“You are what you eat” – yes, but you don’t eat video games

Fox News reports on two different video games released on the same day, one from Lightside Games focusing on Jesus’ life and the other being the demon haunted Diablo III, a product from Blizzard Entertainment.

The timing was not lost on Brent Dusing, CEO of Lightside Games.

“Both games immerse the player, and you are what you eat,” Dusing said in a statement. “While one game goes one direction, ‘Journey of Jesus: The Calling’ players walk in the Messiah’s steps, in an authentic experience of Israel in Christ’s time.

Diablo III sounds like Buffy the Vampire Slayer turned up to eleven, an adventure pitting a “barbarian, witch doctor, wizard, monk or demon hunter” against the fiends from Hell with the fervent hope that the “good” guys will triumph.

Journey of Jesus is free to Facebook users, so it probably will get a lot of play – by those who already claim to be Christian (whether they dutifully follow Christ’s footsteps or not). I suspect it’s going to be of little interest to people from other religions so wouldn’t be a useful tool for converting them. And the atheists who try it will probably try to pick it apart as they play, not use it as a means of learning any real history about that era.

When I was younger, I thought there was something to the notion that violent video games make people violent but then I came around to the notion that people who already have a proclivity towards violence are the ones more likely to be interested in playing those games. Research is starting to swing that way, too.

What the research does show, in a nutshell, then is this:

Teens who are already angry or aggressive likely should be limited in their playing of violent video games
Teens should not play M-rated games
Girls especially should not play M-rated games
Video game is an important social development interaction for boys. Parents should keep this in mind when taking such time away from them in punishment.
And of course, all things in moderation. Playing a video game for 6 or 8 hours straight is unhealthy behavior at any age.

I’ve played my share of “shoot ‘em ups” and I’ve yet to become a violent offender. That’s anecdotal, I admit, but still true. I’m not much of a gamer anyway. The Man loaned me his old Nintendo and I still can’t get Mario past the first few levels. I like puzzle games, or board and card more.

I never play the games on Facebook but for kicks I signed up for the app so I could try it out. I decided to play as a woman and already I’ve cut a bunch of wood, picked a fight with a Roman and witnessed Jesus getting baptized. Whee. What childish fun. If I play again, I’ll update you on my progress.

Scientific American has an article about atheists and trust

Specifically how we aren’t generally trusted. According to the article, Will Gervais, Ara Norenzayan and colleagues at the University of British Columbia sorted through the results of several different studies showing how atheists tend to be the least trusted groups. For their study, they hypothesized that awareness of secular authority figures might be able to improve that.

In one study, they had people watch either a travel video or a video of a police chief giving an end-of-the-year report. They then asked participants how much they agreed with certain statements about atheists (e.g., “I would be uncomfortable with an atheist teaching my child.”) In addition, they measured participants’ prejudice towards other groups, including Muslims and Jewish people. Their results showed that viewing the video of the police chief resulted in less distrust towards atheists. However, it had no effect on people’s prejudice towards other groups. From a psychological standpoint, God and secular authority figures may be somewhat interchangeable. The existence of either helps us feel more trusting of others.

The article goes on to note the predilection for atheism in some European countries. The Scandinavian area sounds like a haven for atheists and the suggestion is that confidence in a country’s government, especially ones “that guarantee a high level of social security for all of their citizens” means people might rely less on faith in God to get through their lives feeling cared for.

After that, the article links to a brief summary of a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology where people had been given two versions of a fake news story. One reported Canada’s political situation as stable and the other did not. When questioned later, those who read about instability were more likely to give God, or some other force, credit for controlling the universe. I don’t pay enough attention to the politics of my country but I know voter turnout is fairly low in most elections and some chunks of the country are right up there with the worst the American bible belt has to offer.

