The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #183: Are you happy or sad the Space Shuttle has been retired? What do you think the next goal for humans in space should be, and what do you think Russia and China, the new leaders, will do next? Is it important enough to get funding before other needs?

I’m actually pretty glad that the Space Shuttle has been retired and we’re not going to waste any more money sending stuff into space. I don’t have enough background knowledge about the Space Shuttle project to know what good it’s for, but at the point America is right now, we don’t need to waste money on extraneous things.

Stopping the Space Shuttle mission might save us enough money to delay the amount of time before we fall so deep in debt to China that they pretty much own us.

My Homework for Your Reading Pleasure

This is a thought paper I wrote today for extra credit for my abnormal psychology course. Thought papers are basically papers about anything psychology-related that make us think. The topic of my first thought paper is the ultimatum game.

A few days ago, I got a $350.00 check in the mail as payment for completing a psychology research experiment about two months ago, back when I was in Madison for this past academic year. I forgot that I was supposed to be expecting my payment, and it was a nice surprise when I opened up a letter and found a check inside. Getting the check reminded me of one of the many small tasks I did as part of the experiment, an economics game of altruism called the ultimatum game.

If you don’t know what the ultimatum game is, it’s simple – the experimenter gives you $10 and you get to decide how to split the money with another participant. Then you present the proposal to the other participant, and the other participant can either accept or reject the offer. If the other participant accepts the offer, you both get to keep the money in the proposed proportions. If the other participant rejects the offer, you both get nothing.

Following basic economic theory, the person deciding how to split the money should keep $9 for him or herself in order to optimize gain, and give $1 to the other participant. The other participant should theoretically accept any offer, regardless of what it is, because some money is better than no money.

And of course, that’s not how things actually turn out.

Most people doing the splitting of the money don’t decide to keep $9 and give $1. Instead, they usually split the $10 50-50 or 60-40. This means that instead of maximizing personal gain, people will freely give a greater-than-minimum amount of money to others. When experimenters found this out, they thought they had made a revolutionary discovery – humans are not in fact hardwired to optimize self-gain, but are instead hardwired to be altruistic to other humans.

On the other hand, most people receiving money don’t actually accept all incoming offers. If the offer is extremely low, like $1 or $2, they will reject the offer, sacrificing what they could have gotten in order to show their disgust of how selfish the other individual is. This means that, again, instead of maximizing personal gain, people will freely give up money to make other people suffer for their socially unacceptable behavior. This suggests that people think other people are supposed to be altruistic to others.

This brings us back to the original thought process of the splitter. Is the splitter giving 40% or 50% of the money to the other participant because they are actually altruistic, or is it just because they don’t want their offer to be rejected?

And if people are really this altruistic, then why is there so much crime and theft?

Let me take you back to when I was a participant of the ultimatum game. The full experimental session took a total of eight hours. I happened to be really good at the puzzle games at the beginning of the session, and ended up finishing about an hour or so ahead of schedule. The researcher then told me the next task was the ultimatum game, and that I would be playing against a real human being. This immediately set off a red flag in my mind – I knew that the chances of someone else doing the same eight-hour experiment as me at the same time and finishing the same puzzle games as me at the same speed to be ahead of schedule the same amount was near-zero. I concluded that I wasn’t actually playing with a real human being, but most likely a computerized recording of a previous participant’s choices.

I was randomly selected as being the receiver. The whole game was three rounds long, each round involving $10. The first offer was split 80-20, with me receiving the 20%. I still had the slightest thought that this might really be a human, so I rejected the offer to let my partner know that I wanted more money than that. I waited for the next round to begin.

The next round had the same result – the second offer was split 80-20 again. At that point I had solidified my hypothesis that I was not playing against a real human, because unless my partner was autistic, they would’ve decreased their selfishness to make sure I wouldn’t reject the offer again. I realized it was pointless to try and condition my opponent to give me more money because a set of recorded offers wasn’t going to change, so I just accepted the offer to leave the experiment with as much money as possible. The third offer was even worse – a 90-10 split – but I accepted it anyway because there was no point rejecting the offer to make a computer feel bad.

This brings up a very important methodological flaw in the experiment process. Out of the participants of this experiment, how many of them felt as if they weren’t playing with a real human being, and how did that affect the level of altruism? I personally think that humans are really altruistic, but altruism is heavily dependent on how emotionally connected one feels with the other human he or she is dealing with. One additional control placed on how the ultimatum game is run can easily find out if this is true or not.

