[ tara duveanu ] [ finding out how online marketing and social design work together ]
“By hurting, the emotion of envy forces us to focus our thoughts on the source of our agitation. That’s a reasonable interpretation from the data, but the fact is that envy does change our cognitive function - it boosts mental persistence and memory.”
“No man will turn his head to ogle a woman because she looks like the type to buy a turkey sandwich for a homeless man or read to the blind.”
“It’s well known that we’re prone to absorb or mimic the opinions and body language of others in all sorts of situations, including those that might seem the most intensely individual, such as who we’re attracted to. While psychologists don’t necessarily think of that sort of influence as “clouding” one’s judgment — most would say it’s a mechanism for learning, allowing us to benefit from information other people have access to that we don’t — it’s easy to see how being surrounded by other people could hamper a person’s efforts to figure out what he or she really thinks of something.
[…] Kids who spent between 25 and 45 percent of their nonclass time alone tended to have more positive emotions over the course of the weeklong study than their more socially active peers, were more successful in school and were less likely to self-report depression.” Source: great read on Boston Globe’s website
“Knowing who is sleeping with whom, who is angry at whom, who cheated whom, and so on, can inform social maneuvering for sex and other vital resources. Indeed, the sorts of gossip that people in all cultures have an apparently inherent thirst for—tales of triumph, tragedy, bonanza, misfortune, extraordinary fidelity, wretched betrayal, and so on—match up well with the sorts of information conducive to fitness.”
Robert Wright - “The Moral Animal”