To my way of thinking, people are used to calling their conscience God rather than give themselves the credit for knowing the right thing to do when the time comes. Maybe they trust themselves even less than they trust atheists but just never look at it that way. When I was a kid, I didn’t need to think a god was watching; I was pretty sure my mother was. A god would punish me in the afterlife but Mom could shout at me mere moments after doing wrong. My conscience developed from a lot of lessons on what not to do and having parents who’d demonstrate proper behaviour every day I was around them. That kind of teaching stuck with me.

It’s good to see atheist groups rallying around charities and demonstrating just how wrong assumptions about us can be, just like any stereotype of a minority group. On an individual basis, we should probably all do more and find ways to give back to our communities. I know I don’t do enough of that. Aside from donating clothes and household items once in a while, I don’t do a hell of a lot to help others. And yes, I do start to feel a bit guilty about that. The conscience is fully functional when it comes to the “ought”s.

So, thoughts? What steps do you take to make your mark and be a better person?

Words have power, study finds. The word “God” especially

I don’t know if anything new was discovered by this study in terms of that, but it’s an interesting report on results nonetheless. The study was done at the University of Waterloo by psychologists hoping to track what impact faith-based terminology had on ambition.

In the new study, the researchers primed more than 350 engineering students with the idea of God or faith, for example, by having participants write a sentence using a list of words with spiritual connotations. Students then completed skill tests in which they had to make as many words as possible from a group of letters. When prompted with religious imagery or language beforehand, the students came up with fewer words, regardless of their religious background, than those who hadn’t been primed with such imagery.

The researchers think the lack of effort in the “religious-primed” group could be dictated by a belief that fate is in God’s hands. If the students believe that God controls their destiny, trying to be better isn’t going to help them actually be better, resulting in less effort. This entire thought process seems to be unconscious, but just the presence of these God-conjuring words or images could alter behavior.

Another study was done involving students, references to God etc., and appetite for cookies. Those who were given something religious to read ahead of time were less likely to take them.

This effect, however, was found only among participants who had previously said they believe an omniscient entity watches over them and notices when they misbehave, though the strength of their devotion to that God didn’t come into play in any of the experiments, the researchers found.

Makes me think about the U.S. Bible Belt and their obesity problem, as it happens. Overindulging on fried foods doesn’t count as misbehaviour in their god’s eyes, I guess. Via an Emory University blog, I find an article posted at CNN in March. It’s not specifically about that area of the country, but the health of church-goers in general.

The new research, presented at an American Heart Association conference dedicated to physical activity, metabolism and cardiovascular disease, involved 2,433 people enrolled in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study. The group was tested – at first between 20 and 32 years old – for various cardiovascular disease risk factors such as diabetes, hypertension, and smoking. Those same tests were repeated in the same group over the next 25 years.

The results were mixed for many risk factors for cardiovascular disease, but as researchers analyzed the data, one disparity stood out. Those who reported attending church weekly, or more often, were significantly more likely to have a higher body mass index than those who attended infrequently, or never.

There was some debate on why that would be. Are people prone to reward themselves with excess food on account of perceived good works? Marriage gets tossed in as a theory, since weight gain tends to follow the ceremony and most churches could advertise themselves as matchmakers generally. They love seeing (heterosexual) people get married. The prevalence of the popular church potlucks get a nod, as does the fact that many churches have reduced the amount of time they give over to sport events like baseball teams and other recreational activities. Or possibly it’s because people choose church over organized sports for their families and then sit around all day after service instead of being active in any way. Day of rest and all that.

Like with anything else, it’s impossible to pinpoint an exact cause. There’s still the camp that insists church-life is a health benefit, of course, and as a stress reducer it’s still one of the most popular choices. Research has lent credence to the theory that it benefits longevity, too.

“The real value of the study is not understanding why,” said Feinstein. “What this study does is highlights a group that could potentially benefit from targeted anti-obesity initiatives. That’s exciting because there is a lot of infrastructure already in place in religious communities.”