The additional control is set-up. There are three basic different possibilities for the set-up of the ultimatum game: participant playing with a computer, participant playing with another participant via a computer, and participant playing with another participant face-to-face.

As clearly seen by my experiment experience (and the experience of my mysterious partner, if those responses were in fact those of another human), if we think that we’re not playing against another human, our signs of altruism and expected altruism are neutralized and we play just to optimize our personal gains.

But what if we do really believe that we’re playing against another human? Does our level of altruism change if we’re playing with them through a computer versus face-to-face? I haven’t been able to find any specific research results for variations of the ultimatum game with that set-up control, but I do know of a very similar experiment that did have this set-up control: the Milgram experiment.

The Milgram experiment was originally created to prove that Germans were genetically predisposed to following the authority of Adolf Hitler during the Nazi revolution and that Americans would never do such a thing if such an opportunity came to America. The experimenter, Stanley Milgram, played the role of the teacher. Another experimenter played the role of the learner. The participant played the role of the shocker. The experiment involved the teacher asking the learner questions; if the learner got the question incorrect, the shocker would electrocute the learner. The twist was that the participant didn’t know that the learner was another experimenter, and instead thought the learner was another participant. The participant also did not know that the electric shocks were not real.

The results of this experiment were shocking (in a figurative sense) to Milgram – his hypothesis was wrong, and Americans were just as compliant to authority as Germans. Americans were just as likely as Germans to shock the learner with the maximum voltage, simply because the teacher said so and claimed it was okay. Once Milgram figured this out, he started making some alterations. The one we’ll be focusing on to connect with the ultimatum game is the alteration of the level of personal connection between the shocker and the learner.

When the experiment started, the shocker had different roles in setting up the experiment. Some would be sitting across a glass wall far away from the learner and would never make contact with him. Some would be instructed to go strap the shocking devices onto the body of the learner. Some would be given some time to chat with the learner. Overall, the more physical and personal contact the shocker had with the learner, the less severely the shocker would shock the learner, most likely because the learner was more easily able to put him or herself into the shoes of the learner.

My guess is that the same will apply to the ultimatum game. The more we increase the amount of personal contact with the other participant, the more willing we will be to split the money fairly and equally. This means that altruism between two people has a direct positive causational correlation with the level of personal connection between the two.

So back to the big question from a while back – if people are so altruistic, why is there so much crime? Based on the results from the Milgram experiment and the assumed results from a variation of the ultimatum game, crime and theft occurs because, although we’re altruistic, we don’t have something that reminds us of how altruistic we actually are. Once that personal connection is sparked, our altruism comes back and proves that the original finding of the ultimatum game – that we’re hardwired to help others – is actually true (even though the specific instance of altruism in the original ultimatum game might have been fueled by something different).

I think my left eyeball is swollen.

…

That is all.

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #180: Are you too lazy or too busy?

As you can probably tell from everything I’ve been doing lately, I’ve been too busy.

Even when I’m not on a tight schedule, if I feel as if I am slowly approaching a level of laziness, I usually find something that I can do (and there always is something that I can do). For example, I could easily flip open my laptop and write a new article for my website or go to the library and find a book to read. So, overall, I don’t think I ever reach a point when I’m too lazy.

My Homework for Your Reading Pleasure

In my abnormal psychology class, we do homework assignments called “The Doctor Is In” where we take the role of a clinical psychologist and apply our abnormal psychology knowledge to real-life events.

This week’s assignment was on the topic of mood disorders and suicide. The prompt was to write a summary about a suicide case that you know of (could be personal or of a celebrity), and find out if any mental disorders had underlying roles in causing the suicide.

Being a WWE fan, I instantly decided to write about Chris Benoit. My paper is included below for your reading pleasure.

Chris Benoit was a professional wrestler best known for his time at World Wrestling Entertainment. He performed a double murder and committed suicide days before he was scripted to become the ECW (Extreme Championship Wrestling, a division within the WWE) Champion.

