YOYO-ISG 100425 TED Talk: Our Buggy Moral Code

[Sherry Liao]

Dear ISG members,

The TED talk for this week and the one for May 23 have one thing in common: they both mention "moral", but the former is interesting and entertaining while the latter is serious and inspiring (at least that's what I think they are). I hope you like both of them anyway.

TED Talk: Dan Ariely on our buggy moral code
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_on_ ... _code.html

This is a sequel to our last topic: "Are we in control of our own decisions?" (yes, the one Kooper mentioned). Please make a summary of the content of the clip and post it on the forum before the meeting.

[jacksonwang]

Are we in control of our own decision? Is all our intuition correct? There is a question mark over it. The key thing is that unless we doing more systematic experimentation of our intuitions, we are not going to do better. When it comes to personal fudge factor, as long as it doesn’t change our impressions about ourselves, more or less we can cheat a little bit and benefit from cheating at a low degree. The most people will still restrict themselves to prevent cheating when we remind them about their morality or they consider the reputation of their own group.

[IVY]

The motive why Dan Ariely did the research of human being’s “predictable irrationality” came from an accident. When he was burned badly, he couldn’t stand the process when those nurses took bandage off him quickly and intensively again and again. So he wondered why they can’t spend more time ripping bandage off patients which could help reduce the sense of pain. Although the nurses are kindly and experienced, their cognition of which way is better for a patient isn’t correct.

All traditional economic assumptions based on a hypothesis: human are rational animals which mean people will calculate the vales of all options and choose the best one. However the truth is people often make irrational decisions unconsciously. The author takes the example of cheating to discuss “irrationality”. Cheating is a simple cost-benefit analysis. If people were rational, they could weigh the advantages and disadvantages before lying. According to the economic theory, increasing the amount of money or decreasing the probability of being caught people should be much more willing to cheat. But the results of experiments showed otherwise. What do we learn from the experiments? 1. Most of people cheat a little bit. 2. Cheats go down when people are raised the awareness of morality. 3. Cheats go up especially when seeing people of our in-group do it. 4. If the gain of cheating is money, people cheat less. In other words, if we replace money for other subjects such as tokens, the likelihood of cheating goes up. Enron’s case is a good sample to testify.

In daily life we make many decisions by intuition which we assume it’s rational. In fact it’s not true. Moreover, "irrationality" could be predicted and happen repeatedly.

[Sherry Liao]

In the beginning of the talk, Dan Ariely mentions that his interest of irrational behavior started with his experience in hospital. At that time he was burned badly and the process by which the nurse debandaged him made him wonder which approach was the right one to take bandage off burned patients: to rip quickly with short duration but high intensity, or the opposite. The nurses insisted that to rip quickly was better for patients, but finally Ariely proved them wrong through experimental method after he left the hospital and entered college.

Ariely believed irrationality was a general case and started to test it in various human behaviors. In this talk, he mentions several experiments he conducted to test cheating behaviors. Different from traditional economic theories, which indicated that people would tend to cheat more when expected value went up and when probability of being caught went down, he found that actually a lot of people cheat a little bit regardless of economic incentives. Ariely believes people would tolerate their minor cheating behavior if they can get it over and still feel good about themselves while benefit from the cheating. He calls this a "personal fudge factor". His further experiments found that people tend to cheat less when reminded of morality, and cheat more when the benefit they get from cheating is different than real money, which make them feel they get bigger distance from cheating. Finally, people tend to cheat when they sense someone else in the same group they belong to is cheating.

Ariely believes many of our intuitions in our life are actually wrong. It is important to create more experiments to test the intuitions and pin down those irrational decisions, as those decisions may influence us in all aspect and have a huge impact on our political and economic policies. Although it is difficult for us to accept doing these experiments to prove that our intuitions are wrong, the world would not get better before we get a start.

[Kooper]

In the speech, Dan Ariely introduced two human beings’ predictable irrationalities identified in his research. One is the widely accepted approach among nurses to reduce the pain burnt patients suffer. The other is the factors that deeply influence people’s cheating behavior.

During Dan’s own hospitalization, nurses who took care of him and other burnt patients had the intuitions that they were minimizing the overall pain of patients by ripping bandages off quickly - increasing the intensity of pain but shortening the duration. Contrary to their intuitions, Dan’s experiments showed that patients experienced less overall pain if the bandage-removing process was slowed down, if nurses started at the most painful part of the body and moved on to the lesser painful ones, or if patients were given a break in the midst of the process to recover from their pains.

Economic theories say that cheating contains a simple cause-effect analysis. People weight various factors, such as the chances of being caught and the benefits brought by cheating, before deciding whether and how much to cheat. With economic principles in mind, it’s intuitive to conclude that more benefits and less possibility of being caught will give rise to more cheating. Dan’s experiments, however, showed a difference story; cheating behavior is in fact more sensitive to a so-called personal fudge factor. That is, whether religious or not, people can cheat a little bit and reap little benefits with still a clear conscience. The experiments further discovered aspects that either shrink or expand the fudge factor; events that temporarily bring up people’s sense of morality can avert cheating, while a weaker or less direct link between cheating and money work the opposite way. Social influences also play a role in it; we’re more likely to cheat if people of the same group as us cheat as well.

