important to understand the ways personality is communicated via our appearance,” says Naumann. “The appearance one portrays in his or her photographs has important implications for their professional and social life.” In the study, observers view... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2974046 Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:02:27 +0100 2974046