Nautilus Magazine: Why Power Brings Out Your True Self

Research in cognitive science reveals the former First Lady is right: Power exposes your true character. It releases inhibitions and sets your inner self free. If you’re a jerk when you gain power, you’ll become more of one. If you’re a mensch, you’ll get nicer. So if you happen to all of a sudden become president, or at least president of your lab or book club, what inner self will come out? [...]

It’s no surprise the traits of narcissism and Machiavellianism are stoked by power. A German study comparing 76 inmates convicted of high-level white-collar crimes with 150 managers on the outside found that the criminals were more narcissistic.7 A Dutch study published last year found that among 225 managers, those scoring higher on Machiavellianism were rated by their subordinates as abusive (“Our supervisor ridicules us”). [...]

Culture of origin can shape how individualistic or communal you are—and how you use power. Hispanic immigrants, on average, have been found to be more collectivistic than European Americans, more inclined to use power to help people, and less inclined to use it to take advantage of others.14 Priming European Americans to feel powerful increased the mental accessibility of words related to entitlement, but priming Asian Americans to feel powerful conjured responsibility.15 And while feeling powerful increased selfishness in European Americans, it reduced it in Asian Americans. [...]

In short, when people obtain power, don’t expect them to behave dramatically differently from how they behaved before. Nice people don’t suddenly become tyrants, and jerks don’t automatically become servants. How people behave when few people are watching them is a good indicator of how they’ll act when everyone is.

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Salon: Why doesn’t anyone know we’re incredibly close to replacing the Electoral College with the popular vote?

The simple compact proposes that states pledge their electoral votes “to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.” This rather brilliantly obviates the need for an amendment dumping the Electoral College from the Constitution.

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would only take effect when a sufficient number of states sign on such that their combined electoral votes constitute the magic 270 we’ve always needed to elect a president.

So far 165 electoral votes from 11 states have been secured. Of the remaining 105 required, 82 are seriously in play, having passed at least one legislative chamber in 10 states. Optimistically, we’re 23 new electoral votes away from ridding ourselves of the Electoral College. It’s something that could be managed through strategically pressuring a handful of state representatives. [...]

“A common argument against fixing the Electoral College is that it protects small states, but the evidence based on where presidential candidates spend time and money indicates otherwise,” Burke says. “Fourteen of the 15 smallest states by population are ignored like the big ones because they’re not swing states. Small states are safe states. Only New Hampshire gets significant attention. In terms of protecting small states, it’s a myth.”

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The Conversation: Guide to the classics: the Epic of Gilgamesh

Depending upon your point of view, Gilgamesh may be considered a myth-making biography of a legendary king, a love story, a comedy, a tragedy, a cracking adventure, or perhaps an anthology of origin stories.

All these elements are present in the narrative, and the diversity of the text is only matched by its literary sophistication. Perhaps surprisingly, given the extreme antiquity of the material, the epic is a masterful blending of complex existential queries, rich imagery and dynamic characters. [...]

Gilgamesh explores the nature and meaning of being human, and asks the questions that continue to be debated in the modern day: what is the meaning of life and love? What is life really — and am I doing it right? How do we cope with life’s brevity and uncertainty, and how do we deal with loss? [...]

Despite the gravity of this royal duty, Gilgamesh seems to do everything wrong. He kills the divinely-protected environmental guardian, Humbaba, and ransacks his precious Cedar Forest. He insults the beauteous goddess of love, Ishtar, and slays the mighty Bull of Heaven.

He finds the key to eternal youth, but then loses it just as quickly to a passing snake (in the process explaining the snake’s “renewal” after shedding its skin). Through these misadventures, Gilgamesh strives for fame and immortality, but instead finds love with his companion, Enkidu, and a deeper understanding of the limits of humanity and the importance of community.

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The Atlantic: The Virtues of Boredom

Boredom is in many ways an emotion of absence. The absence of stimulation, of interest, of excitement. But as Mary Mann reveals in her new book, Yawn: Adventures in Boredom, what’s lacking when we feel bored is often something much deeper than entertainment. She writes about her “fear that there was no overarching purpose for my time,” how boredom can paper over feelings of powerlessness or meaninglessness. It’s easier to label that itchy sensation “boredom” than it is to consider the feeling one gets sometimes that the train of life is stopped on its tracks, that the narrative is going nowhere. [...]

Mann: Toxic is a great word for it. There’s an idea, I think especially with loneliness, that it can be contagious. You see someone super lonely and you think “Oh they’re going to glom onto me and I’m never going to escape.” I’ve moved a lot and when I move to a new city that’s something I always worry that people see in me.

