So there’s this experiment where researchers take a bunch of preschoolers and give them a marshmallow and they say, “ok, you can eat this now, or you can wait thirty minutes and then we’ll give you two marshmallows.”
And they leave them alone with hidden cameras and watch the struggle of willpower and it’s supposed to say something about delayed gratification.
And this thing gets used to explain why some people are better with money than others, or make various other better life choices. The Aesop here is if you can delay your satisfaction, you’ll get ahead.
But here’s a proposed version of that experiment that’s more realistic.
Give the kid the marshmallow and explain it all as above. Then come back 30 minutes later and say, “Sorry, actually we ran out of marshmallows, so even though you didn’t eat yours, you’re not getting a second one. Other kids got two, but you don’t. Also, every kid with fewer than two marshmallows has to give back their original marshmallow. Sorry we didn’t tell you that earlier now hand it over.”
Then call them back for a repeat experiment where you give them the same offer. See how many kids scarf that marshmallow down in two seconds flat because like hell they’ll trust you again.
If it’s the experiment I’m thinking of they did run the experiment again, and this time did take into account something they didn’t before: the socio-economic level of the children involved and if there had been broken promises made before to them. Children from lower socio-economic circumstances who had been let down in the past were far more likely to eat the marshmallow the first time around. The experimenters then showed the kids they had the two marshmallows to give them and let them out.
Then comes the fun part: they ran the experiment again.
This time, those kids who ate the marshmallow before waited. Without any further prompting than keeping their word, the scientists destroyed the notion that children in poverty are more prone to poor impulse control or are more likely to scarf down sugar than rich kids.
Oh now that is interesting! I’d never heard that follow-up before.
When I first learned about this case study in college, something about it felt incomplete, but I could never really put my finger on it. It seemed overly simplistic, but I couldn’t see the missing piece because in was in one of my cognitive blind spots.
Knowing about this follow up is incredibly valuable and insightful!
And this is why it’s vital for human beings to check our assumptions and always be on the lookout for cognitive blind spots. Because even one missing variable can mean the difference between transformative insight and generations of deeply embedded misconceptions.
This is also why it’s important for the scientific community to actively seek out scientists with diverse backgrounds and perspectives. It’s not about arbitrary “diversity quotas,” it’s about pursuing a diversity of insight.
:^)
Source?
I have a source, and not only does it key on the idea of the kids being more able to wait if they know the adults will be likely to keep their promises, but it also compares the waiting times of kids from Germany to kids from Cameroon, and found that the Cameroonian kids (unlike the German kids) almost all had absolutely no problems with the test, because they were raised in a completely differently way–a way that was based on their parents anticipating the children’s needs, so the kids already knew they adults would keep their promises and so the kids had no need to be upset (the report states that “being upset” is strongly discouraged in their culture) https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/07/03/534743719/want-to-teach-your-kids-self-control-ask-a-cameroonian-farmer SO YES no matter how you look at it, it’s really a test of the children’s parents, not the children.
Your professor will not be happy with you if he says the Stanford Prison Experiment shows human nature and you say it shows the nature of white middle class college-aged boys.
Like he will not be happy at all.
For real though. That experiment. Scary shit.
This reminds me of a discussion that I read once which said Lord of the Flies would have turned out a hell of a lot differently if it was a private school of young girls (who are expected to be responsible and selfless instead), or a public school where the children weren’t all from an inherently entitled, emotionally stunted social class (studies have shown that people in lower socioeconomic classes show more compassion for others).
Or that the same premise with children raised in a different culture than the toxic and opressive British Empire and it’s emphasis on social hierarchy and personal wealth and status.
And that what we perceive as the unchangable truth deep inside humanity because of things like Lord of the Flies and the Stanford Prison Experiment, is just the base truths about what happens when you remove any accountabilty controlling one social group with an overwhelming sense of entitlement and an inability to feel compassion.
I will always reblog this.
I just wanna say that the Lord of the Flies was explicitly written about high-class private school boys to make this exact point. Golding wrote Lord of the Flies partially to refute an earlier novel about this same subject: The Coral Island by
R.M. Ballantyne. Golding thought it was absolutely absurd that a bunch of privileged little shits would set up some sort of utopia, so his book shows them NOT doing that.
This is also generally true about most psychological experiments.
There’s an experiment called “The Ultimatum Game”. It goes something like this.
Subject A is given an amount of money (Say, $100).
Subject A must offer Subject B some percentage of that money.
If Subject B accepts Subject A’s offer, both get the agreed upon amount of money. If Subject B refuses, no one gets any money.
The most common result was believed to be that people favored 50/50 splits. Anything too low was rejected; people wanted fairness. This was believed to be universal.
And then a researcher went to Peru to do the experiment with members of the indigenous Machiguenga population, and was baffled to find that the results were totally different.
Because, to the Machiguenga, refusing any amount of free money (even an unfair amount) was considered crazy.
So the researcher took his work on the road (to 14 other ‘small scale’ societies and tribes) , and to his shock found the results varied wildly depending on where the test was done.
