Higher social class predicts unethical behavior

What? How crazy is that?! In a paper published in January 2012 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS), seven studies were conducted that revealed that upper class individuals behaved more unethically than lower class ones. Apparently, the better off you are the more likely you are to lie, cheat and steal, due to your more positive attitude towards greed. According to the paper, the upper class value their own welfare above that of others, and greed leads to reduced concern of how their behavior affects others.

I have long heard that poorer families give a greater percentage of their income to charity than their wealthier counterparts, and now it turns out that richer you are, the more Scrooge-like you are. With all apologies to Mr. Scrooge. But why are upper-class individuals more prone to unethical behavior, from violating traffic codes to taking public goods to lying? And what would be the results, I wonder, if the study were conducted in a different country? Is it just Americans or does society’s nobility behave boorishly across cultures? I find this to be distressing on many levels, and I’m not sure what can be done to reverse this trend.

March is Women’s History Month

March is when we celebrate the achievements of women around the world, the famous and the not-so-famous. Even “just a mom” is a chauffeur, research assistant, psychologist, nutritionist, referee, teacher, chief financial consultant and more. What moms do cannot be measured simply in terms of financial compensation–they provide loving homes and unmitigated support, not only to their immediate families, but also to those that come into their orbit. Moms are simply amazing, and they deserve to be recognized as much as those women renowned for some other achievement.

Tell the women in your life how grateful you are that they’re there. And don’t forget that behind every great man there is an equally great woman.

Think you’re great at multi-tasking? Think again.

Do you listen to music as you do your homework? Watch TV while on your iPhone? Talk on your cell phone while driving? Conversely, can you focus on just one task at a time? Is it really possible to actually multi-task, that is, complete two or more tasks at the same time? According to a study published on PLOS One (a peer-reviewed, open access journal), the answer isn’t as cut and dried as you might think. Turns out that perceived ability differs significantly from actual ability, and that people multi-task because they’re not able to block out distractions. The study indicates that overall performance may suffer, as multi-tasking can be physically and mentally challenging. Also, it turns out that the people most able to multi-task are those that also have the ability to not multi-task; in other words, being able to selectively focus on a single task was an indicator that the individual would also be able to complete more than one job at a time.

Interesting. People that rate themselves high in ability to multi-task turn out to be not so good at it, and the ability to focus exclusively on one task indicates that you’d be good at multi-tasking. What kind of an effect will this have on how people present themselves during job interviews? The ability to multi-task is seen as very desirable, but when people over-state their competence what then? I think that the old-fashioned adage of doing one thing and doing it well is a is still a good lesson to teach and model, one which will serve our students in good stead well into the future.

How reading literature affects your brain

I have more ammunition now, thanks to a study by humanities scholar Natalie Phillips at Stanford university. She mapped the relationship between reading, attention and distraction by placing volunteers into an MRI, hooking them up to eye-tracking equipment, then having them read passages from Jane Austen’s “Mansfield Park.” The student volunteers were asked to read at two speeds, recreational, and critically and analytically, as though they were reading for an assignment. A computer program tracked their eye movements, breathing and heart rates.

The results were more extensive than she’d imagined: areas of the brain normally used for physical activity and movement were engaged, the part that we use to place ourselves spatially in the world; it was as though the readers placed themselves physically in the story.

Concentrated, close reading “activated unbelievably widespread parts of the brain that are immensely cognitively complex, on a par with doing hard math problems or working through computer code,” she said.

At a time when the value of a liberal arts and humanities education at publicly funded colleges is under fire from cost-cutting governors and nervous university presidents, this research, she hopes, might lead toward validating literary study as a critical learning tool. The complex congitive brain patterns of the brain scans “show us that we have really no idea of the complexity involved in literary analysis.”

I think this is fascinating! Who knew that reading analytically could be such good exercise for your brain? Even though this is only one study and it’s still early days, I’m hopeful that with more studies it will show how beneficial it is to read. I’ve long been a proponent of fluent reading being a strong indicator of scholarly success, and now there seems to be scientific evidence corroborating the statement. I firmly believe that the more you read, the better you will do in all subjects; if you can’t read, how can you expect to comprehend the erstwhile gobbledegook that is a chemistry or calculus text book?

