altruism

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Why are people so inconsistent? Is there such a thing as character? And did Stephen once have the world's longest chain of gum wrappers?

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Turn on the news, and you'll be bombarded with stories of people who lie, cheat, and kill. Most of our public and economic policies take aim at these sorts of people — the wrongdoers and the profiteers. But is there a hidden cost to the rest of us when we put bad actors at the center of our thinking? Do the measures we put in place to curtail the selfish inadvertently hurt our capacity to do right by others? In the latest in our "Mind Reading 2.0" series, we revisit a 2020 episode with behavioral economist Sam Bowles. He argues that laws written to govern the lawless end up changing the behavior of the lawful — for the worse. 

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Sam Harris speaks with Paul Bloom about the role that pain and suffering play in living a good life. They discuss the limitations of hedonism, the connection between chosen suffering and meaning, the research of Daniel Kahneman on well-being, integrating the experiencing and remembering selves, moral motivations, the effects of parenthood on happiness, unchosen suffering, the asymmetry of loss and gain, Nozick’s “experience machine” thought experiment, effective altruism, valuing the future more than the past, the power of contrast, false ideals of happiness, polyamory, money and status, the role of the imagination, boredom, the power of apology, and other topics.

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Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in life. That’s why Sam Harris created the Waking Up app. From rational mindfulness practice to lessons on some of life’s most important topics, join Sam as he demystifies the practice of meditation and explores the theory behind it.

If you’ve ever wandered past what looked like a pile of dog barf on a log during a hike in the woods, you’d just seen slime mold - one of the most perplexing organisms on Earth. 

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In this episode, we continue our discussion on the Big Five. We will do a deep dive into agreeableness discussing it's sub facets: trust, straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, and tender-mindedness. We will also discuss the strengths and weaknesses of having high trait agreeableness.

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In the months since the spread of the coronavirus, stories of selfishness and exploitation have become all too familiar: people ignoring social distancing guidelines, or even selling medical equipment at inflated prices. Most of our public and economic policies take aim at these sorts of people — the wrongdoers and the profiteers. But is there a hidden cost to the rest of us when we put bad actors at the center of our thinking? Do the measures we put in place to curtail the selfish inadvertently hurt our capacity to do right by others?

We talk a lot about psychopaths - but rarely discuss their polar opposites, super altruists. These are people who go to extreme lengths to help others - even though their acts of kindness might cost them time, money or expose them to physical danger. These folk are also happier than the rest of us.

A super altruist once saved the life of psychology professor Abigail Marsh - so she devoted her career to understanding what drives these amazing and happy people and how we call all learn to be more like them.

For an even deeper dive into the research we talk about in the show visit happinesslab.fm

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Concern and care for others’ feelings are virtues we seek to instill in our children, yet they are sorely lacking in many adult Americans today. There’s scientific research to back up the notion that Americans are caring less for others and more about themselves. Our guest is Sara Konrath, PhD, an associate professor of philanthropic studies at Indiana University and director of the Interdisciplinary Program on Empathy and Altruism Research. We’ll be exploring why empathy is declining and what we can do to create more kindness and caring in our communities.

Join us online August 6-8 for APA 2020 Virtual.

Today it’s a pleasure to have Molly Crockett on the podcast. Dr. Crockett is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Yale University and a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics. Prior to joining Yale, Dr Crockett was a faculty member at the University of Oxford’s Department of Experimental Psychology and a Fellow of Jesus College. She holds a BSc in Neuroscience from UCLA and a PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Cambridge, and completed a Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Fellowship with economists and neuroscientists at the University of Zürich and University College London.

In this episode we discuss:

• The discrepancy between outrage in real life vs. online outrage
• Cultural evolution and the selection and amplification of online content
• How basic reinforcement learning principles drive the design of online systems to maximize the amount of time we spend on the platforms
• Is the “habitual online shamer” addicted to outrage?
• Habitual behavior vs. addiction
• Is “outrage fatigue” happening en masse?
• Should we be thinking about rationing our outrage (reserving it for issues we find most important)?
• The costs and benefits of outrage
• Why people punish and the discrepancy between the actual reasons why we punish (inferred from behavior) vs. self-reported motives
• The difficulty doing science on topics that are incredibly heated in public social discourse
• The intractably intertwined nature of science and social justice
• What technologies might be doing to the way that young people construe the social world
• The human capacity for forgiveness
• Twitter Q & A

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A series of academic studies suggest that the wealthy are, to put it bluntly, selfish jerks. It's an easy narrative to swallow — but is it true? A trio of economists set out to test the theory. All it took was a Dutch postal worker's uniform, some envelopes stuffed with cash, and a slight sense of the absurd.

Summer vacations often take time, energy and money to plan. Expectations can run unreasonably high. This week in Stopwatch Science, we dive into what research says about how to have a better getaway.