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In This Issue |
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1.Sad
individuals spend more
2.
Money motivates-especially when your colleague
gets less
3.
Poor working memory could lead to children's
under-achievement
4.
Women are more forgiving than men
5.Restricting
kids' video time reduces obesity
6.Hong Kong
leads the world in economic freedom
7.Boys' and Girls'
brains are different
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Sad
individuals spend more
A
new study reveals that people feeling sad spend more
money to acquire the same commodities than those in
neutral emotional state.
Researchers Cynthia Cryder of
Carnegie
Melon
University,
Jennifer Lerner of
Harvard
University,
James Gross of
Stanford
University
and Ronald Dahl of
Pittsburgh
University,
who conducted a research on the impact of emotions o n
decision-making, found that sad individuals and
self-focused individuals tend to spend more.
In the experiment, participants were asked to view
either a sad video clip or a video clip devoid of
emotions. After viewing the video clips, they were
allowed to buy various commodities at different prices.
The researchers found that volunteers who viewed the sad
video clips offered as much as three times more money to
buy the products compared to volunteers who viewed the
neutral video clips. Another fact the researchers found
was that the sad volunteers insisted that the emotional
content of the video clips had not influenced their
spending.
Why sad people spend more money? First sadness and
self-focus cause one to devalue both one’s self esteem
and one’s current possessions. Second this devaluation
increases a person’s willingness to pay more for new
material goods, presumably to enhance self-esteem.
This ‘misery is not
miserly’ effect may extend to domains beyond purchasing
decisions. For example it could cause people to engage
in increased stock trading or to seek new relationships,
without being aware that they are driven by hidden
emotions.
How to avoid being enslaved and manipulated by hidden
emotions? The long term solution is to find ways and
means to raise one’s self-esteem. The instant solution
is to avoid taking any important decision when one is
emotional.
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Money motivates-especially when your
colleague gets less
In
an experiment conducted at the
University
of
Bonn,
researchers wired male volunteers to MRI
(Magnetic
Resonance Imaging) scanners and monitored the activity
in the ventral striatum of the brain, where the reward
centre is located.
The volunteers were
asked to perform certain tasks and for correct answers,
they received financial rewards, ranging from 30 to 120
euros. Each participant was also informed how his
co-player performed and how much reward he received.
Dr.
Bernd Weber, who heads the Neuro Cognition Imaging
Group at the Life & Brain Institute was observing the
scanners and found that the reward centre in the brain
was activated whenever the volunteer got the correct
answer. He found that the activation was at its highest
when a player got the answer correct, while his
co-player got it wrong.
The researchers also observed that if the player
received the same financial reward there was relatively
moderate activation in the reward centre. But if one
player received 120 euros and his co-player received
only 60 euros, the activity was much stronger for
player one. Whereas for players two, the activation in
the reward centre actually decreased when he learnt that
his co-player got 120 euros whereas he got only 60
euros.
It is already known that the absolute size of the reward
has an impact on the reward centre of the brain. “The
interesting point to emerge from our study is that the
relative size of one’s earnings plays such a major
role,” according to Dr. Armin Falk, economic professor
at The Bonn University.
“Men appear to draw a great deal of their motivation
from competition”, says Dr. Bernd Weber. The researchers
now want to find out if that goes for women too.
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Poor
working memory could lead to children's
under-achievement
Children’s under-achievement could be due to poor
working memory rather than low intelligence according to
researchers at
Durham
University,
who surveyed more than three thousand children.
The researchers observed that poor working memory is
rarely identified by teachers. Children with poor
working memory are often described as inattentive or as
having low intelligence. Without appropriate
intervention, it could affect the children’s long-term
academic success.
Working memory is the ability to hold information in
your head and manipulate it mentally. “Working memory is
a bit like a mental jotting pad and how good this is in
someone will either ease their path to learning or
seriously prevent them from learning,” explains Dr.Tracy
Alloway from Durban University’s School of Education.
When do we use working memory in everyday life,
Multiplying together two numbers such as 43 and 27,
spoken to you by another person, without being able to
use a pen and paper or calculator.
Remembering a new telephone number, PIN number, web
address or vehicle registration number.
Following spoken directions such as go straight over
at the roundabout take the second left and the
building is on the right opposite the church.
Remembering the unfamiliar foreign name of a person
who has just been introduced to you for long enough to
enable you to introduce them to someone else.
Measuring and combining
the correct amounts of ingredients
(rub in 50gm of
margarine and 100gm of flour and then add 75gm of
sugar)
when you have just read the recipe but are no
longer looking at the page.
“We
believe, the only way children with poor working memory
can go onto achieving success is by teaching them how to
learn”, says Alloway. |
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Women are
more forgiving than men |
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Men
have a harder time forgiving than women do, according to
Julie Juola Exline, a psychologist at the
Case
Western Reserve
University.
But when men were made to realize, that they could have
committed similar offences, the gender gap closed and
they became less vengeful.
Exline conducted seven studies with more than 1400
volunteers. She found that men tend to be more vengeful
than women. Women having been taught from an early age
to be more empathetic, lean towards relationship
building and do not emphasize the vengeful side of
justice to the degree that men do.
