Mortality Salience and Metabolism: Glucose Drinks Reduce Worldview Defense Caused by Mortality Salience

The current work tested the hypothesis that a glucose drink would reduce worldview defense following mortality salience. Participants consumed either a glucose drink or placebo, wrote about either death or dental pain, and then completed a measure of worldview defense (viewing positively someone with pro-US views and viewing negatively someone with anti-US views). Mortality salience increased world- view defense among participants who consumed a placebo but not among participants who consumed a glucose drink. Glucose might reduce defensiveness after mortality salience by increasing the effectiveness of the self-controlled suppression of death-related thought, by providing resources to cope with mortality salience and reducing its threatening nature, or by distancing the individual from actual physical death

Improved Self-Control Associated with Using Relatively Large Amounts of Glucose: Learning Self-Control Is Metabolically Expensive

The current study examined whether changes in glucose during a self-control task would predict changes in self-control performance later on. Participants attended two experimental sessions, spaced two weeks apart. During each session, they had their glucose measured, completed the Stroop task as a measure of self-control, and then had their glucose measured again. Larger decreases in glucose (from before to after the Stroop task) during the first session predicted larger increases in improvement on the Stroop task during the second session, in the form of increased speed. Learning self-control might benefit from using larger amounts of glucose. Learning self-control is metabolically expensive. These findings raise the possibility that self-control fatigue occurs because metabolic energy is depleted during the learning of self-control

Linguistic Barriers to Financial Flows

Historical ties and linguistic similarities between countries are highly correlated with outcomes in the financial sector. Various types of linguistic relationships all affect information flows between populations, and countries with similar languages can more easily share ideas and are likely to have come from similar historical groups. There is evidence that linguistic factors have a strong relationship with bilateral trade, and I test whether this is also true for financial flows. Using bilateral data on the debt and equity flows between the 35 OECD countries in 2002 to 2012, I examine the changing patterns of financial flows and language between countries. I find that the relationship between linguistic similarity and equity flows is significant and large in magnitude before 2008. After 2008, this pattern holds. However, the relationship between linguistic similarity and debt flows is not strong before or after 2008. Despite integration under the European Union and institutions like the OECD, historical linguistic patterns of financial flows still hold in times of economic prosperity.No embargoAcademic Major: EconomicsAcademic Major: Mathematic

Hunger and Reduced Self-Control in the Laboratory and across the World: Reducing Hunger as a Self-Control Panacea

Ten studies link hunger to reduced self-control. Higher levels of hunger-as assessed by self-report, time since last eating, or physiology-predicted reduced self-control, as indicated by increased racial prejudice, (hypothetical) sexual infidelity, passivity, accessibility of death thoughts and perceptions of task difficulty, as well as impaired Stroop performance and decreased self-monitoring. Increased rates of hunger across 200 countries predicted increased war killings, suggestive of reduced aggressive restraint. In a final experiment, self-reported hunger mediated the effect of hungry (v fed) participants performing worse on the Stroop task, suggesting a causal relationship of hunger reducing self-control

La place de l’editor dans la procession des jeux

À Rome, les jeux du cirque commençaient par une procession solennelle qui menaient les hommes et les dieux du Capitole au Grand Cirque. L’importance du rôle qu’y jouait le magistrat chargé d’organiser les festivités, revêtu d’un costume similaire à celui du général triomphant et entouré de ses clients et des autres magistrats, a déjà été bien souligné. En revanche, sa place dans l’ordonnance du cortège reste à définir précisément. En se fondant sur une relecture attentive d’un célèbre passage de Denys d’Halicarnasse et sur le témoignage fondamental des actes épigraphiques des Jeux séculaires sévériens, cet article propose de donner à l’editor sa juste place, loin derrière les cohortes d’adolescents, les athlètes, les ludions, les victimes sacrificielles et les musiciens, juste devant les statues des dieux, de façon à mieux comprendre le fonctionnement de la cérémonie, aussi bien d’un point de vue rituel que politique.In Rome, a grand procession was held before public games, where Gods and men marched from the Capitol to the Great Circus. Scholars have stressed the fundamental role of the editor, the roman magistrate in charge of the ceremony, dressed remarkably like a triumphing general, and surrounded by his friends, clients and colleagues. A faulty reading of Dionysius of Halicarnassus has led to surmise that the editor led the marching order. Using the Severian acta of the Saecular Games, combined with a careful re-reading of Dionysius, this article proposes to locate the editor behind the youths, athletes, dancers, musicians and sacrificial victims, just before the statues of the gods. Understanding the correct organisation of the pompa circensis allows in turn for a better understanding of the ritual and political stakes of the ceremony