That’s completely worthwhile. I wonder if they’d run into trouble with that, though, considering how many believers seem to prefer caring about their spiritual after-life than their current physical life. Are they really going to want to change how heavy and unfit they are on this earth if they think they’re guaranteed a perfect body on the other side? What’s the motivation to do a bunch of work on a body they won’t be keeping anyway?

Then there’s that flipside, of course, and the people who think all they should ever be eating is whatever Jesus and company may have been able to ingest. Like Daniel’s Diet, named for the prophet who foresaw a lot of things, including, I guess it can be argued, the need for future followers to slim down a little. That part of the site offers only testimonies that prove it works, not specifics for following it. I guess that’s why there’s a picture of a book people can buy if they want it.

Godweb features information about several Christian-themed weight-loss plans that try to answer the question of “What would Jesus eat?” when it seems fairly obvious going by scriptures available that there’s no way in hell anyone can actually know for sure.

The story of his life sends some very mixed signals as far a diet is concerned. First of all, he adopted a lifestyle that involved constant travelling, on foot, from village to village of his native Galilee and Judea. From the moment he began his ministry, he didn’t have a home.

Therefore his diet was shaped entirely by those who offered him temporary hospitality. It was a function of his decision to be an itinerant preacher. That fact that this involved a significant amount of walking, probably guarantees that he was not obese. Needless to say, he was not tempted by calorie rich Big Macs, french fries, soda or ice cream.

Still, nowhere in the words of Jesus can you find a word of criticism or even comment about the first century diets of his contemporaries. We simply do not know whether he approved or disapproved of the food served to him by those gracious enough to welcome him into their homes.

Constant travelling. On foot. Even if he was having grand seven course meals every night (damned unlikely), that’s a fine way to keep the weight off. Unfortunately, many of those who claim to follow Christ’s footsteps these days would much rather do it by car.

I don’t really have a conclusion to this. Bad planning on my part.

Americans believe in two gods

Maybe not both at the same time, but that’s still what the results of study amount to, I suspect. But, maybe that’s just me believing in something that isn’t really there…

A couple studies were done recently to track how beliefs in god affect feelings of worry. The findings were presented at the annual American Psychological Association gathering in Washington, D.C.

One study questioned 332 subjects solicited from religious Web sites and religious organizations that included Christians and Jews. The study found those who trusted in God to look out for them had lower levels of worry and less intolerance of uncertainty in their lives than those who had a “mistrust” of God to help them out, Rosmarin says.

The second study was of 125 subjects from Jewish organizations were shown an audio-video program designed to increase trust in God and decrease mistrust in God. Participants in the two-week program reported significant increases in trust in God as well as clinically and statistically significant decreases in intolerance of uncertainty, worry and stress.

These findings make some psychologists think they should be trained more in how to deal with their patients on a spiritual level, especially if it’s going make a noticeable difference in the state of their well being.

Isn’t that what pastors are for? If being told “Trust in God and everything will be rosy” actually worked to make people better, there’d be little need for psychologists.

I think the ones who are willing to admit to themselves that their god is a bastard are better off mentally. They’re not trying to fool themselves by pretending there’s a benevolent being out there that gives a damn. They’ve read their bibles, they’ve read about what that god has done, they choose to see his hand in the making of tragedy and given that god’s track record it’s hardly an illogical jump to conclusions. If this realization of reality has made them feel miserable, maybe the real help they need is guidance toward giving up gods completely. They need to be relieved of the belief that some malevolent force wishes them ill. Those people need to become atheists. It’ll make them feel better. Of course shit will still happen. Random terrible things will still happen. But at least those people wouldn’t be stuck believing they somehow deserve that divine punishment.

It’s a lot easier to deal with life’s challenges if you deal with the life that’s in front of you. There’s no need to credit or blame a god for any of it. Happiness can be a choice. Help is out there for those who know when to ask for it.

Read Jon Ronson’s “Psychopath Test”

The Guardian posted an excerpt a while back which I enjoyed reading, so when the library finally received its copies of the book I made sure to get on the list to read it.