On June 22, 2007, he killed his wife Nancy Benoit at home in an office. Autopsies showed that she was killed after Benoit pressed a knee into her back and pulled a cord around her neck, strangling her. They also found Xanax (also known as Alprazolam, normally used to treat severe anxiety disorders) and hydrocodone and hydromorphine (both narcotic analgesics and antitussives, commonly used as morphine substitutes) in her body.

On the following day, June 23, 2007, Benoit called co-worker and fellow professional wrestler Chavo Guerrero to let him know that he had overslept and missed his flight, and would be late for the upcoming show in Beaumont, Texas. Guerrero noticed that Benoit sounded stressed and tired; Benoit justified his tone by saying that he was having a tough day with his wife and son suffering from a bout of food poisoning, vomiting blood, and having to go to the hospital.

On June 24, 2007, Benoit used both his and his wife’s cell phones to send out a total of five text messages, with recipients including Chavo Guerrero and WWE referee and official Scott Armstrong. Four of the texts indicated their physical address in Fayetteville, Georgia, while the remaining text message informed the recipient that the family’s dogs were safely enclosed in a pool area and the side garage door was open.

Later that day, Benoit killed his son by sedating him with Xanax and suffocating him to death in his bedroom. Then, Benoit hung himself by creating a noose using the cord of a weight machine and committed suicide.

On June 25, 2007, Guerrero and Armstrong informed WWE of the text messages they received, who in turn alerted the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department and asked them to do a wellness check on Benoit at the noted physical address. This is when authorities discovered the three dead bodies inside Benoit’s place of residence.

After it was discovered than Benoit had died, many people, including the WWE, mourned his death and aired a Benoit tribute instead of their normal scheduled broadcasting. The WWE soon started distancing itself from Benoit after details of the murders and his suicide were discovered and released. They removed all mention of him from all television broadcasting and videos on their website, and removed his merchandise from the WWE Shop.

There were three main speculative theories about the motives of the double murder and suicide. The first involved conflicts between Benoit and his wife, as his wife had filed for divorce five years earlier but withdrew a few months after the initial filing. It was also found that they had gone through recent arguments about Benoit possibly having an affair with a WWE Diva (a female performer) and a life insurance plan. The second involved an accusation of drug use that stemmed from Benoit’s history of illegal steroid usage back in February 2006. However, Benoit was undergoing treatment for his previous steroid use and was prescribed artificial testosterone to make up for the damage it had caused, which justified the higher-than-normal levels of testosterone found in his toxicology report.

The third and most convincing motive for his actions was the fact that Benoit was suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy. CTE is characterized by the degeneration of the brain as a result of repeated, untreated concussions. It is highly likely that this is applicable to Benoit because, according to fellow professional wrestler Christopher Nowinski, Benoit was one of very few people who was willing to take steel chair shots to the head during performances. Furthermore, according to the conclusive report from a brain analysis conducted by Sports Legacy Institute’s neurosurgeon Julian Bailes, “Benoit’s brain was so severely damaged [that] it resembled the brain of an 85-year-old Alzheimer’s patient.” It also “showed an advanced form of dementia that appears on the brain scan as brown clumps or tangles. … In Benoit’s case, the damage was found in every section of the brain – all four lobes and deep into the brain stem.”

The known symptoms of CTE are memory and other cognitive ability loss, behavioral problems including aggression and confusion, and depression. Other individuals known to have CTE showed characteristics of deep depression and harming themselves and others. Benoit’s father suggested that it was highly likely that brain damage suffered while working for the WWE was the cause of his uncharacteristic actions, but the WWE dismissed the idea as speculative and refused to take responsibility.

Benoit’s double murder and suicide gives us some insightful information about the nature of brutal contact sports like professional wrestling. Because of his work, Benoit was more prone to receiving brain damage that ultimately led him to make choices he otherwise would not have made. On top of that, even though he was not able to think straight, he still sent out subtle requests for help and left sufficient information for authorities to find out what had happened, emphasizing the importance of acting quickly on all signs of potential suicide or other suspicious activity. Had Guerrero or Armstrong alerted the WWE and the authorities immediately after receiving the text messages rather than waiting the next day, it is possible that Benoit would have been found before he was able to commit suicide, and possibly even before he killed his son.

The death of Benoit is a wake-up call to all sports performers who put their work before their own health. Even though Benoit may have been seen as a brave individual willing to go to lengths other wrestlers would never go, the trade-off for his recognition was an incident that ended both his career and his life.