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The anecdote about the study doesn't pass basic common sense unless they happened to randomly select psychopaths for the leader every time (unlikely) Imagine y
by imgabe 5y ago
The anecdote about the study doesn't pass basic common sense unless they happened to randomly select psychopaths for the leader every time (unlikely)
Imagine yourself in the situation of the leader and think about what you would do. Would you greedily grab the cookie and eat it "with gusto"? Or would you maybe propose any of the blindingly obvious and more fair solutions that immediately leap to mind - break the cookie into 3 equal pieces (duh), draw straws for it, rock paper scissors, ask politely if anyone else wants it, you know, like anything that a normal human being in a non-made-up story might do.
- rambambram 5y agoThis, also. Plus one for calling something a 'psychopath' when it's indeed Cluster B behavior pur sang.
- teekert 5y agoAbsolutely, I recently read Rutger Bregman’s “Humankind” and it has made me extremely skeptical of these short “sounds nice” stories. Like with the Stanford experiments, they should be thoroughly reproduced or otherwise assumed to be made up.
- underyx 5y agoWorrying about the sugar contents I'd be happiest to pass off a second cookie to someone else anyway, even if I perceive it to be 'mine'.
- codeulike 5y agoHere's the paper but its quite long https://web.archive.org/web/20120915145553/https://gsbapps.stanford.edu/researchpapers/library/rp1669.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20120915145553/https://gsbapps.s...
- imgabe 5y agoThis isn't the paper about the cookie study, this paper examines results from a number of studies, including the cookie one, which it identifies as Ward and Keltner 1998. That paper was never published. https://thenewstatistics.com/itns/2019/05/22/the-cookie-monster-study-the-highly-influential-memory-of-a-long-lost-study/ https://thenewstatistics.com/itns/2019/05/22/the-cookie-mons... It also doesn't claim anything like the effect that Lewis is talking about in his speech. The people in power ate, on average 1.25 cookies, which is not consistent with every single one greedily devouring the extra cookie. It also has 5 cookies for 3 people, so that at least one person could take an extra cookie without the social stigma of being the one who grabs the last cookie.
- ballenf 5y agoI'd expect a few groups to have a person who passed on the cookie, leaving two each for the others.
- fatnoah 5y agoThe entire story lost credibility when it noted that nearly every leader drooled and had crumbs on their shirt.