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Lawrence Hrubes

Walter Mischel, The Marshallow Test, and Self-Control - The New Yorker - 1 views

www.newyorker.com/...hologist-studying-self-control

TOK psychology psychiatry self-control gratification delay social studies human sciences

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 14 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Mischel’s story isn’t surprising—nicotine is addictive, and quitting is difficult—except for one thing: Mischel is the creator of the marshmallow test, one of the most famous experiments in the history of psychology, which is often cited as evidence of the importance of self-control. In the original test, which was administered at the Bing Nursery School, at Stanford, in the nineteen-sixties, Mischel’s team would present a child with a treat (marshmallows were just one option) and tell her that she could either eat the one treat immediately or wait alone in the room for several minutes until the researcher returned, at which point she could have two treats. The promised treats were always visible and the child knew that all she had to do to stop the agonizing wait was ring a bell to call the experimenter back—although in that case, she wouldn’t get the second treat. The longer a child delayed gratification, Mischel found—that is, the longer she was able to wait—the better she would fare later in life at numerous measures of what we now call executive function. She would perform better academically, earn more money, and be healthier and happier. She would also be more likely to avoid a number of negative outcomes, including jail time, obesity, and drug use.
  • It was not until one day in the late nineteen-sixties, when he saw a man with metastasized lung cancer in the halls of Stanford’s medical school—chest exposed, head shaved, little green “x” marks all over his body, marking the points where radiation would go—that Mischel realized he was fooling himself. Finally, something clicked. From then on, each time he wanted a cigarette (approximately every three minutes, by his count) he would create a picture in his mind of the man in the hallway. As he described it to me, “I changed the objective value of the cigarette. It went from something I craved to something disgusting.” He hasn’t had a smoke since.
  • Lawrence Hrubes on 14 Feb 15
     
    "Mischel, who is now eighty-four years old, has just published his first popular book, "The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control." It is part memoir, part scientific analysis, and part self-help guide. In the book, he describes the original impetus for the marshmallow study. At the time, his daughters, Judith, Rebecca, and Linda, were three, four, and five years old, respectively. "I began to see this fascinating phenomenon where they morphed from being highly impulsive, immediate creatures who couldn't delay anything," he told me. "There were these amazingly rapid changes-everything around them was the same, but something inside them had changed. I realized I didn't have a clue what was going on in their heads." He wondered what was it that had enabled them to go from deciding that they wanted to wait to actually being able to do so. He found the answer among their classmates at the Bing preschool."
Lawrence Hrubes

Why Do People Persist in Believing Things That Just Aren't True? : The New Yorker - 1 views

www.newyorker.com/...ings-that-just-arent-true.html

belief false beliefs science psychology identity errors TOK

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 22 May 14 - No Cached
  • Last month, Brendan Nyhan, a professor of political science at Dartmouth, published the results of a study that he and a team of pediatricians and political scientists had been working on for three years. They had followed a group of almost two thousand parents, all of whom had at least one child under the age of seventeen, to test a simple relationship: Could various pro-vaccination campaigns change parental attitudes toward vaccines? Each household received one of four messages: a leaflet from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stating that there had been no evidence linking the measles, mumps, and rubella (M.M.R.) vaccine and autism; a leaflet from the Vaccine Information Statement on the dangers of the diseases that the M.M.R. vaccine prevents; photographs of children who had suffered from the diseases; and a dramatic story from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about an infant who almost died of measles. A control group did not receive any information at all. The goal was to test whether facts, science, emotions, or stories could make people change their minds. The result was dramatic: a whole lot of nothing. None of the interventions worked.
  • Until recently, attempts to correct false beliefs haven’t had much success. Stephan Lewandowsky, a psychologist at the University of Bristol whose research into misinformation began around the same time as Nyhan’s, conducted a review of misperception literature through 2012. He found much speculation, but, apart from his own work and the studies that Nyhan was conducting, there was little empirical research. In the past few years, Nyhan has tried to address this gap by using real-life scenarios and news in his studies: the controversy surrounding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the questioning of Obama’s birth certificate, and anti-G.M.O. activism. Traditional work in this area has focussed on fictional stories told in laboratory settings, but Nyhan believes that looking at real debates is the best way to learn how persistently incorrect views of the world can be corrected.
  • One thing he learned early on is that not all errors are created equal. Not all false information goes on to become a false belief—that is, a more lasting state of incorrect knowledge—and not all false beliefs are difficult to correct. Take astronomy. If someone asked you to explain the relationship between the Earth and the sun, you might say something wrong: perhaps that the sun rotates around the Earth, rising in the east and setting in the west. A friend who understands astronomy may correct you. It’s no big deal; you simply change your belief. But imagine living in the time of Galileo, when understandings of the Earth-sun relationship were completely different, and when that view was tied closely to ideas of the nature of the world, the self, and religion. What would happen if Galileo tried to correct your belief? The process isn’t nearly as simple. The crucial difference between then and now, of course, is the importance of the misperception. When there’s no immediate threat to our understanding of the world, we change our beliefs. It’s when that change contradicts something we’ve long held as important that problems occur.
Lawrence Hrubes

