kerkko.fi

In high doses, alcohol impairs our reaction times, muscle control, co-ordination, short-term memory, perceptual field, cognitive abilities, and ability to speak clearly. But it does not cause us selectively to break specific social rules. The effects of alcohol on behaviour are determined by cultural rules and norms.

Read the rest of this post »

In many German cities, Muslim arbiters, or "peace judges," are settling criminal cases before law enforcement can bring the cases to court. That is undermining Germany's rule of law, according to a new book published by Econ Verlag.

German law expert and former public TV investigative journalist Joachim Wagner presented a new book on Monday in which he speaks of a parallel justice system among the Muslim minority that undermines the rule of law in Germany.

The 236-page book, titled "Judges Without Law: Islamic Parallel Justice Endangers Our Rule of Law," looks into the problems the German judiciary faces when investigating crimes committed within Muslim communities in Germany.

The entire British political class came together to denounce the rioters. They were right to say that the actions of these looters were abhorrent, and that the police should be given more support. But there was also something very phony and hypocritical about all the shock and outrage expressed in parliament. MPs spoke about the week’s dreadful events as if they were nothing to do with them.

I cannot accept that this is the case. I believe that the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of British society. The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite. It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat. An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up.

The specter of fascist resurgence may not be far beneath the peaceful veneer of any nation. Even the most ostensibly free and open societies are not immune to fascism's lure -- including places like Palo Alto. What came to be known as the "Third Wave" began at Cubberly High School in Palo Alto as a game without any direct reference to Nazi Germany, says Ron Jones, who had just begun his first teaching job in the 1966-1967 academic year.

When a social studies student asked about the German public's responsibility for the rise of the Third Reich, Jones decided to try and simulate what happened in Germany by having his students "follow instructions" for a day. But one day turned into five, and what happened by the end of the school week spawned several documentaries, studies and related social experiments illuminating a dark side of human nature -- and a major weakness in public education.

Why is there so little looting in Japan? The explanation is a robust system of laws that reinforce honesty, a strong police presence, and, ironically, active crime organizations. The Japanese legal structure rewards honesty more than most. The high rates of recovery have less to do with altruism than with the system of carrots and sticks that incentivizes people to return property they find rather than keep it. If you find an umbrella and turn it in to the cops, you get a finder's fee of 5-20% of its value if the owner picks it up.

If they do not pick it up within six months, the finder gets to keep the umbrella. Japanese learn about this system from a young age, and a child's first trip to the nearest police station after finding a small coin, say, is a rite of passage that both children and police officers take seriously. At the same time, police enforce small crimes like petty theft, which contributes to an overall sense of security and order. Failure to return a found wallet can result in hours of interrogation at best, and up to 10 years in prison at worst.

Japan has an active and visible police force of nearly 300,000 officers across the country. Cops walk their beats and chat up local residents and shopkeepers. Police are posted at ubiquitous kobans, police boxes manned by one or two officers, and in cities there is almost always a koban within walking distance of another koban. A survey in 1992 found that 95% of residents knew where the nearest koban was. Police are good at their jobs: The clearance rate for murder in 2010 was an unbelievable 98.2%.

At the same time, members of the Yakuza are also enforcing order. All three major crime groups -- Yamaguchi-gumi, Sumiyoshi-kai, and Inagawa-kai -- patrol the streets to make sure looting and robbery does not occur. The Sumiyoshi-kai claims to have shipped over 40 tons of humanitarian aid supplies nationwide and that is probably a conservative estimate. One group has even opened its Tokyo offices to displaced Japanese and foreigners who were stranded after the first tremors disabled public transportation.

Alcohol is more dangerous than illegal drugs like marijuana, according to a new study. British experts evaluated substances including alcohol, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, and marijuana, ranking them based on how destructive they are to the individual who takes them and to society as a whole.

