Group items tagged

"Specifically, while people are less inclined to deceive for self-gain those individuals they perceive as warm, they also tend to lie more to highly competent others. Furthermore, the perceived warmth and competence modulated the general tendency to reduce deceptive behaviour when there was a risk of disclosure compared to when the lying was anonymous, highlighting the importance of these judgements in social evaluation processes. Together, our results demonstrate that the emotional costs and personal moral standards that inhibit engagement in deceptive behaviour are not stable but rather malleable according to the target and the consequences of the deception."

"there is a more complex, though no less disturbing, process at play when we objectify not only girls and women, but boys and men as well. In contrast to popular belief, when we 'objectify' we don't treat people as objects with no intelligence or emotions of their own. Several notable psychologists are beginning to argue that, when we objectify someone, we don't assume that they have less mind overall, but that they have a different type of mind."

"David Brooks does a good job explaining why many people--myself included--find Pete Buttigieg the most compelling figure in the race for president right now. Mayor Pete's views are to the left of mine, but at some point, competence is more important than ideology."

"But a new study from Robert Clifford, an economist at the Boston Fed, and Daniel Shoag, an assistant professor at Harvard's Kennedy School, finds that when employers are prohibited from looking into people's financial history, something perverse happens: African-Americans become more likely to be unemployed relative to others. …What's surprising is how that redistribution happened. In states that passed credit-check bans, it  became easier for people with bad credit histories to compete for employment. But disproportionately, they seem to have elbowed aside black job-seekers."

Workers across the socioeconomic spectrum, from hotel housekeepers to surgeons, have stories about toiling 12- to 16-hour days (often without overtime pay) and experiencing anxiety attacks and exhaustion. Public health experts have begun talking about stress as an epidemic. The people who can compete and succeed in this culture are an ever-narrower slice of American society: largely young people who are healthy, and wealthy enough not to have to care for family members. An individual company can of course favor these individuals, as health insurers once did, and then pass them off to other businesses when they become parents or need to tend to their own parents. But this model of winning at all costs reinforces a distinctive American pathology of not making room for caregiving. The result: We hemorrhage talent and hollow out our society.

The problem with corruption is often not so much the amount of money that changes hands corruptly, but that inexperienced contractors may win business at the expense of capable ones. They may also be allowed to produce sub-standard work, cut back on health and safety and delay completion. This is particularly prevalent in the construction industry: road surfaces break up prematurely, bridges collapse and lives are lost. These issues often occur when contractors fraudulently take advantage of inadequate contracts management. Were such problems to occur in Andhra Pradesh, it would not only be an enormous setback to construction plans, but would do collateral damage to Singapore's reputation. Success will therefore require excellent project and programme management, contracting and contracts management and a resilient anti-fraud and corruption plan. The procurement and contracting team must be independent from the operational teams, and have its own reporting lines both to the programme manager and a very competent board. A strong, independent audit team is a must. This project does carry some risks for Singapore. However, in undertaking the project, Singapore shows a focus and vision which is arguably unmatched in developed countries. It has built a powerful economy despite having virtually no natural resources. Successful delivery of such a major project in India should further strengthen its brand and reputation as a global business leader.

As advocates of science-based thinking, we need to promote the fact that women are just as logical and capable thinkers and doers as men, not just because it's true, but because it's our only defence against the kind of mysticism which preys on the insecurities of women and reinforces stereotypes. What the myth of women's intuition is really telling us is that women need to elevate themselves to the status of deities just to compete with the abilities of mortal men.

Women who post loads of photos of themselves on their sites are conveying some strong personal characteristics, according to new research. These women are more likely to base their self-worth on appearance and use social networking to compete for attention.

Science education was regarded as excellent preparation for motherhood, social work, and teaching.

"The "I don't want to debate" line spoke to a growing trend worrying some observers of higher education, and beyond just Yale: in the balance between sensitivity versus critical thinking and academic freedom, students are increasingly emphasizing the former over the latter. On college campuses around the country, students, particularly students of color, are forcing white students and administrators to confront the pernicious effects of racial bias. At the same time, students are demanding that colleges be more sensitive to their mental health and well-being. They're feeling empowered to make requests that professors sometimes feel interfere with their long-cherished right to research freely and to speak their mind in public. The question facing campuses, then, is how to weigh those issues of sensitivity and mental health against sometimes-competing values of free speech and academic freedom."

" "Organisations want to hire competent candidates but individuals have their own agenda. "When employing someone, they do not want the newcomer to do better than them and show them up.""