[Sherry Liao]

According to the economic theory, increasing the amount of money or decreasing the probability of being caught people should be much more willing to cheat. But the results of experiments showed otherwise.

I like this word. In fact I intended to use it in my summary but at that time I could not recall it from my vague recollection. It's amazing to see it here.

[Sherry Liao]

With economic principles in mind, it’s intuitive to conclude that more benefits and less possibility of being caught will give rise to more cheating.

I think "give rise to" is a perfect usage here, and it is just a new phrase we learned last week from Ivy's topic.

[chiron]

My summary is not too different from yours, so I would save my words. But I doubt how many of you can make a theory from "bandage"?? And does theory reallly apply to all stiuations happening in real life?? For social science, it's almost impossible to find an universal theory. Not to mention it's application. (Even though we know human is not irrational, so what? Would that help us make more rational decision??) Here, I want to ask you an easy question as an conclusion:
Would you like short but high intesity pain or the other way? Explain.

[janet12tw]

Dan Ariely thinks we should not depend too much on our intuition but on more systematic experimentation. The speeach takes two examples and clarify people's irrational behaviors. One example is when he got burned very badly and covered with bandages. The nurses always rip off the bandages quickly because they think it will cause less pain. But he did various experiments on other people and found out the correct approach should be rip off the bandages slowly. The other example is he try to get people cheat in the test. He give a test with 20 simple math problems and pay one dollar for the people for each question they got correct. The results are different when he ask people to turn out their papers or shred their paper after the test. As a result, he thinks we should have more thoughts in how we do things like how school should pay the school teachers or how nurses should rip off the bandage in the hospital to build a better social system.

[chiron]

My summary is not too different from yours, so I would save my words. But I doubt how many of you can make a theory from "bandage"?? And does theory reallly apply to all stiuations happening in real life?? For social science, it's almost impossible to find an universal theory. Not to mention it's application. (Even though we know human is not irrational, so what? Would that help us make more rational decision??) Here, I want to ask you an easy question as an conclusion:
Would you like short but high intesity pain or the other way? Explain.

Good article, good dicusion, good viewpoints, and most important of all, good attendees, including myself, haha~~ Well, in a hindsight, I believe once you can make a theory from bandage, you'll be qualified to enter MIT!

[Sherry Liao]

When I was doing my assignment yesterday, I was stuck with a problem of this sentence:

哪一種方法對病人比較好? 快速撕下繃帶, 痛苦強烈但時間較短, 或是慢慢撕下繃帶, 痛苦比較緩和但時間拉長?

This is a long sentence. To make it short, we can rewrite it this way:

哪一種方法對病人比較好? 快速撕下繃帶, 痛苦強烈但時間較短, 或是反過來?

The problem is, I found I didn’t know how to express this “或是反過來” in English, that is, to refer to an opposite or different situation. After thinking it over, I decided to put the sentence this way:

...which approach was the right one to take bandage off burned patients: to rip quickly with short duration but high intensity, or the opposite.

Today I reread all the assignments and found that almost everyone put a similar expression in their articles, like these:

But the results of experiments showed otherwise.

Dan’s experiments, however, showed a difference story;

while a weaker or less direct link between cheating and money work the opposite way.

Would you like short but high intesity pain or the other way?

That’s very interesting. I really learn a lot from your articles.

[Sherry Liao]

Good article, good dicusion, good viewpoints, and most important of all, good attendees, including myself, haha~~ Well, in a hindsight, I believe once you can make a theory from bandage, you'll be qualified to enter MIT!

It's bad that I left early this morning. What did I miss?

[Michael-liu]

When I was doing my assignment yesterday, I was stuck with a problem of this sentence:

哪一種方法對病人比較好? 快速撕下繃帶, 痛苦強烈但時間較短, 或是慢慢撕下繃帶, 痛苦比較緩和但時間拉長?

This is a long sentence. To make it short, we can rewrite it this way:

哪一種方法對病人比較好? 快速撕下繃帶, 痛苦強烈但時間較短, 或是反過來?

Would you like short but high intesity pain or the other way?

Hi, Sherry

In this kind of situation, we should say "or the other way around"

the other way around - WordNet (r) 2.1 (2005) :

the other way around
adv 1: with the order reversed;


Michael

[chiron]

Good article, good dicusion, good viewpoints, and most important of all, good attendees, including myself, haha~~ Well, in a hindsight, I believe once you can make a theory from bandage, you'll be qualified to enter MIT!

It's bad that I left early this morning. What did I miss?

We discussed how could you make a theory from "bandage" like this speaker. From 別鬧了費曼先生 (A nobel prize winner, as I remembered) this book I knowed that when he was a "kid", one day, he was curious at the phonemenon why ants always creep on the same route, one following another, so he decidedd to "move" leading ants one by one. And then; the subsequent ants turned out to creep on radom routes totally different from those ahead of them. He found its "smell" which attracts subsequent ants to follow pioneer ants. My conclusion, if you have this insight, you definitely could be genius/or geek.