Category: Research

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ROTD: Do Men Hurt More?

Let’s consider these last two arguments. We all know that women tend to be more expressive about their complaints – you can’t beat ‘em for wailing and gnashing of teeth. But the fact that men act more stoic and complain less doesn’t mean they hurt less. To economists, the relevant standard is willingness to pay, and by this standard new results suggest men hurt more from most harms:
What’s a marriage worth? To an Aussie male, about $32,000. That’s the lump sum Professor Paul Frijters says the man would need to receive out of the blue to make him as happy as his marriage will over his lifetime. An Aussie woman would need much less, about $16,000. But when it comes to divorce, the Aussie male will be so devastated it would be as if he had lost $110,000. An Aussie woman would be less traumatised, feeling as if she had lost only $9000. … The lifetime boost to happiness that flows from a birth – for the mother around $8700, for the father $32,600. … The death of a spouse or child causes a woman $130,900 worth of grief. … It costs a man $627,300.
via Overcoming Bias : Do Men Hurt More?.

Very interesting, must delve into this paper soon.

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ROTD::Do Working Men Rebel? Insurgency and Unemployment

Do Working Men Rebel? Insurgency and Unemployment in Iraq and the Philippines
Most aid spending by governments seeking to rebuild social and political order is based on an opportunity-cost theory of distracting potential recruits. The logic is that gainfully employed young men are less likely to participate in political violence, implying a positive correlation between unemployment and violence in places with active insurgencies. We test that prediction on insurgencies in Iraq and the Philippines, using survey data on unemployment and two newly- available measures of insurgency: (1) attacks against government and allied forces; and (2) violence that kills civilians. Contrary to the opportunity-cost theory, we find a robust negative correlation between unemployment and attacks against government and allied forces and no significant relationship between unemployment and the rate of insurgent attacks that kill civilians. [Emphasis mine]
via Do Working Men Rebel? Insurgency and Unemployment.

This is discouraging. Please remember that GMA is still an economist and in some accounts a sharp person. Does this mean that keeping people in poverty a viable strategy in minimizing rebellion? It seems to be what the warlords and government are actually doing.

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Sentences To Ponder: Some new happiness research

There is, I suspect, a common theme here – that people don’t predict what will make them happy at all well. Having children and investing in careers rather than in social networks doesn’t make us happy, and yet we do it in our 20s and 30s, only to be miserable later.
via Stumbling and Mumbling: Some new happiness research.

That was one loaded sentence. Thinking about my life, I am solidly in Team Social Network and Not the  TEAM Children/Career that a lot of my generation are slowly (fast?)  going into. I don’t know, maybe in our 40’s we would know.
PS 01: I’m not anti kids. Simply put I see myself as a big kidI sometimes can’t be trusted with myself, why the hell would I trust myself with the responsibility for another human being.
PS 02: I’m not strictly anti-career, It’s just that I believe that our society/backgrounds do not allow us the leeway to really find our passions. If we dive head on to our “careers” when will we ever find our passions. 2 things.
One, I’m lucky to have my mom and dad as my parents.  This for me means that I have a personal responsibility to be the best that I can be, whatever that means.
Two, I saw a friend from high school/college in the elevator yesterday, we decided to catch up a little. During our conversation he told me something. He has found his passion, He said in a way Pisay and UP wasn’t such a good fit for him, what he wanted to do was for from what he learned from these great learning institutions. This is the third time (That I remember vividly but probably more than 10 or even more) that I have heard this from a friend from Philippine Science/University of the Philippines. In a way it made me happy. Not that my friends wasted a lot of their time, rather they do not see the other side of the coin, I prefer to think of their predicaments more in the light of; I am lucky to have found my passion, it is probably because of the different things that I went through in life, of which going to PSHS/UP was a part of.
Read the original post to get to the research to justify the claims.

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Learned::Biased News Has Delayed Impact | Miller-McCune Online Magazine

This is big. What this means we really have to guard against alot of the things we hear from the media, we must always try to correct media people when they report the things incorrectly. This probably means almost nobody is immune! Better Press Corp Please!