But with boredom I think it’s also embarrassing. People don’t want to admit that they feel bored because there’s a judgment about it, right? “Only boring people get bored.” It’s a sign that maybe you’re not as creative or as great or as fascinating as you would like to seem. So we just don't talk about it. [...]

Mann: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a weird paradox. The people who present as most interesting are also the ones who are most easily bored. Because boredom is such a motivating force, you’ll do whatever to not feel it. You’ll climb a mountain, you’ll go wrestle that fish away from a bear or whatever. Statistics can show what people click on, and we do seem to be attracted to people who profess to love new things and new experiences.

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Scientific American: Why Don't People Return Their Shopping Carts?

Supermarkets can try and guide our behavior with receptacles or cart attendants, but they’re competing with our own self-serving goals, which in this case may be staying dry, keeping an eye on our children, or simply getting home as quickly as possible, and we’re being guided by the ways others behave on top of that. These goals can override the norm because the support provided by the supermarket—ironically—resets the situation before complete chaos is unleashed with carts running rampant in the parking lot. An attendant will most likely step in before that happens. So if we apply this definition of norms to our classification of cart returners, the injunctive norm applies the greatest pressure to Returners and Pressure Returners. These folks are concerned by what others will think of them on some level, and want to adhere to social rule mandating that the carts are returned. Descriptive norms are at play for Convenience Returners and Pressure Returners who are more inclined to act if there is precedent. These folks are more likely to return a cart if there are no carts parked haphazardly. The Never Returners and the Child-Driven Returners are two example of goal-driven actors, which means that they’re responding to a more individual need. These two are interesting as they’re on opposing ends of the spectrum but still demonstrate the ways an individual goal can work for or against a norm. [...]

They replicated these results in two additional tests. For example, they set up temporary fences along two parking lots and posted No Trespassing signs and No Bicycle signs. While the temporary fences did have a gap that a person could use to get to their vehicle, the No Trespassing signs were intended to make people walk to another entrance. The No Bicycles sign were intended to signify that people could not lock their bicycles to the fences. At one parking lot, bicycles were left nearby; they were not chained or locked to the fence. At the other parking lot, bicycles were chained to the fence. The results were significant: 82% of participants used the gap if the bicycles were chained to the fence compared with 27% when there were no bicycles chained to the fence.  [...]

While there are always outliers—people who behave contrary to the norm for the sake of doing so—these scenarios are fairly illustrative of the ebb and flow of the social order. There are norms that are intended to provide overall governance for the benefit of society at large but as individuals we have goals that intersect with these norms and can create conflicts. Yes, we want to generally behave like others of our choosing because we want to be accepted, but we also have goals that serve ourselves or provide us with immediate satisfaction. The data above suggests that as a situation broaches on deviance, more people will trend toward disorder; once we have permission to pursue an alternative action, we will do so if it suits us. Not returning our shopping carts opens the door to throwing our circulars on the ground to parking haphazardly or in reserved spaces to other items that impact the quality of our experience at that establishment.

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Quartz: Russia’s meddling in the French election has backfired spectacularly

The Kremlin doubtless thought it had the French election all sewn up. Of the four leading candidates for president, three were openly pro-Moscow. Even the eventual winner Emmanuel Macron was hardly a hawk. As Quartz wrote at the time, Russian president Vladimir Putin really couldn’t lose.

And yet, buoyed by its alleged intervention on behalf of US president Donald Trump, the Kremlin couldn’t help itself. As Macron’s upstart candidacy gained traction in February, Russia unleashed an extraordinary propaganda and cyber campaign against the centrist insurgent. This ranged from the crude (publishing baseless claims that Macron is secretly gay), to the silly (state newspapers saying he is a “psychopath” with “fishlike, slightly bulging eyes”), to the very smart (allegedly helping spread fake documents claiming that Macron has an offshore bank account). [...]

Indeed, when Macron visited Moscow as economy minister just over a year ago he said he wanted to work to lift EU sanctions on the country. “He showed no anti-Russian inclinations whatsoever, in many ways he was very much in favor of developing ties,” says Pavel Baev, a research professor at the Peace Institute Oslo. “In all his stances, there was nothing problematic for the Kremlin whatsoever—now they have managed to turn him into a real problem for themselves.” [...]

“If we look at recent history, Russia has been technically efficient but strategically inept in every operation,” according to Galeotti, who says Russian foreign ministry sources have talked to him “with horror” about the US election result, insisting the real aim was to disrupt Hillary Clinton’s legitimacy—not help Trump win. “Now they have an almost Putin-like figure to deal with,” he notes.

