Neuroeconomics: The Dictator Game

My favorite neuroeconomic game is The Dictator, which is essentially an allocation game. There are two players: the “dictator” and the “recipient”. At the beginning of every round, the “dictator” receives a certain amount of money. He/she has to decide how much money to give to himself/herself and how much to give to the “recipient”. The game continues for the number of rounds designated.

I really appreciate this game because it demonstrates how far people are willing to go to serve their own needs and how much they care about other people around them. Because it is a strong measure of human behavior and values, I think that an experiment revolving around The Dictator game would serve as an excellent reflection of the social and cultural environments and their influence on people’s behavior. I would like to see how people of different nations and cultures vary, if at all, in their behavior as the “dictator”.

http://upennsocialbook.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/dictator-game1.jpg

Anti-Conformity: Acting Like L

For an attempt at violating social norms, I decided to follow the lead of one of my favorite fictional characters: L Lawliet from the anime/manga series Death Note. It took a bit of courage, but I finally went into the middle of the Great Hall, pulled out a chair, and mimicked L’s posture of squatting down with feet on the chair and sucking my thumb. I proceeded to stay in this position for several minutes.

To my extreme surprise, despite a significant number of people around me, hardly anyone noticed. Three people who did notice simply gave me some very quick raised eyebrows and then continued on with their business. One kid right next to me didn’t pay attention at all; it’s like I was invisible to him. Finally, two other guys explained to me, after I gave up and told them what my goal was, that they didn’t pay attention because they assumed I was doing some sort of pledge for a fraternity.

I suppose there are a variety of reasons why so few people noticed me acting strange. Perhaps, like the two guys I spoke with, they all thought I was doing a frat pledge. Maybe people are so busy and isolated today that nobody notices anything unusual that’s not right in front of them or in their current business. In any case, acting like an anti-conformist did not bring me the reaction I expected.

Here is a great cartoon about anti-conformity:

 And for those interested, meet L (I highly recommend the Death Note series by the way):

Hormones and Medication

I can testify from experience that hormonal effects on people can be profound indeed. Some of the best examples are various kids I have known who have been diagnosed, correctly or not, with ADHD.

Back when I was in high school, I knew a kid who was very hyperactive and seemed prone to goofing around in class; everyone was led to believe had ADHD. He often made loud noises and other disruptions randomly, and he had severe trouble focusing. It seemed his doctors and his parents tried everything, but nothing seemed to help his condition. Then, after about two years or so, he stopped taking the ADHD medications… and his problem steadily fixed itself. It turns out the kid did NOT have ADHD; the medication was what driving him into such wild behavior.

It is scary to think of the powerful effects medication can have on our behavior, because it is through experiences like the one I just described that we can see just how vulnerable our self-control, our hormones, and our minds and bodies in general, can be.

What Is Emotion?

There are a lot of aspects of humanity that we take for granted. Look at the concept of emotions, for example. It is a key aspect of humanity, and everyone knows about them. Yet nobody can sit down and truly describe what emotions are. How are we so uncertain about such an integral part of our lives and our own selves?

            I don’t think I will be doing the definition of emotions justice, but I will nonetheless try to explain my own interpretation. I believe emotions refer to any form of communication or idea that allow us to put forth our feelings. We use emotions to express our feelings to other people and ourselves. It is a crucial to our language, and it helps separate us, and to a lesser extent other animals, from other forms of life. We are not just living things that act and then die; we have the ability to think and reflect on our world. In fact, having a good reflection of our lives is one of the most crucial steps towards true happiness. With that in mind, we must use this understanding in the best way possible: towards the creation of a much more healthy and humane world than what we see today.