In fact, the “universal” result? Was an outlier.
And that’s the problem. 96% percent of test subjects for psychological research come from 12% of the population. Stuff that we consider to be universal facts of human nature… even things like optical illusions, just… aren’t.
You can read an article about it here. But the crux of it is that psychology is plagued with confirmation bias, and people are shaped more by their environment than we realize.
Just a btw of your professor tried to say the Stanford Prison experiment was about human nature, they’re a bad professor. Every single instance I’ve see of in in my textbooks over the last two years have had a disclaimer about the bias.
How to hack any hospital computer (L337 version for advanced security systems)
-Use the password taped to the back of the monitor
As a computer guy: This is what happens when you have too much security. It reaches a tipping point and then suddenly you have none.
Security at the cost of convenience comes at the cost of security.
This is true of so many things in healthcare. Example: our software is designed to automatically alert the doctor if a patient’s vital signs are critically out of range. If someone has a blood pressure of 200/130, the doc gets a pop-up box that they have to acknowledge before doing anything else. It makes sense, in our setting.
But then some mega-genius upstairs realized something: the system was only alerting for critical vital signs, but not for all vital signs that could possibly be bad. Like, yeah, 200/130 is potentially life-threatening, but 130/90 is above ideal and can have negative effects on health. Should the doctors be allowed to just ignore something that could negatively affect a patient’s health? Heavens no!
So now the system generates a pop-up for any vital signs that are even slightly abnormal. A pressure of 120/80 (once considered textbook normal, now considered slightly high) will create the pop-up. We have increased our vigilance!
Well, no, what we’ve actually done is train doctors to click through a constant bombardment of pop-ups without looking. We’ve destroyed their vigilance and made it much easier for them to accidentally skim past life-threatening vital signs.
But you can’t tell that to management, because you’d have to confess that you are a flawed human with limited attention resources. They’d tell you “well, all the other doctors take every abnormal vital sign seriously, it sounds like you’re being negligent.” And if you’re smart, you back down before you start telling the big boss all about your habit of ignoring critical safety alerts.
The end result is exactly the same as if we had no alerts at all, except with more annoying clicking.
Condition your teacher to get the fuck out of the class
Think about this in the context of performing feminity. So many women deny that they have been influenced to shave, wear makeup, wear heels, etc and claim they do it for themselves. But when you are receiving compliments and are getting treated better when you do those things, you are definitely being influenced.
Same with Diet Culture. You claim to do it for yourself but you get treated better then thinner you are – fat people are treated much better if they explain that they are losing weight or dieting.
Another weird and frustrating phenomenon when you get sucked into an argument with conservative types (something I usually try to avoid bothering with anymore) is that there’s this very narrow set of people they’re convinced are key figures, even “leaders” on any given topic. Talk about climate change and they bring up Al Gore. Talk about women’s rights and they bring up Anita Sarkeesian.
To this day I have NO IDEA what any of those people have ever said on those topics, and in most cases, I never even heard of them outside of conservative complaints and memes. I would never know the name Anita Sarkeesian if she wasn’t one random blogger out of thousands that an obscure niche of people went positively ballistic over. I’ve never heard of anyone accepting the existence of global warming just because non-scientist Al Gore said to.
If I tell them this they never believe it. They’re completely convinced that the beliefs they hate actually revolve around some random youtubers or B-list politicians they randomly elevated into their own bugbears and the idea that the people they fight hardest against actually have barely any influence or fame outside their own subculture seems almost impossible for them to accept.
George Soros.
I always see people saying George Soros pays people like me to protest (I wish), or buses people to vote on battleground states, some way or another he has us under our thrall.
I don’t even know who the fuck George Soros IS
I don’t even feel bothered to Google him and find out- he’s utterly irrelevant to my life. But apparently all liberals are on his payroll somehow.
I, too, never heard of George Soros before just recently.
They could make up absolutely any name in these arguments and it would have just as much meaning to me. “You’re only pro-vaccine because you’re shilling for Jiminy Ferpendoodle!!!”
I’ve heard this referred to as the central fallacy of the authoritarian mindset: It’s not that authoritarians don’t care about facts, it’s that facts aren’t real until they are confirmed by an Authority. Of course no liberal believed in Global Warming until Al Gore said so! Why would they believe it, until Someone In Charge said it? And moreover, if you can prove That Person Isn’t Really An Authority, the facts will change! See also:
Why Creationists are obsessed with disproving Darwin – not his theory, but the man himself. As if casting doubt on Darwin-a-dude-born-in-eighteen-fucking-oh-nine-for-chrissake-’s personal beliefs will somehow completely disprove the ensuing two centuries of scientific research.
Why various idiot politicians try to legislate away Global Climate Change, as if making laws against the ocean will stop it from rising.
I’m sure you could add on ten thousand bullet points but it’s Saturday and I don’t wanna do the research when I could be cleaning my kitchen and playing Minecraft.