Ronson spends a chunk of the book with “Tony,” a man who faked insanity so well that he avoided one relatively short jail term but wound up doing all that time and more behind the gates of Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital. Doctors there were eventually convinced it was psychopathy that led Tony to such extraordinary efforts to manipulate the courts and the medical teams.

Ronson dives into the history of psychopathic study a bit, too, outlining some of the bizarre attempts that were made to understand and fix such people (short answer: might never be possible, and has been known to make them worse).

He also read books by Bob Hare and contacted him about the work he did to create what’s known in the field as the PCL-R Checklist (included in the excerpt) and partook in one of Hare’s seminars so he could learn how to grade potential psychopaths with it.

The interviews in the middle of the book are where he puts his new skills to the test, meeting with Toto Constant, once a paramilitary leader, C.I.A. informer, and head of a death squad in Haiti, and Al Dunlap, a Sunbeam CEO who joyfully fired people (among other things).

He suggests somewhere in the book that it’s kind of a power trip having that ability and I can see why. You read the list and start thinking about the people you know and work with, celebrities, politicians, and other folks in the news and on TV and wonder…

In doing this, Ronson is reminded that journalists are always on the hunt for the eccentrics when it comes to finding things to write about. So are those who cast for Springeresque talk shows, he discovers. They look for “the right sort of madness” to intrigue viewers but not so nuts as to be dangerous. Ronson comes to the conclusion that people in those kinds of jobs have created their own versions of a Hare test to pass and fail potential media darlings.

David Shayler was one of those darlings for a while. Once an MI5 officer, his rabid interest in conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 and 7/7 got the better of him and now he wanders around dressed like a woman and claims to be the next Messiah. His conspiracy wing-nut ideas got him a lot of press at the time but his saviour complex has pushed him a bit too far into Looney Country and he’s lost some of the “credibility” his fans thought he had.

Ronson spends part of the book looking at the history of mental illness as the content of the enormous compendium that holds all the descriptions of all the syndromes currently invented by psychiatrists, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition. Psychopathy isn’t in the book. He interviews one of the creators of the thing, Robert Spitzer, to find out why. It turned out that there’d been a schism between Hare and Lee Robins, a sociologist who argued (successfully as it turned out) that “clinicians couldn’t reliably measure personality traits like empathy.” (p. 239) Lack of empathy is one of the items on Hare’s list. They opted to call it “Antisocial Personality Disorder” instead, but Ronson reports a suggestion to rename it “Hare Syndrome” at some point. No idea if that would appease him or not, though.

There’s more in the book, obviously, but it was a fairly quick read and every anecdote was an interesting one. The mysterious books that led him to look into mental illness to the scientologists who’ve successfully ruined the careers of some iffy psychiatrists, Tony’s destiny.

who does admit, somewhat begrudgingly, that

Are prophecies more likely to appeal to gamblers?

I don’t have any stats to back that up but it’d be interesting to investigate, wouldn’t it? Maybe someone qualified will consider tracking that after May 21st. If researchers go back into the lives of people fleeced (and possibly bankrupted) by Harold Camping’s latest idiocy, I wonder how many of them would have a history of monetary risk taking, or risk taking in general.

I found an article at the Vancouver Sun noting work done in the 1950s by a psychologist named Leon Festinger, who had an opportunity to study a different end times cult. I can’t recall if his name ever came up in my university Psych classes but I was also in the habit of ditching them for coffee with a friend instead so who knows. Anyway, he and his team determined that cognitive dissonance had a big part to play in a person’s ability to buy into beliefs anyone else might scoff at. Why? Because when those beliefs fail to deliver the expected results, hard-core followers don’t usually conclude that they’ve been betrayed. They’ll find a way to rationalize it, turn it around, and stay positive. Again, and again, and again. It’s not even limited to prophecies. People rethink and reanalyze this way on a daily basis to justify any number of bad/sudden decisions.