VAASL conference

Attending VAASL conference on libraries and collaborative learning. So far so good.

CPD23 Newbie

I signed up this week for CPD23, which translates to “23 things for continuing professional development” for the uninitiated. It took me a while to find out what it meant, which made me feel not a little foolish. It started three weeks ago: Thing One was to create a blog for this whole process, which, luckily, I already have. Thing Two was to investigate other blogs by people also engaging in CPD23. I’m still working on that one, as time management is still something that I struggle with. I’ve read (and been inspired) by one or two blogs, and I’m working on reading more of them today. Thing Three was to Google yourself and see what kind of electronic footprint you’ve created, and how you want your personal brand to reflect on you. I discovered that there is a Heather A. Steinmiller, Attorney at Law, who lives in Philadelphia and who has some major accomplishments to her name. I did find myself over three or four Google pages; my Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as LinkedIn and some of the other groups to which I belong. There are photos that I’ve shared, and you can find my home address, phone number and maiden name. Kind of scary, that last. All in all, though, my footprint pales in comparison to Heather A. A good thing? A bad thing? Just a thing? I want to be “profersonal” by keeping some things private and sharing others in a way that portrays me in a positive light.  Anyway, something to keep in mind as I continue this journey with some very fascinating and desireable companions.

Information Literacy infographic

Project Information Literacy interview

David Weinberger, senior researcher and co-director of the Harvard Law School Library Innovation Lab and the author of the book Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren’t the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room  was interviewed recently by Project Information Literacy (PIL) regarding knowledge, education and the contradictory nature of the Internet. (Read the interview here.) He was questioned on how the way we used to think about knowledge has lost some of its gloss, utility, and meaning. His answer? “We have ratcheted up what we count as knowledge to the point where little beyond axiomatic truths have counted.” Knowledge used to be a firm foundation on which new “bricks” were laid, and without which it was impossible to formulate new thoughts. Now, however, knowledge is a series of inter-connected links in a wide network that is the world wide web. Not everything is as pat as it once was; in the past, books were vetted and knowledge imparted with the thought being that the printed word held weight and stability. The new web of knowledge, though, “has a very different shape than a book. It is vast, complexly ordered, non-sequential, un-curated, vetted after being made public, and intimately tied to its intellectual context. It has no boundaries, no stable shape, and no edges.” What this means, to me, is that libraries are more than ever an important resource in teaching its clientele how to sift through this new web, assessing and evaluating what purports to be knowledge from that which truly is reliable and verifiable. “Students need help in gaining the skill to discern what’s worth believing and what’s hucksterism and wish fulfillment.” And lastly, “given the human temptation to hang out with ideas that are familiar and unchallenging, librarians have a special role to play as guides to sources that also disturb us, challenge our hidden assumptions that celebrate difference and disagreement.” Some heavy food for thought, indeed.

Culture of meanness and cruelty…and what to do about it

A draft of a paper entitled ” What You Must Know to Help Combat Youth Bullying, Meanness, and Cruelty” came out on February 28th, and I’ve been spending some time cogitating its words of wisdom. We do live in a society that tolerates cruelty and meanness, from politicians slinging mud at each other to celebritites talking trash about each other to sitcoms wringing laughs by characters maligning each other. In this type of environment, it is easy to see how bullying can seem like the norm.

“In order for youth to feel empowered to create a kinder and braver world,” the paper states,  “we must begin by making sure that youth are safe.” The culture of meanness and cruelty in which we live, however, promulgates negativity and antagonistic behavior, which prevents youth from feeling safe in their environment.

There is no single answer to problem of bullying, of course, but we as a society owe it to our youth to look to our own behavior and make signficant changes. Children learn what they live, and if we want to address the issue of youth bullying, it needs to start by being role models of decency, compassion,  and tolerance. We need to create “a positive youth culture that reinforces kindness and bravery.”  It starts with us.

Disraeli said that “to b…

Disraeli said that “to be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge”.

So how do we get stupid people to take that first step?