This article investigates the effects of economic inequality on legislative agendas. It considers two competing hypotheses: (1) that policymakers will act to counter rising inequality by renewing their focus on redistributive social policies, and (2) that rising inequality makes legislative agendas especially vulnerable to the influence of economic elites, and that these elites will attempt to keep redistributive social policies off the agenda. Empirical tests, which are designed to arbitrate between these hypotheses, use data on public laws and parliamentary bills introduced in the legislatures of nine European countries between 1941 and 2014. The evidence is supportive of the second hypothesis: as inequality becomes more acute, European legislative agendas become systematically less diverse and this narrowing of attention is driven by a migration away from social safety-net issues toward issues relating to law enforcement, immigration, and national defense.

"Put (too) simply the only men who are good enough to get into university are men who are good at STEM. Women are good enough to get into non-STEM and STEM fields. Thus, among university students, women dominate in the non-STEM fields and men survive in the STEM fields. (The former is mathematically certain while the latter is true only given current absolute numbers of male students. If fewer men went to college, women would dominate both fields). I don't know whether this story will hold up but one attractive feature, as a theory, is that it is consistent with the worrying exit from the labor market of men at the bottom. If we accept these results, the gender gap industry is focused on the wrong thing. The real gender gap is that men are having trouble competing everywhere except in STEM."

"According to a comprehensive new report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, "Groups comparable to … immigrants in terms of their skill may experience a wage reduction as a result of immigration-induced increases in labor supply." But academics sometimes de-emphasize this wage reduction because, like liberal journalists and politicians, they face pressures to support immigration. Many of the immigration scholars regularly cited in the press have worked for, or received funding from, pro-immigration businesses and associations. Consider, for instance, Giovanni Peri, an economist at UC Davis whose name pops up a lot in liberal commentary on the virtues of immigration. A 2015 New York Times Magazine essay titled "Debunking the Myth of the Job-Stealing Immigrant" declared that Peri, whom it called the "leading scholar" on how nations respond to immigration, had "shown that immigrants tend to complement-rather than compete against-the existing work force." Peri is indeed a respected scholar. But Microsoft has funded some of his research into high-skilled immigration. And New American Economy paid to help him turn his research into a 2014 policy paper decrying limitations on the H-1B visa program. Such grants are more likely the result of his scholarship than their cause. Still, the prevalence of corporate funding can subtly influence which questions economists ask, and which ones they don't. (Peri says grants like those from Microsoft and New American Economy are neither large nor crucial to his work, and that "they don't determine … the direction of my academic research.") "

"My fear is that in reserving an election for the Malays, we have unintentionally ended up reinforcing stereotypes instead. Which is why a Malay friend of mine lamented that should Madam Halimah win, her star will not shine as bright because there will always be many with the sentiment that if she was "so good, she would win an open election".  A young non-Malay professional I met at a Hari Raya gathering at my friend's place over the weekend also told me frankly that, in his view, the election was not meritocratic. As much as he believes that Madam Halimah is a great candidate, he added dryly that a reserved election feeds into the stereotype of Malays just not being good enough. I don't think this is an isolated view. After all, a Malay candidate will not have to compete with 85 per cent of Singaporeans in his or her bid for the Presidency even if he or she has met the  minimum - albeit high - criteria for qualification.  So it's not the most meritorious person who gets the job."

The real reasons for conflict are a lot harder to raise - and resolve - because they are likely to be complex, nuanced, and politically sensitive. For example, people's interests may truly be opposed; roles and levels of authority may not be correctly defined or delineated; there may be real incentives to compete rather than to collaborate; and there may be little to no accountability or transparency about what people do or say. When two coworkers create a safe and imaginary set of explanations for their conflict ("My coworker is a micromanager," or "My coworker doesn't care whether errors are corrected"), neither of them has to challenge or incur the wrath of others in the organization

"According to models of objectification, viewing someone as a body induces de-mentalization, stripping away their psychological traits. Here evidence is presented for an alternative account, where a body focus does not diminish the attribution of all mental capacities but, instead, leads perceivers to infer a different kind of mind. Drawing on the distinction in mind perception between agency and experience, it is found that focusing on someone's body reduces perceptions of agency (self-control and action) but increases perceptions of experience (emotion and sensation). These effects were found when comparing targets represented by both revealing versus nonrevealing pictures (Experiments 1, 3, and 4) or by simply directing attention toward physical characteristics (Experiment 2). The effect of a body focus on mind perception also influenced moral intuitions, with those represented as a body seen to be less morally responsible (i.e., lesser moral agents) but more sensitive to harm (i.e., greater moral patients; Experiments 5 and 6). These effects suggest that a body focus does not cause objectification per se but, instead, leads to a redistribution of perceived mind. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)"

How the sex bias prevails SHANKAR VEDANTAM May 15, 2010