Which is why I thought about problem gamblers who expect their luck to turn “any minute now” rather than conclude the game is rigged for failure and quit playing. Maybe playing this prophecy game is evidence of impulse control issues, too. Studies done with rats have found links between good decision making and serotonin levels, comparable to what humans experience in gambling situations.

Believing we stand at the end of the world is a hell of a gamble and it’s not going to pay off for anyone.

“It’s natural to believe in God”

It’s also natural to crap where we’re standing but most of us adults have the sphincter control to hold it in until we can make it to a bathroom.

The post title comes from an article about the results of a research project.

Human beings have natural tendencies to believe in God and life after death, according to a three-year international research project directed by two academics at the University of Oxford.

The 1.9 million pounds project involved 57 researchers who conducted over 40 separate studies in 20 countries representing a diverse range of cultures. The studies (both analytical and empirical) conclude that humans are predisposed to believe in God and an afterlife, and that both theology and atheism are reasoned responses to what is a basic impulse of the human mind, a university release said.

The study wasn’t on the hunt for proof of god. The ambition was find out if we learn to believe, or if the ability to believe is innate within us.

The findings are due to be published in two separate books by psychologist Dr Barrett in Cognitive Science, Religion and Theology and Born Believers: The Science of Childhood Religion.

The studies by Emily Reed Burdett and Justin Barrett suggest that children below the age of five find it easier to believe in some superhuman properties than to understand similar human limitations. Children were asked whether their mother would know the contents of a box in which she could not see.

Children aged three believed that their mother and God would always know the contents, but by the age of four, children start to understand that their mothers are not all-seeing and all knowing.

However, children may continue to believe in all-seeing, all-knowing supernatural agents, such as a God or Gods.

And it’s noted that research on adults out of China and Belfast suggested that belief in an afterlife is instinctual. The books they’ll release about this research might be worth looking for. Quoting Project Director Dr Justin Barrett, from Oxford’s Centre for Anthropology and Mind:

Just because we find it easier to think in a particular way does not mean that it is true in fact. If we look at why religious beliefs and practices persist in societies across the world, we conclude that individuals bound by religious ties might be more likely to cooperate as societies.

“Interestingly, we found that religion is less likely to thrive in populations living in cities in developed nations where there is already a strong social support network.”

But, Project Co-Director Professor Roger Trigg, also at Oxford, figures that since the mental habits of religion can be found all over the world, ridding the world of religion is a pipe dream and unlikely to occur.

“This suggests that attempts to suppress religion are likely to be short-lived as human thought seems to be rooted to religious concepts, such as the existence of supernatural agents or Gods, and the possibility of an afterlife or pre-life.”

We’ve evolved to want to believe in something. It won’t matter how many organized religions might dwindle, the urge to create images of gods in our minds and share them with others will keep going on.

Assuming the Rapture doesn’t solve this problem for us on the 21st…

A link between religion and consumerism?

Here’s a story up my alley. I’m reading a book right now called Can’t Buy my Love: How advertising changes the way we think and feel. Jean Kilbourne wrote it more than a decade ago so it’s not completely up to date but it’s likely that trends she noted then will only have gotten worse now.

I don’t watch a lot of television so I rarely see commercials. What I tend to do is wait until the library gets something and then borrow it. People like me are the reason imbedded advertising has gotten to the point it’s at. I was watching Bones Season 6 this past week and it was hard not to notice who paid for the privilege to have their cars in the show. Three different episodes praised three technical wonders available in vehicles these days: cameras in an SUV that help you parallel park, GPS devices that react to voice instead of touch activation, and a driver attention system (in a Prius, I recall) that alerts everyone if the car drifts over the double line. All impressive, and all added into the conversations between characters. In two cases, the writers did an okay job of making the tech part of the program (not getting lost, and erratic driving catching the eyes of police) but in the third it was clearly slapped in to sell the SUV’s safety rating, not so Daisy and Angela could bond.