This is actually supported by psychological and sociological research into authoritarianism; on @ampersandworm‘s comment on doing the research, I have to recommend Bob Altemeyer’s excellent (and free!) book, The Authoritarians, where he summarizes his research into the authoritarian mindset in a layman accessible manner (and, yes, I do love the irony that, in response to a comment about how conservatives only believe something when supported by An Authority, I’m linking to An Authority for discussion on that mindset). It is really worth a read to gain some insight into the mindset of American authoritarians.
We know a lot about authoritarian followers, but unfortunately most of what we know indicates it will be almost impossible to change their minds, especially in a few months. Here are a dozen things established by research.
They are highly ethnocentric, highly inclined to see the world as their in-group versus everyone else. Because they are so committed to their in-group, they are very zealous in its cause.
They are highly fearful of a dangerous world. Their parents taught them, more than parents usually do, that the world is dangerous. They may also be genetically predisposed to experiencing stronger fear than most people do.
They are highly self-righteous. They believe they are the “good people” and this unlocks a lot of hostile impulses against those they consider bad.
They are aggressive. Given the chance to attack someone with the approval of an authority, they will lower the boom.
They are highly prejudiced against racial and ethnic majorities, non-heterosexuals, and women in general.
Their beliefs are a mass of contradictions. They have highly compartmentalized minds, in which opposite beliefs exist side-by-side in adjacent boxes. As a result, their thinking is full of double-standards.
They reason poorly. If they like the conclusion of an argument, they don’t pay much attention to whether the evidence is valid or the argument is consistent.
They are highly dogmatic. Because they have gotten their beliefs mainly from the authorities in their lives, rather than think things out for themselves, they have no real defense when facts or events indicate they are wrong. So they just dig in their heels and refuse to change.
They are very dependent on social reinforcement of their beliefs. They think they are right because almost everyone they know, almost every news broadcast they see, almost every radio commentator they listen to, tells them they are. That is, they screen out the sources that will suggest that they are wrong.
Because they severely limit their exposure to different people and ideas, they vastly overestimate the extent to which other people agree with them. And thinking they are “the moral majority” supports their attacks on the “evil minorities” they see in the country.
They are easily duped by manipulators who pretend to espouse their causes when all the con-artists really want is personal gain.
They are largely blind to themselves. They have little self-understanding and insight into why they think and do what they do.
Points number 6, 7, 8 and 9 are what lead to the “argument from authority” tendency that OP noted.
• any target
• churches in texas
• abandoned 7/11’s
• your bedroom at 5 am
• hospitals at midnight
• warehouses that smell like dust
• lighthouses with lights that don’t work anymore
• empty parking lots
• ponds and lakes in suburban neighborhoods
• rooftops in the early morning
• inside a dark cabinet
playgrounds at night
rest stops on highways
deep in the mountains
early in the morning wherever it’s just snowed
trails by the highway just out of earshot of traffic
schools during breaks
those little beaches right next to ferry docks
bowling alleys
unfamiliar mcdonalds on long roadtrips
your friends living room once everybody but you is asleep
laundromats at midnight
what the fuck
galeries in art museums that are empty except for you
the lighting section of home depot
stairwells
•hospital waiting rooms
•airports from midnight to 7am
• bathrooms in small concert venues
I just got the weirdest feeling I swear
OK LISTEN THERE ARE REASONS FOR THIS!!!
A lot of these places are called liminalspaces – which means they are throughways from one space to the next. Places like rest stops, stairwells, trains, parking lots, waiting rooms, airports feel weird when you’re in them because their existence is not about themselves, but the things before and after them. They have no definitive place outside of their relationship to the spaces you are coming from and going to. Reality feels altered here because we’re not really supposed to be in them for a long time for think about them as their own entities, and when we do they seem odd and out of place.
The other spaces feel weird because our brains are hard-wired for context – we like things to belong to a certain place and time and when we experience those things outside of the context our brains have developed for them, our brains are like NOPE SHIT THIS ISN’T RIGHT GET OUT ABORT ABORT. Schools not in session, empty museums, being awake when other people are asleep – all these things and spaces feel weird because our brain is like “I already have a context for this space and this is not it so it must be dangerous.” Our rational understanding can sometimes override that immediate “danger” impulse but we’re still left with a feeling of wariness and unease.
Listen I am very passionate about liminal spaces they are fascinating stuff or perhaps I am merely a nerd.
If I can add a couple more:
Your grandparents house when you’re no longer small
Getting out of the car when you’ve been driving for hours and you find people with a different accent
Hotels in the small hours of the morning
Posted on
Posted on
17% of cardiac surgeons are women, 17% of tenured professors are women. It just goes on and on. And isn’t that strange that that’s also the percentage of women in crowd scenes in movies? What if we’re actually training people to see that ratio as normal so that when you’re an adult, you don’t notice?
…We just heard a fascinating and disturbing study where they looked at the ratio of men and women in groups. And they found that if there’s 17% women, the men in the group think it’s 50-50. And if there’s 33% women, the men perceive that as there being more women in the room than men.