Breaking the Rules: Low Trait or State Self-Control Increases Social Norm Violations

Two pilot and six studies indicated that poor self-control causes people to violate social norms and rules that are effortful to follow. Lower trait self-control was associated with a greater willingness to take ethical risks and use curse words. Participants who completed an initial self-control task that reduced the capacity for self-control used more curse words and were more willing to take ethical risks than participants who completed a neutral task. Poor self-control was also associated with violating explicit rules given by the experimenter. Depleting self-control resources in a self-control exercise caused participants subsequently to talk when they had been instructed to remain silent. Low trait self-control and poor performance on a behavioral measure of self-control (the Stroop task) predicted poor compliance following experimental instructions over a 2-week span. Poor self-control thus undermines adherence to some social rules and regulations, therefore possibly contributing to a broad variety of social ills

Stereotypes and prejudice in the blood: sucrose drinks reduce prejudice and stereotyping

"Prejudice and stereotyping cause social problems and intergroup tension. The current work examined whether bolstering self-control by giving participants glucose would reduce stereotype use for an impression formation task. Previous work has demonstrated that self-control depends on biologically expensive brain processes that consume energy derived from glucose in the bloodstream. In the current study, glucose was manipulated via lemonade sweetened with either sugar or Splenda. Compared to the control group, the participants in the glucose condition used fewer stereotypes when writing an essay about a day in the life of a gay man. In addition, high-prejudice participants in the glucose condition used fewer derogatory statements in their essays than high-prejudice participants in the control condition. The findings are discussed in terms of the importance of self-control resources in the effective regulation of prejudice and stereotyping." [author's abstract

No effects of ingesting or rinsing sucrose on depleted self-control performance

Self-control tasks appear to deplete a limited resource resulting in reduced subsequent self-control performance; a state of ego depletion. Evidence of reduced peripheral glucose by exertion of self-control, and attenuation of ego depletion by carbohydrate metabolism underpins the proposition that this macronutrient provides the energetic source of self-control. However, the demonstration of positive, non-metabolic effects on ego depletion when merely sensing carbohydrates orally contradicts this hypothesis. Recent studies have also failed to support both metabolic and non-metabolic accounts. The effects of ingesting or rinsing a carbohydrate (sucrose) and an artificially sweetened (sucralose) solution on capillary blood and interstitial glucose, and depleted self-control performance were examined in older adults. Forty, healthy, adults (50-65. years) ingested and rinsed sucrose and sucralose solutions in a 2 (method). × 2 (source), fully counterbalanced, repeated measures, crossover design. Capillary blood and interstitial glucose responses were assayed. Depleted self-control performance (induced by the Bakan visual processing task) on an attention switch task was assessed under each study condition. Ego depletion had no consistent effects on peripheral glucose levels and no significant effects of ingesting or rinsing sucrose on self-control were observed. The act of rinsing the solutions, independent of energetic content, resulted in a small, non-significant enhancement of performance on the attention switch task relative to ingesting the same solutions (RT: p= 05; accuracy: p= 09). In conclusion, a metabolic account of self-control was not supported. Whilst a positive effect of rinsing on depleted self-control performance was demonstrated, this was independent of energetic content. Findings suggest glucose is an unlikely physiological analogue for self-control resources