Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

Why Chess Should Be Required in U.S. Schools

April 15, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Rook to B8. Checkmate. There's nothing quite like the feeling of defeating a worthy opponent in a game of chess: the ultimate battle of the wits. Of course, it's not a feeling I have very often, since I'm not very good at chess. On the other hand, my father is officially an "expert" and my friend is a "master." In other words, they are both very, very good. To give an idea of how good, if I was to play 100 games with each of them, I would win precisely zero. Worldwide, chess is still a popular game, but it is treated with particular seriousness in Eastern Europe. For instance, the ... Read More

More like this: Education
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The Weight-Loss Incentive That Works Better Than Cash

April 10, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Trying to hit the gym and shed that winter insulation? With bikini season just around the corner, weight loss seems to be—once again—the water-cooler topic du jour. And for employers and health insurers both, that’s good news. Encouraging workers to get a little competitive on the elliptical by offering them cash incentives may be the best way to help them lose pounds—and to slow companies’ spiraling health care costs. That’s what researchers from Michigan and Pennsylvania discovered when they implemented a dollars-for-dieters program among the medical staff at ... Read More

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‘Let’s Work Together’ Message Can Be Counterproductive

April 4, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: LEXAARTS/SHUTTERSTOCK)

When it comes to climate change, we’re all in this dilemma together, and forcefully addressing it will require collaboration and cooperation. A stirring sentiment, but if you’re looking to spur white Americans to action, it’s actually counterproductive. That’s the conclusion of a Stanford University research team, which found invoking the idea of interdependence undermined the motivation of European-American students to take a course in environmental sustainability. The researchers, led by MarYam Hamedani of Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, argue ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Findings
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Missing Pieces

March 6, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(ILLUSTRATION: MÁGOZ)

Elaborate greetings are the norm, I’ve found, when one enters a Central African village. So it was a surprise when I noticed that many people weren’t shaking hands the morning I arrived in Tiringoulou, a town of about 2,000 people in one of the remotest corners of the Central African Republic, in March 2010. I soon found out the reason: the day before, a traveler passing through town on a Sudanese merchant truck had, with a simple handshake, removed two men’s penises. As best I could reconstruct from witness accounts, the stranger had stopped to purchase a cup of tea at the market. ... Read More

More like this: March-April 2013
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Replicate This

February 26, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(ILLUSTRATION: MÁGOZ)

There are few psychological effects better known—or more widely accepted—in academic halls than what is called semantic priming. Show a person a simple stimulus, something as unremarkable as a photograph of a cat. Let some time pass, then ask that same person to list as many words as possible that start with the letter c. This person is more likely not only to come up with the word cat, but to mention catlike animals such as cougars and cheetahs, because he was initially primed with that one little kitty cat. Priming’s reach, of course, stretches far beyond cognitive tests. Therapists ... Read More

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We Aren’t the World

February 25, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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IN THE SUMMER of 1995, a young graduate student in anthropology at UCLA named Joe Henrich traveled to Peru to carry out some fieldwork among the Machiguenga, an indigenous people who live north of Machu Picchu in the Amazon basin. The Machiguenga had traditionally been horticulturalists who lived in single-family, thatch-roofed houses in small hamlets composed of clusters of extended families. For sustenance, they relied on local game and produce from small-scale farming. They shared with their kin but rarely traded with outside groups. While the setting was fairly typical for an ... Read More

More like this: Cover Story, March-April 2013
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Why You Can’t Stop Perusing Your Facebook Profile

February 11, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: ALXYAGO/SHUTTERSTOCK)

How often do you check out your Facebook profile? If considering that question makes you blush—or raises the uncomfortable notion that you’re a narcissist—relax: You’re acting on an impulse that is as basic as it is benign. New research suggests that all that rereading, revising, and updating satisfies the fundamental human need to feel good about yourself, and your place in society. This reassurance and sense of security is a vital psychological resource, and Facebook may be the easiest, most convenient way to provide it yet been devised. No wonder the social network has ... Read More

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Dirty Tricks

February 1, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK)

The good news about hand washing is that 96 percent of Americans do it every time they use a public bathroom. Or, that’s what 96 percent of Americans say, anyway. Such self-reported behavior is too good to be true, of course, so when researchers from the American Society for Microbiology want to know the dirty truth about human hygiene, they don’t just conduct phone interviews: they go hide in crowded bathrooms—Atlanta’s Turner Field, New York’s Grand Central Station, San Francisco’s Ferry Terminal—and surreptitiously take notes. The results aren’t so reassuring. An ... Read More

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Want to Increase Retail Sales This Christmas? Keep It Simple (and Orange)

December 7, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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While you're out doing your holiday shopping this month, you might notice a certain scent in the air. No, it's not the Spirit of Christmas (or not just that, anyway). It's the smell of pine. Or orange. Or fresh-baked cookies. There's a reason for that. Savvy retailers use all kinds of sensory information to convey their brand, welcome you in, and put you in a frame of mind that they hope will lead to more sales. Their displays are arranged just so. Their wall colors are carefully chosen. The music burbling through their speakers hits all the right notes. That fresh-baked-cookie smell ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
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Rethinking the Classic ‘Obedience’ Studies

November 25, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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They are among the most famous of all psychological studies, and together they paint a dark portrait of human nature. Widely disseminated in the media, they spread the belief that people are prone to blindly follow authority figures—and will quickly become cruel and abusive when placed in positions of power. It’s hard to overstate the impact of Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments of 1961, or the Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971. Yet in recent years, the conclusions derived from those studies have been, if not debunked, radically reinterpreted. A new perspective—one that ... Read More

More like this: The 101
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