Marbury

born liars latest

I had a great time at the RSA yesterday, giving a talk on the theme of 'Necessary Lies'. It's a wonderful place and the audience was fantastic, asking great questions in the discussion afterwards. You can listen to a recording of the event here.

Rather belatedly, I should like to draw the world's attention to the latest review, which appeared in The Times last Saturday (paywall). Here are the last few lines:

Ian Leslie contends that lying is not a perversion of our nature, it’s central to it. It is neither a design flaw nor a glitch, but necessary to our mental stability and social behaviour. His range of references is fascinating, from saints to sinners, from psychologists to psychopaths. I loved the irony and ingenuity of this book — would I lie to you?

Born Liars is still half-price at Amazon. And even cheaper in e-book form.

how sarcasm boosts creativity

 

 
A new study suggests being sarcastic with someone can drive them to be more creative.

Yeah right.

No, really. The researchers were looking at how bosses can get more out of their employees, and how customers can get more out of services. If you think someone isn't doing their job well, is it a good idea to bawl them out? Or is it better to express your disapproval using withering sarcasm?

The main finding of the study was if the job they're doing is really simple, then just losing your rag can get the person to buck up - but if the job at hand requires creative thinking, then the best catalyst is withering sarcasm:

Evidence for this conclusion can be found in three experiments, one of which featured 184 undergraduate engineering students. They began by listening to one of three messages purportedly left on a business’ customer service line. All featured customers complaining that the company only makes deliveries at an inconvenient time of day — between 9 a.m. and noon.

The first message “featured hostile language and negative intonation,” including the outburst “This is an outrage!” The second message “combined positive language and negative intonation,” such as “These hours are just ‘perfect’ for working people!” The third message featured neutral language delivered without emotion (“I am at work doing those hours”).

The participants then were asked to solve a series of creative problems... and analytic problems...Those who had heard the angry complaint scored highest on the analytic test, slightly ahead of the other two groups. But they came in last on the creativity test. When imaginative leaps were required, those exposed to the sarcastic message far outperformed the others.

Oh I know - I'm totally amazing you with my interestingness.

Link to report on study.

planet asia

 

From a great series of designs by Toby Ng.

the milibandian mentality

In Born Liars I recount the story of Leon Festinger's famous study of apocalyptic cults. Festinger, a social psychologist, was interested in the historical recurrence of doomsday movements which claim that the end of the world is imminent, and that only those who believe will be saved. It still happens, of course.

In 1954, when Festinger was at Michigan University, he heard about the existence of a cult in suburban Chicago which believed that at midnight on December 21st, aliens were going to call forth a great flood that would sweep away everyone on earth - except those in the cult, who would be safely transported to another planet. Festinger couldn't resist this opportunity, and joined the cult in the guise of a believer, attending all their meetings. The full story is told in my book (and in Festinger's book-length account of his experiment, When Prophecy Fails). For our purposes it's enough to note his key insight: that when someone holds a strong belief and puts their reputation at stake for it, mere reality often cannot shake them from it. On December 22nd, when the world still stubbornly existed, the Chicago cult didn't say 'OK, we got that wrong, sorry'. They became even more convinced they had been right and began making up rationalisations for what had or hadn't happened. Dissatisfied with reality, they preferred to make up their own.

I was reminded of this psychological dynamic when reading Dan Hodges's coruscating attack on the 'flat earth' mentality shared by many in the Labour Party today. Having elected Ed Miliband and convinced itself that the country is yearning for a left-wing government, and having bet the farm on the Coalition's economic policy being a disaster, they now see everything through this increasingly distorted lens:

There is a world out there where the world is flat, the Tories are desperate to swap their stance on the economy for ours, and if only Ed Miliband could convince more people he’s left wing, we’d be striding to power. As the harsh realities of opposition continue to bite, it’s a world with growing appeal. 

Out there on the edge of space and time, where the earth bows to the heavens, Ed Miliband is the sole, final hope of progressive socialism. If he fails, Labour’s historic mission is over for eternity. The left will “wither and die”. At the moment, the cult of the flat earther is everywhere... the local election results were great. There is a progressive majority in this country. Ed’s problem is that not enough people have got to know him.

This is not simple denial. Denial is an inability to face the truth. We’re not just ignoring the truth, we are constructing an entire alternate universe.

John Rentoul was the first to note the similarity between the Millenarian and Milibandian mentalities.

Following Festinger's logic, when the end of the world comes - that is, when Labour loses the next election (or, less likely, Ed Miliband gives up the ghost before then) - the Milibandians won't admit they got anything wrong. They'll dig in, and insist they were more right than ever. It's reality that messed up.

Here are some of the justifications and rationalisations I predict will be most popular amongst the Toynbees, Ashleys, Hundals and Hasans:

- If it weren't for those pesky Blairites...Basically, everything would have been fine except that Blair queered the patch in the first place, and then his people conspired to undermine poor Ed.

