Talking in Euphemisms Can Chip Away at Your Sense of Morality

Laura Niemi, Alek Chakroff, and Liane Young
The Science of Us
Originally published April 7, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Taken together, the results suggest that unethical behavior becomes easier when we perceive our own actions in indirect terms, which makes things that we would otherwise balk at seem a bit more palatable. In other words, deploying indirect speech doesn’t just help us evade blame from others — it also helps us to convince ourselves that unethical acts aren’t so bad after all.

That’s not to say that this is a conscious process. A speaker who shrouds his harmful intentions in indirect speech may understand that this will help him hold on to his standing in the public eye, or maintain his reputation among those closest to him — a useful tactic when those intentions are likely to be condemned or fall outside the bounds of socially acceptable behavior. But that same speaker may be unaware of just how much their indirect speech is easing their own psyche, too.

The article is here.

Financial ties between researchers and drug industry linked to positive trial results

British Medical Journal
Press Release
Originally released January 17, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

More than half (58%) of principal investigators had financial ties to the drug industry - including travel expenses, honorariums, payment for advisory work, or stock ownership.

The results show that trials authored by principal investigators with financial ties to drug manufacturers were more likely than other trials to report favourable results.

Even after accounting for factors that may have affected the results, such as funding source and sample size, financial ties were still significantly associated with positive study outcomes.

The authors point to possible mechanisms linking industry funding, financial ties, and trial results such as bias by selective outcome reporting, lack of publication, and inappropriate analyses.

The pressor is here.

How Unconscious Bias Is Affecting Our Ability To Listen

Vivian Giang
The Fast Company
Originally published September 8, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

Meghan Sumner, an associate professor of linguistics at Stanford University, stumbled into the unconscious bias realm after years of investigating how listeners extract information from voices, and how the pieces of information are stored in our memory. Study after study, she found that we all listen differently based on where we’re from and our feelings toward different accents. It’s not a conscious choice, but the result of social biases that form unconscious stereotyping which then influences that way we listen.

"It’s not always what someone said, it’s also how they said it," Sumner tells Fast Company. "How we view people socially from their voice, influences how we attend to them, how we listen to them."

For instance, in one experiment, Sumner found that the "average American listener" preferred a "Southern Standard British English" voice rather than one who had a New York City accent, even if both voices are saying the same words. Consequently, the listener will remember more of what the English speaker says and will deem them as smarter. All of this is impacted by the stereotypes that we have of British people and New Yorkers.

The article is here.

Don't make Important Decisions When You are Hungry

The Stomach-Derived Hormone Ghrelin Increases Impulsive Behavior

Rozita H Anderberg, Caroline Hansson, Maya Fenande and others
Neuropsychopharmacology (2016) 41, 1199–1209
doi:10.1038/npp.2015.297; published online 21 October 2015

Abstract

Impulsivity, defined as impaired decision making, is associated with many psychiatric and behavioral disorders, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder as well as eating disorders. Recent data indicate that there is a strong positive correlation between food reward behavior and impulsivity, but the mechanisms behind this relationship remain unknown. Here we hypothesize that ghrelin, an orexigenic hormone produced by the stomach and known to increase food reward behavior, also increases impulsivity. In order to assess the impact of ghrelin on impulsivity, rats were trained in three complementary tests of impulsive behavior and choice: differential reinforcement of low rate (DRL), go/no-go, and delay discounting. Ghrelin injection into the lateral ventricle increased impulsive behavior, as indicated by reduced efficiency of performance in the DRL test, and increased lever pressing during the no-go periods of the go/no-go test. Central ghrelin stimulation also increased impulsive choice, as evidenced by the reduced choice for large rewards when delivered with a delay in the delay discounting test. In order to determine whether signaling at the central ghrelin receptors is necessary for maintenance of normal levels of impulsive behavior, DRL performance was assessed following ghrelin receptor blockade with central infusion of a ghrelin receptor antagonist. Central ghrelin receptor blockade reduced impulsive behavior, as reflected by increased efficiency of performance in the DRL task. To further investigate the neurobiological substrate underlying the impulsivity effect of ghrelin, we microinjected ghrelin into the ventral tegmental area, an area harboring dopaminergic cell bodies. Ghrelin receptor stimulation within the VTA was sufficient to increase impulsive behavior. We further evaluated the impact of ghrelin on dopamine-related gene expression and dopamine turnover in brain areas key in impulsive behavior control. This study provides the first demonstration that the stomach-produced hormone ghrelin increases impulsivity and also indicates that ghrelin can change two major components of impulsivity—motor and choice impulsivity.

The article is here.