Does Biased News Have a Time Bomb Effect?
A European study shows that, over time, even the most sophisticated readers can be manipulated.
By: Melinda Burns | November 09, 2009 | 05:00 AM (PST) |
Even the most hardened Europeans may succumb to media manipulation and change their political views if they are bombarded long enough with biased news.
There's nobody more cynical about the media than your average European.
Only 12 percent of Europeans claim to trust the media, compared to 15 percent of North Americans, 29 percent of Pacific Asians and 48 percent of Africans, the BBC has found.
Yet new research out of the London School of Economics and Political Science suggests that even the most hardened Europeans may succumb to media manipulation and change their political views if they are bombarded long enough with biased news.
via Politics Articles | Biased News Has Delayed Impact | Miller-McCune Online Magazine.

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rePost::Rejection massively reduces IQ – 15 March 2002 – New Scientist

Hmm? Wow I could have been a genius! hehehe! 25% fall in IQ after rejection? Wow, that’s big!

Rejection massively reduces IQ
* 13:45 15 March 2002 by Emma Young, Blackpool
Rejection can dramatically reduce a person’s IQ and their ability to reason analytically, while increasing their aggression, according to new research.
“It’s been known for a long time that rejected kids tend to be more violent and aggressive,” says Roy Baumeister of the Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, who led the work. “But we’ve found that randomly assigning students to rejection experiences can lower their IQ scores and make them aggressive.”
Baumeister’s team used two separate procedures to investigate the effects of rejection. In the first, a group of strangers met, got to know each other, and then separated. Each individual was asked to list which two other people they would like to work with on a task. They were then told they had been chosen by none or all of the others.
In the second, people taking a personality test were given false feedback, telling them they would end up alone in life or surrounded by friends and family.
Aggression scores increased in the rejected groups. But the IQ scores also immediately dropped by about 25 per cent, and their analytical reasoning scores dropped by 30 per cent.
via Rejection massively reduces IQ – 15 March 2002 – New Scientist.

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Google vs Alzheimer's

Functional magnetic resonance imaging provides...
Image via Wikipedia

Internet searches MIGHT have a positive effect on brain functions of middle-aged adults. Here’s a snippet (emphasis mine):

UCLA scientists have found that for computer-savvy middle-aged and older adults, searching the Internet triggers key centers in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning. The findings demonstrate that Web search activity may help stimulate and possibly improve brain function. The study, the first of its kind to assess the impact of Internet searching on brain performance, is currently in press at the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and will appear in an upcoming issue.
…
“Internet searching engages complicated brain activity, which may help exercise and improve brain function,” said principal investigator Dr. Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA who holds UCLA’s Parlow-Solomon Chair on Aging.
For the study, the UCLA team worked with 24 neurologically normal research volunteers between the ages of 55 and 76. Half of the study participants had experience searching the Internet, while the other half had no experience. Age, educational level and gender were similar between the two groups.
Study participants performed Web searches and book-reading tasks while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, which… tracks the intensity of cell responses in the brain by measuring the level of cerebral blood flow during cognitive tasks.
All study participants showed significant brain activity during the book-reading task, demonstrating use of the regions controlling language, reading, memory and visual abilities…
Internet searches revealed a major difference between the two groups. While all participants demonstrated the same brain activity that was seen during the book-reading task, the Web-savvy group also registered activity in the… areas of the brain which control decision-making and complex reasoning.
…researchers found that during Web searching, volunteers with prior experience registered a twofold increase in brain activation when compared with those with little Internet experience. The tiniest measurable unit of brain activity registered by the fMRI is called a voxel. Scientists discovered that during Internet searching, those with prior experience sparked 21,782 voxels, compared with only 8,646 voxels for those with less experience.
…the Internet’s wealth of choices requires that people make decisions about what to click on in order to pursue more information, an activity that engages important cognitive circuits in the brain.
“A simple, everyday task like searching the Web appears to enhance brain circuitry in older adults, demonstrating that our brains are sensitive and can continue to learn as we grow older,” Small said.
Small added that the minimal brain activation found in the less experienced Internet group may be due to participants not quite grasping the strategies needed to successfully engage in an Internet search, which is common while learning a new activity.”With more time on the Internet, they may demonstrate the same brain activation patterns as the more experienced group,” he said.

Link
There are a few caveats though, the study didn’t differentiate between the levels of prior internet searching knowledge (maybe one was a power googler while another might’ve only searched for porn before). One more caveat, the participants in the study may have been through ‘self-selecting bias’.
Does anyone know if Google funded this study? It Seems that a good way to increase the web search market share is to reel in those baby boomers into searching as a preventive measure against Alzheimer’s disease.
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