Long digression, sorry. The article is out of New Zealand and research done at the Universities of Canterbury and Bath to track the buying habits of Christians. Results seemed to indicate that Christians didn’t want to buy products advertised in showy or materialistic ways but would buy based on the perceived quality of the product.

As part of the study more than 400 people from Britain were surveyed about advertising for a luxury watch. Half of the survey group identified themselves as being religious and believed materialism was wrong.

“We found that expensive luxury watches that were advertised as being showy or an item of envy were frowned upon by religious consumers,” Dr Veer said.

While non-religious consumers had no preference, religious consumers were 25 per cent more likely to purchase the watch if they saw the advertisement which did not portray it as a materialistic item.

“It’s a really interesting case of being torn between the consumer driven world that encourages material wealth and one’s religious beliefs,” he said.

The results helped explain how many Christians can accumulate and store materialistic items despite the Biblical teachings against it.

The last line of the article is what reminded me of the book I’m reading:

The research could benefit advertisers seeking to target these groups.

Here’s the thing. The ad agencies that get hired to promote companies know a lot of tricks already so they’re probably very aware of what works to lure Christians into spending money. I expect this study was completely unnecessary and uncovered nothing advertisers didn’t know already.

I’m not very far into the book I mentioned above but Kilbourne provides a lot of examples from a publication called Advertising Age in which companies place ads to sell their products to advertisers. It gets pretty sinister sounding as she piles up evidence that the marketing of products is all about manipulating the desired audience. (I see that the Ad Age website has a whole section devoted to Hispanic marketing.)

From page 48:

“Black people drink too much,” says an ad for the Black Newspaper Network. “Too much, that is,” the copy continues, “for you to ignore.” “Diario Las Américas readers Pour It On,” echoes an ad in Advertising Age for a Spanish-language newspaper sold in Florida. The truth is that African-Americans and Latinos don’t drink nearly as much as Caucasians, but they represent desirable new territory to the alcohol industry. And so the African-American and Latino media hand them over.

Perhaps this wouldn’t matter very much if it didn’t affect the content of the media. But it does. “Uncork the black market,” says an ad for Ebony magazine in Advertising Age, which promises alcohol advertisers that “nothing sells black consumers better.” A few years later Ebony did a story on the ten most serious health problems affecting blacks–but did not include the fact that alcohol is related to nine out of the ten health problems. There were eleven alcohol ads in this same issue of Ebony.

Kilburne mentions similar set-ups in ladies magazines, alerting readers to bizarre health dangers (beware of burning toasters!) on one page but advertising cigarettes on others, never once mentioning in the articles how bad cigarettes are for people. Can’t offend the ones who buy ad space, after all. A loss of revenue like that would cripple them, if not kill them completely.

I’m up to page 64 where she quotes media scholar Mark Crispin Miller. He suggests that people these days tend to have less tolerance toward things that are depressing. “I think ultimately it has to do with advertising, with a vision of life as a shopping trip.” This statement reminded me of something worth verifying. It turns out that while George W. Bush didn’t exactly tell Americans to “go shopping” after 9/11, he did encourage people to fly to tourist destinations like Disney World and have fun. I’m sure more than a few people did just that and built a fantasy that all was right with the world, yet spent like there was no tomorrow.

It’s truly a pipe dream to think we can’t be bought, manipulated or intimidated by the media and our saturated surroundings. Maybe we can trick ourselves into thinking we’re unaffected by advertising but maybe the bigger trick was done by the advertisers themselves. Like the old adage about the smartest thing the devil ever did, he let people think he didn’t exist.

I’m not a big Dr. Seuss fan but a Freudian Cat in the Hat…

… analysis made for some interesting reading. For those unfamiliar with the story, the Cat in the Hat encourages a couple “Home Alone” kids to do a bunch of ridiculous crap and their goldfish attempts to be the voice of reason.