Neuroscience and Moral Responsibility - The New York Times - 2 views

www.nytimes.com/...-and-moral-responsibility.html

ethics science neuroscience neurology brain free will teens morality moral knowledge

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 06 Apr 18 - No Cached
  • ARE you responsible for your behavior if your brain “made you do it”?Often we think not. For example, research now suggests that the brain’s frontal lobes, which are crucial for self-control, are not yet mature in adolescents. This finding has helped shape attitudes about whether young people are fully responsible for their actions. In 2005, when the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty for juveniles was unconstitutional, its decision explicitly took into consideration that “parts of the brain involved in behavior control continue to mature through late adolescence.”
Lawrence Hrubes

Germanwings 9525, Technology, and the Question of Trust - The New Yorker - 2 views

www.newyorker.com/...logy-and-the-question-of-trust

technology decision making emotion trust

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 31 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • hortly before the dreadful crash of Germanwings Flight 9525, I happened to be reading part of “The Second Machine Age,” a book by two academics at M.I.T., Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, about the coming automation of many professions previously thought of as impervious to technological change, such as those of drivers, doctors, market researchers, and soldiers. With the advances being made in robotics, data analysis, and artificial intelligence, Brynjolfsson and McAfee argue, we are on the cusp of a third industrial revolution.
  • The U.S. military appears to be moving in the direction of eliminating pilots, albeit tentatively. The Pentagon and the C.I.A. have long operated unmanned drones, including the Predator, which are used for reconnaissance and bombing missions. In 2013, the U.S Air Force successfully tested the QF-16 fighter-bomber, which is practically identical to the F-16, except that it doesn’t have a pilot onboard. The plane is flown remotely. Earlier this year, Boeing, the manufacturer of the QF-16, delivered the first of what will be more than a hundred QF-16s to the Air Force. Initially, the planes will be used as flying targets for F-16 pilots to engage during training missions. But at least some military observers expect the QF-16 to end up being used in attack missions.
  • Until now, most executives in the airline industry have assumed that few people would be willing to book themselves and their families on unmanned flights—and they haven’t seriously considered turning commercial aircraft into drones or self-operating vehicles. By placing experienced fliers in the cockpit, the airlines signal to potential customers that their safety is of paramount importance—and not only because the crew members are skilled; their safety is at stake, too. In the language of game theory, this makes the aircraft’s commitment to safety more credible. Without a human flight crew, how could airlines send the same signal?
markfrankel18

The Morality of Robotic War - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...e-morality-of-robotic-war.html

TOK technology ethics

shared by markfrankel18 on 29 May 15 - No Cached
  • Humans must ultimately bear moral responsibility and face the horror of war squarely — not outsource it to machines. And people must be able to remain in control of a weapon and manage its behavior. We cannot have weapons that are intrinsically uncontrollable or wildly unpredictable. After you fire a bullet, you can’t take it back, but its trajectory is predictable. The key is to ensure that future weapons that behave like self-steering bullets do not run amok.
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