Activated brain areas included the insula and amygdala, which are associated with subjective “gut feelings”, disgust, reaction to norm violations, threat detection, and evaluation of trustworthiness.
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Scientific Encounters
The trolley problem is a favorite of researchers studying moral decision-making. Many consider it a good test of individual differences in approaches to moral dilemmas, basically variations on Hot versus Cold decision-making: emotional versus cognitive, empathetic versus detached, aversion to directly causing personal harm versus impartial concern for the greater good.
Whenever we seek goals under conditions of uncertainty – not knowing the best way forward, perhaps not being sure what success even looks like – we are faced with explore/exploit trade-offs as we guess our way to what we think we want.
They all agree that some people are insufficiently skeptical, fail to appreciate their own fallibility, and/or are way too swayed by some version of authority (e.g., the consensus, unorthodox thinkers of one’s own choosing, this particular subset of research, gut feeling…).
In none of these articles were there specific references or links to academic papers. Rather, the authors use markers of scientific authority to present their claims as “facts”.
Harming others directly through hands-on action is harder on our psyches than causing harm indirectly, either through inaction or action at a remove (e.g., pulling a switch, pressing a button).
Optimism undermines success when it’s based on magical thinking. We engage in magical thinking when we believe happy endings are the result of a will-to-success. Voila! It will happen because I Can Do It.
Using practice tests as a teaching tool has been criticized for emphasizing memorization over reasoning and for being narrowly focused on knowledge goals rather than the learning process. No doubt practice tests can be misused, overused, or poorly designed. But they are also one of the most effective ways to reinforce knowledge and improve our ability to think about that knowledge.
In a variation on the “Wason selection task”, students in a research study were asked to test the rule “if a card has D on one side, it has a 3 on the other”. They were then shown four cards, which had either a letter (D or F) or a number (3 or 7) on them, and were asked which cards they would turn over to validate the rule. The correct answer was ...
In their analysis of survey responses regarding proposed federal policies, Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page compare the policy preferences of “average citizens” versus “economic elites.
In their paper Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens (2014), Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page analyze survey data on public support for proposed federal policies.
“Good research is cautious about drawing conclusions, careful to identify uncertainties and avoids exaggerated claims. It demands multiple types of evidence to reach a conclusion. It does not assume that association (things occur together) proves causation (one thing causes another). Bad research often contains jumps in logic, spurious arguments, and non-sequiturs (‘it does not follow’).” Todd Litman
“What is the core, immutable quality of science? It's not formal publication, it's not peer review, it's not properly citing sources. It's not "the scientific method" (whatever that means). It's not replicability. It's not even Popperian falsificationism... Underlying all those things is something more fundamental. Humility.”
Move your right foot in a clockwise circle. Now move your right hand clockwise on the table at the same time your right foot is moving clockwise…. Pretty easy....
Oceans are my biggest worry. Covering 70% of the earth’s surface, oceans absorb a huge amount of CO2. A few chemical processes later and we have ocean acidification, scourge of coral reefs and who knows what else. We’re not sure what else, but such quick change will surely challenge the capacity of sea life to adapt. Evolution’s not used to working on such short time scales.
Here I am thinking about the type of beliefs much discussed in clinical psychology, such as the following “irrational” beliefs identified by Albert Ellis: It is a dire necessity for adult humans to be loved or approved by virtually every significant other person in their community. One absolutely must be competent, adequate and achieving in all important respects or else one is an inadequate, worthless person....
... anxiety and fear are more responses to the absence of comforting beliefs than the presence of uncomfortable beliefs.
What lets fear in is the uncertainty, not the belief. Uncertainty without the compensation of belief - that ultimately it will work out, that there is a secure harbor, despite the present confusion – creates a vacuum that is filled by alarm.
There is a time to give into temptations and a time to resist them. Whenever there’s a tug-of-war among competing goals, and you have to override one behavior or goal in favor of another, self-regulation is involved. Enjoying what the moment has to offer is a worthy goal. When to honor that goal is the question.
Self-regulation is a internal goal management process where we override or preempt one goal in favor of another. By ‘goal’ I mean an outcome and the forces marshaled by that outcome: behaviors, emotions, and attention. Don’t do that, calm down, look the other way, think of something else.