Or possibly Jesus:

The Cat proceeds to charm the wary youths into engaging in what he so innocently refers to as “tricks.” At this point, the fish, an obvious Christ figure who represents the prevailing Christian morality, attempts to warn the children, and thus, in effect, warns all of humanity of the dangers associated with the unleashing of the primal urges. In response to this, the cat proceeds to balance the aquatic naysayer on the end of his umbrella, essentially saying, “Down with morality; down with God!”

After poohpoohing the righteous rantings of the waterlogged Christ figure, the Cat begins to juggle several icons of Western culture, most notably two books, representing the Old and New Testaments, and a saucer of lactal fluid, an ironic reference to maternal loss the two children experienced when their mother abandoned them “for the afternoon.” Our heroic Id adds to this bold gesture a rake and a toy man, and thus completes the Oedipal triangle

Has the anonymous author of this piece read too much into this tale of childish recklessness, or is he hitting the phallic nail on the head here? According to CNN, Ted Geisel wrote the book as a statement against the boredom that was Dick and Jane books and wanted something better and more fun so kids would grow up loving to read. Decide which of these theories you like better, I guess.

It turns out that Geisel was Lutheran and Christians have been encouraged to use his secular writings in morality lesson plans for some time.

In 2004, Judson Press published a thin book by clergyman James W. Kemp called, The Gospel According To Dr. Seuss, which sought to liberate Geisel’s theology from the pages of his children’s books. Kemp was somewhat successful in connecting biblical passages to Geisel’s themes of faith and forgiveness, and to the social concerns about war, racism and the environment that are found in his books.

As an artist, Geisel created flamboyant creatures for children to enjoy, and placed words like diamonds on pages to bring them joy. It seems that in it all he was just passing on the Christian values he learned as a child.

But there’s also evidence that Geisel and his wife might have been pro-abortion. His widow raised a stink over an anti-abortion group that took the Horton Hears a Who quote, “A person’s a person, no matter how small,” for their own advertising campaign.

Atheists can find meaning in his books, too. I found a nice piece by Pinoy Atheist, comparing atheist/religious debates to the Zax and their stubbornness. I hadn’t heard of that one so I hunted down a video version. The music is provided by someone emulating Bob Dylan from an album called Dylan Hears a Who.

Why ask why, I say…

So thinking someone’s watching is kind of “childish”?

Not really the point of the study. I’m just sayin’…

The study involved 39 kids and researchers in Belfast set up a game that was difficult enough to make cheating seem like the only way to win it. They also set the kids up with the possibility that an invisible princess named Alice might be in the room while they played.

While secretly being videoed, each child played the game either with an adult present, with no one present, or with no one except “Princess Alice” present.

Beforehand, they were all asked if they believed Princess Alice really existed. Of the 11 children who did, only 1 cheated in her “presence”. Five of the seven disbelievers cheated, but not before they’d manually “checked” the Princess didn’t exist by running their hand over the chair to feel if she was there.

“This is an interesting example of an audience effect and the drive to preserve our reputation,” says Chris Frith of University College London, who was not involved in the study. “It’s certainly consistent with the idea that belief in an invisible watcher will increase social-norm conformity.”

Next, the researchers hope to delve deeper by finding out why children behaved well when being watched by Alice: whether it was from fear she would punish them directly, or that she would tell the experimenter.

I wonder if it occurred to the researchers to do another round of this with kids told that the invisible watcher is something other than nobility. Maybe the presumed importance of the invisible person was in play here, too. Would it make a difference if they’d been told it was an invisible janitor or even another kid who might be watching?

It’s certainly interesting in terms of how people in general might decide the best course of action. I’m amused by how many kids checked the chair to see if they could literally “feel” a presence rather than taking a researcher’s word for it (or their own sense about the impossibility of invisible people). I wonder if any of them considered the possibility that she was still in the room but standing.

How many of us need the feeling of being externally monitored in order to “encourage” us to make moral decisions and play fair ? How many choices wind up being made with the intent to save face rather than because the decision itself is the “right” one?