- If it weren't for the Murdoch media...The voters - who as everyone knows, are naturally leftish, progressive types yearning for Ed - got scared off by a campaign of distortion and lies led by the Murdoch press.

- If it weren't for the voters ... Perhaps - minor concession - we underestimated the venality and myopia of the voters, especially those in the Southern middle class. So sue us.

I'm sure there will be other excuses - you can make up your own - and I'm even more sure that none of these people will say, 'You know what, I completely misread the politics of this and helped to elect the wrong guy at the wrong time. Sorry about that. Now, where's my copy of A Journey...'

Link to Hodges.

Link to Born Liars, still half-price at Amazon.

a brilliant man

The New Yorker's Ariel Levy has written a superb, funny, horrifying profile of Silvio Berlusconi. She concludes that his appeal to Italian voters may be on the wane. Perhaps so, but it remains true that, for many Italian men, Silvio is the ultimate role model:

Lecce, a retired union leader, said he considers Berlusconi “a brilliant man,” adding, wistfully, “If only I had the money he has, I’d be on the top surrounded by beautiful girls. Maybe I’d drop, but it’d be a beautiful way to go!” He smiled sweetly and yelled across the street at the demonstrators, “You guys are all gay! We have the men who fuck!” Then he turned to me and said, “I see you are a girl—I want to kiss you!” He pinched my cheek and concluded happily, “This is nature.”

Link to article.

blago, terrorist hunter

Loyal readers will recall this blog's fascination with Rod Blagojevich, otherwise known as Blago, otherwise known as the man who played dirty even by Chicago standards in his pursuit of Obama's vacant Illinois Senate seat in 2008 (you may think you recognise his face from the barber shop window and it's true that he does take his hair very seriously). Well, his corruption trial is now a retrial and although all this is hugely expensive for the taxpayer, you can't say Blago isn't giving value for money:

During his fifth day on the witness stand, even Rod Blagojevich managed to startle observers with a new one: If he had appointed himself to the U.S. Senate seat in 2008, he would have traveled to Afghanistan to try to hunt down Osama bin Laden.

His lawyer, Aaron Goldstein, asked if Blagojevich talked about appointing himself to the Senate “in exchange for going to Afghanistan and hunting down Osama bin Laden.”

“Yes,” A straight-faced Blagojevich replied, bringing yet another prosecution objection, hushed snickers and head-scratching in the courtroom.

In a sense, bin Laden got off lightly.

via Ben Smith.

do we all need lies to get by?

Next week, in the hallowed environs of the Royal Society of Arts (the RSA) I'll be addressing the topic of 'Necessary Lies'. If you're free at lunchtime on Thursday (9th June), in London, and can get to John Adam Street, do come along. It's free and even if I'm dull (I'll try not to be) the place is worth a visit. Here's the blurb:

Ian Leslie's book Born Liars: Why We Can't Live Without Deceit is an exhilarating tour around the psychology, neuroscience and anthropology of deceit. It explores the role it played in our evolution and looks at lying in our childhoods, in our relationships, and our careers; in medicine, politics, advertising and war. Its thesis is that 'lying isn't a perversion of our nature - it's central to it.'

Ian will visit the RSA to ask whether all human societies, including our own, need lies to function properly - and if so, which lies?

I'm very excited. The RSA under the leadership of Matthew Taylor has become one of the most intellectually vibrant institutions in Britain. Every week there are brilliant speakers and fascinating discussions - and most are free and open to the public. It's an honour to be involved.

Details of the event here.

phoning mum for a data exchange

Brian Christian is the author of what sounds like a fascinating new book on what it means to be human in an age of technology and artificial intelligence (The Atlantic ran a wonderful extract from it a few weeks ago). This striking insight is from an interview with the author:

One of the comments that we’ve heard several times on our program in the past is that people are now starting to interact with each other like computers. That computers aren’t just learning from us, we’re learning from computers…

…I would also say that the shift in telephone technology from landlines to cellphones has had a kind of unforeseen trade-off, which is that we’re now much more accessible geographically, but the cost is that the lag on the connection is six times greater. So it’s about half of a second instead of a little bit less than a tenth of a second.

And it may not seem like much, but in fact it is enough to disrupt a lot of the subtle dynamics of timing and pauses, and yielding to other people, and it’s turning communication much more into a kind of peer data exchange, you know, pure content.

Hat tip: Mind Hacks.

the future as seen from 1966

When we imagine the future, we generally find it easier conceive of technological change than we do cultural change. Thus the makers of this film get some things right - the idea of personal computers in the home, the potential for surveillance - and some things comically wrong:

"What the wife selects on her console will be paid for by the husband at his counterpart console.”