1. Next week, Harvard psychologist Joshua Greene is slated to release a new book on behavioral morality, examining the everyday irrationalities and subconscious biases that Kahneman, Tversky and company have popularized over the last few decades (aside: are all titles/covers copying Malcolm Gladwell?). A common behavioral problem, the “trolley experiment”, asks people to make a hypothetical […]
Another Week Ends: Delta Malaise, Self-Deprecating Obituaries, The Hill and Wood, Breaking Bad, Bound Atheists, Fall Conf Schedule and more Dark Knight Rises
1. First up, The New York Times published an eye-opening article about sorority rush in US colleges this week that’s been spreading like wildfire. It visits all the usual themes of the Law of group belonging: self-doubt, attempts at identity improvement, the need to belong, and our single-minded attempts to live up to a certain […]
Righteous Minds, Moral Matrices, and the Real (Non-)Difference Between Liberals and Conservatives
Are our brains fundamentally wired to experience and filter reality according to standards of moral righteousness? And if so, what’s the emotional and relational cost? We know how the Apostle Paul would respond, and we now know how cutting-edge UVA social psychologist Jonathan Haidt would. In an interview over at The Scientific American, Haidt talks […]
Steve Jobs, Positively 4th Street, and the Upside of Anger
Apple cultivates such a serene image, it’s hard to believe that the underlying corporate culture, at least if reports about the late Steve Jobs’ management techniques are to be believed, is one of confrontation, brutal criticism and threat. Then again, perfectionism tends to produce such fruit. Sort of the opposite of Pixar, which is ironic, […]
Born-Again Stress and Hippocampal Atrophy
Scientific American reported last week on another interesting if inconclusive study about the brain activity of the religious, “Religious Experiences Shrink Part of the Brain.” Specifically, the marked variation between believers (of a certain type) and non-believers in the volume of the hippocampus portion of the brain, the exact function of which is not totally […]
Another Week Ends: Transformation Myths, Eating Disorders, Suicidal Standards, Aging Ungracefully, Rehab Albums, St Elizabeths
1. The timing just could not be any better. NYC Mockingbird Conference Speaker Mark Galli has been blowing up this past week, most notably on The Internet Monk. Start with The Evangelical Myth of “Transformation” and go from there – the discussion provides a helpful overview of where Mr Galli is coming from, not to […]