When asked to recall offences they had committed
personally, men became less vengeful toward people who
had offended them. Women reflecting on personal offences
and beginning at a lower baseline for vegence, exhibited
no differences in levels of vengeance. When women had to
recall a similar offence in relation to the other’s
offence, women felt guilty and tended to magnify the
other’s offence.
The research found that people of both genders are more
forgiving when they see themselves as capable of
committing a similar offence. “Offences are easier to
forgive to the extent that they seem small and
understandable and when we see ourselves as similar or
close to the offender,” says Exline.
There’s no doubt that forgiveness can be a powerful
means to healing, but it does not come naturally for
both sexes.
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Restricting kids' video time
reduces obesity
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“Watching
television and playing computer games can lead to
obesity by reducing the amount of time that
children are physically active or by increasing
the amount of food they consume as they are
engaged in these sedentary behaviour,” says
Leonard Epstein,
University of
Buffalo’s
Distinguished Professor in the department of
Pediatrics, Health Behaviour and Social &
Preventive medicine.
The
researchers randomly assigned the participating
children either to a control group or
to an intervention
group. Each family was given a device called ‘TV
allowance’. The devices had a personal individual
code for activation. Devices in the intervention
group had a set weekly time limit which was
reduced by 10 percent per week until viewing time
was reduced by 50 percent. The control group’s
device did not have this feature. Body mass index
(BMI), calarie intake and physical activity were
monitored every six months.
At the end of the 2-year study , the researchers
found that by using the TV allowance device, that
automatically restricted the television & video
viewing time, parents in the intervention group
reduced their children’s video time by an average
of 17.5 hours a week and lowered their body mass
index significantly.
In contrast, children in the control group, whose
video time was monitored, but not restricted,
reduced their viewing time by only 5 hours a week.
Using this single and inexpensive device(costs
approximately one hundred dollars), magnified
across the population, may produce important
reductions in obesity and obesity-related health
problems, the study points out.
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Hong Kong leads the world in
economic freedom
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Hong
Kong continues to be the world’s freest economy,
according to the 2008 ‘Index of economic Freedom’
published annually by the Wall Street Journal.
It’s the 14th straight year that
Hong Kong
has earned the number one ranking.
To compile the index, the editors measured 157
countries across 10 specific factors of economic
freedom. The higher the score, the lower the level
of government interference. All countries were
graded on a scale of 0 to 100.
The 10 freedoms measured are:1) Business freedom
2) Trade freedom 3) Fiscal freedom 4) Government
freedom 5) Monetary freedom 6) Investment freedom
7) Financial freedom 8) Property freedom 9)
Freedom from corruption and 10) Labour freedom
Of the 157 countries ranked, only seven are
classified as free
(a score of 80 plus). They are:
1)
Hong Kong (90.3)
2)
Singapore
(87.4)
3)
Ireland
(82.4)
4)
Australia
(82)
5)
United States
(80.6)
6)
New Zealand
(80.2)
7)
Canada
(80.2)
Another 23 countries are classified as mostly-free (scoring
from 70 to 70.9). 103 countries are classified as
either moderately-free (scoring 60 to 60.9) or
mostly unfree (50 to 50.9). Some 24 countries have
repressed economies, with a score of less than 50.
Countries which are at the bottom of the list are
:
157.
North Korea
(3)
156.
Cuba
(27.5)
155.
Zimbabwe
(29.8)
154.
Libya
(38.7)
153.
Myanmar
(39.5)
152.
Turkmenistan
(43.4)
151.
Iran
(44).
India scored 54.2 and ranks 115, whereas china
scored 52.8 and ranks 126.
United Arab Emirates
scored 62.8 and ranks 63 in the list.
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Boys' and Girls' Brains are different
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For the first time, researchers from
Northwestern
University,
have unambiguously established that areas of the
brain associated with language, work harder in
girls than in boys during language tasks, and that
boys and girls rely on different parts of
the brain
when performing these tasks.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI), the researchers measured brain activity in
boys and girls aged 9 to 15 as they performed
spelling and writing language tasks. The tasks
were delivered in two sensory modalities – visual
and auditory. When visually presented, the
children read certain words without hearing them.
When presented in the auditory mode, they heard
words aloud but did not see them.
The researchers found that language processing is
more sensory in boys and more abstract in girls.
“Our findings could have major implications for
teaching children and even provide support for
advocates of single sex classroom,” said Douglas D
Burman, research associate at
Northwestern
University.
“If this pattern is extended to testing methods,
boys might be more effectively evaluated via oral
tests on knowledge gained from lectures and via
written tests on knowledge gained by reading. For
girls, these different testing methods would
appear unnecessary,” said Burman.
This new finding could explain the still-
unresolved question why women often provide more
context and abstract representation than men. Ask
a woman for directions and you may hear something
like, “Go straight and take a U turn: On your
right, you’ll find a restaurant and on your left
you’ll find a café; Take the first right and go
straight. Don’t turn anywhere; It’s the last
building at the end of the road.” Such information
–laden directions may be helpful for women because
all information is relevant to the abstract
concept of where to turn and the location of the
building; however men may require only one cue and
be distracted by additional information.
Men and women are different not only biologically
but neurologically as well.
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