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The Atlantic: Kentucky Is Home to the Greatest Declines in Life Expectancy

In 13 counties across the U.S., Americans can now expect to die younger than their parents did. And the eight counties with the largest declines in life expectancy since 1980 are all in the state of Kentucky.

That’s according to a new study out Monday in the journal JAMA: Internal Medicine, for which researchers examined geographic changes and inequality in life expectancy across the U.S. [...]

The three longest-living counties were all in Colorado: Summit, Eagle, and Pitkin, which are home to wealthy, outdoorsy enclaves such as Vail and Breckenridge. There, people live until they’re about 86, on average.

Interestingly, the study finds that the risk of dying under age 5 dropped in all counties since 1980, possibly thanks to programs that target improving the health of infants and children. Meanwhile, the risk of death between the ages of 25 and 45 rose in about 12 percent of all U.S. counties. [...]

Kentucky has one of the highest rates of death from drug overdoses, with about 30 deaths per 100,000 people. Owsley County is the country’s poorest white-majority county, according to a 2016 analysis by Al Jazeera, with about 45 percent of its roughly 4,500 residents living in poverty. The decline of coal mines and tobacco fields have battered the county, whose population peaked in 1940. (Indeed, the JAMA study authors acknowledge that part of the life expectancy trends might be due to healthy people moving away from blighted areas, and “high-risk” people remaining in them.)

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Haaretz: Le Pen Lost French Election, but Battle Against Populism Is Far From Over

None of this means European liberals can return to their pre-Brexit complacency, however. Not when 52 percent of the votes in the British referendum in June were in favor of leaving the EU. Nor can we discount Donald Trump’s victory in the United States, or the 46 percent of voters in Austria’s presidential election who cast their ballots for a right-wing extremist. The center is holding, for now. 2016, the year of populism, has been followed so far by relative sanity, but the threat has only receded, not disappeared.

Moderate leaders like Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May have been forced to tack to the right to capture ground lost to the populists. Rutte announced crackdowns on immigrant communities during his campaign for the March 15 election. May is fighting a jingoistic campaign, demonizing the EU leaders with whom she will have to negotiate a complex Brexit deal after next month’s election. Meanwhile centrist parties, particularly center-left ones, are shrinking across the continent. In Britain, Labour been taken over by Marxists and is unlikely to be a viable opposition party for at least another decade. In France, both of the parties that shared power for the last five decades failed to make it in to the second round of voting and face uncertain prospects in next month’s parliamentary election. In Sunday’s state election in Germany’s Schleswig-Holstein, the Social Democratic Party lost control of the regional parliament while Alternative for Germany passed the electoral threshold for the first time. [...]

Macron and Renzi’s challenges are similar. They must adapt the European welfare state to the globalized economy of the 21st century. They have to try to rekindle hope in a largely apathetic society. Young people fear they will not achieve the standard of living of their parents, who are reluctant to give up on a long and comfortable retirement paid for by a shrinking younger generation. There is the challenge of creating new jobs in a state where traditional industries are bleeding. Finally, both Macron and Renzi must attempt to preserve the European project of economic and political integration, which guaranteed peace and prosperity, when it is under attack from all sides. There are no easy answers. That’s why Macron’s campaign was heavy on slogans and lean on policy. And why Renzi’s first attempt ended in failure. And why after eight years of being led by the young and charismatic Barack Obama, the United States elected Trump.

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The Guardian: Marine Le Pen defeated but France's far right is far from finished

This was a staggering, historic high for the anti-European, anti-immigration party that during the campaign was slammed by political opponents as racist, xenophobic, antisemitic and anti-Muslim despite Le Pen’s public relations efforts to detoxify its image in recent years. [...]

Political scientists have warned that no one should write off the French far right after Marine Le Pen’s presidential loss. The Front National has slowly been gaining ground for the last 45 years and its steady electoral increases must be seen in the long term. The issues that the party has sought to focus on and capitalise from – the terrorist threat, the refugee crisis, immigration, mass unemployment, deindustrialisation, voters who struggle to make ends meet – are unlikely to instantly disappear. [...]

Nevertheless, inside the Front National, there will be internal party recriminations over how Le Pen ran her campaign. The controversial central manifesto pledge to leave the euro was seen as having dissuaded much-needed voters from coming over from the right. It was the source of wavering and bickering inside the party. Le Pen’s TV debate performance was seen as aggressive, erratic and completely at odds with her initial aim to appear “presidential” and reassuring in the campaign. That highly criticised TV performance was also seen to have cost her second-round voters from the mainstream right who might otherwise have given theirsupport.

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