Researchers analyzed how addictive a drug is and how it harms the human body, in addition to other criteria like environmental damage caused by the drug, its role in breaking up families, and its economic costs, such as health care, social services, and prison.

Heroin, crack cocaine, and crystal meth were the most lethal to individuals. When considering their wider social effects, alcohol, heroin, and crack were the deadliest. Overall, alcohol outranked all other substances, followed by heroin, and crack. Marijuana, ecstasy, and LSD scored far lower.

The study was paid for by Britain's Centre for Crime and Justice Studies and was published online Monday in the medical journal, Lancet. Experts said alcohol scored so high because it is so widely used and has devastating consequences not only for drinkers but for those around them.

http://www.latimes.com/sns-ap-eu-med-dangerous-alcohol,0,4283007.story

A new study shows that people feel morally cleansed when they are physically clean, and as such are more inclined to judge others more harshly. The study conducted by Chen-Bo Zhong at Northwestern University found that “participants who cleansed their hands before rating the social issues judged these issues to be more morally wrong compared to those who did not cleanse their hands.”

Those who had a self-image of cleanliness and purity made more harsh moral judgements on social issues. Crucially, this association was entirely mediated by their having an inflated sense of moral virtue compared with their peers. "Acts of cleanliness have not only the potential to shift our moral pendulum to a more virtuous self, but also license harsher moral judgment of others," Zhong concluded.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/08/clean-people-feel-morally-superior/

An interesting yet disheartening series of socioeconomic experiments shows that those on the lower-income levels are more likely to give and be charitable than their higher paid counterparts. The findings come from experiments carried out by UC Berkeley doctoral student Paul Piff and his team. A recent national survey in the US reiterates the results, revealing lower-income people give more of their hard-earned money to charity than the wealthy.

At a time when the richest one percent of Americans own more than the bottom 90 percent combined, the findings are timely. "Our data suggests that an ironic and self-perpetuating dynamic may in part explain this trend," the researchers write. "Whereas lower-class individuals may give more of their resources away, upper-class individuals may tend to preserve and hold onto their wealth. This differential pattern could exacerbate economic inequality."

Prior research done by Piff and his colleagues suggests lower income people might be more compassionate because they are more closely rooted to and dependent on others, therefore more empathetic. It is also thought that the more money the lower-earning people make in their lifetime, the higher their status becomes. As a result, their ability to connect with others' point-of-view disappears, including the low-income population they were once ties to.

http://www.physorg.com/news201364510.html

Peter Jonason of New Mexico University believes that narcissism and callousness may have an innate, genetic component. Speaking in New Scientist, Dr Jonason describes the "Dark Triad" of traits: the self-obsession of narcissism, the impulsive, thrill-seeking and callous behaviour of psychopaths, and the deceitful and exploitative nature of Machiavellianism. "We have evidence that these traits may represent a successful evolutionary strategy," he says.

While acknowledging that clinical levels of the Dark Triad traits are certainly socially undesirable, Dr Jonason and his colleagues argue that the traits that underlie the Dark Triad, which are partially independent but moderately related to one another, are best viewed as one particular social orientation towards others and may facilitate people's goals, especially when those goals involve an exploitative social strategy and a short-term mating strategy.

Those scoring high on the Dark Triad tended to be more extraverted, open to experience, and have higher self-esteem. They also tended to be less agreeable, neurotic, and conscientious. "The traits reflect a highly selfish social strategy. High level of self-esteem, extraversion, and openness, along with low levels of conscientiousness and anxiety, may be instrumental in enabling an exploiter to persist in the face of potential social rejection and retaliation."

"In a world where individuals want to avoid being taken advantage of, those high on the Dark Triad, like James Bond, who tend to be more agentic than others, have a particularly difficult task at hand. How to get what they want without rousing the suspicions or retaliations of others? The answer is to be extraverted, open, high on self-esteem, and low on conscientiousness and anxiety while being individualistic and competitive," Dr Jonason argues.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/201007/james-bonds-psyche