bodhi tree swaying

Jesse Bering, who has been mentioned in this blog before, has an interesting column in Scientific American outlining a couple of experiments investigating mortality salience (the effect that an awareness of death has on us).

These rather elegant experiments show that when presented with reminders of death, people are more likely to make patriotic statements and to overestimate how many people share their opinions. In general it seems people cling to group membership as a protection against the idea of their own mortality.

Another such study found that judges presented with cues reminding them of death would set bond almost 10 times higher than they otherwise would.

In a 2005 study published in the Journal of Economic Psychology, German psychologist Eva Jonas from Ludwig-Maximilians University and Immo Fritsche from Otto-von-Guericke University teamed up with terror management theory co-founder, social psychologist

…

Several weeks back I spotted this interesting article by Jesse Bering, director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland. In it he details experimental evidence that despite assumptions to the contrary, exacting revenge upon someone who has cheated you makes you less happy, not more.

In our minds we may imagine that revenge will feel sweet (this is known as “affective forecasting,” in which we make assumptions about how we will feel under a given circumstance) but actually it’s forgiveness that’s sweet.

…as a “punisher,” you would have been given the opportunity to levy a punitive fine against the cheater at the end of the game, thus “teaching her a lesson.” Or, as a “witness,” you would simply observe as one of the other players imposed the fine. Alternatively, you could have found yourself in the control condition in

…

There’s a fascinating article in the New York Times about people’s relationship to their frozen embryos. Because IVF treatment is so expensive and success is so hit-or-miss, couples generally create more embryos than they need. Those remaining after conception are stored in deep freezes. But couples become attached to those embryos — blastocysts, really — and can have trouble letting go of them.

The article gives an overview of different relationships with these embryos. Some people are willing to let them be used for research. Some are willing to donate them to other couples. But others are unwilling to have them donated, even though it would help another family get through the painful situation they themselves have experienced, because they regard these as “their” embryos and are unsure of what kind of life they wold have with a new family.

Some people are simply so …