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January 26, 2018

From Harper's:
Britain’s link to Europe was severed 450,000 years ago and its textile heritage was being destroyed by moths.

From The Economist:
Nearly half of young American employees say they would be more loyal if their boss took a public position on a social issue.

From The Economist:
Investments that considered environmental, social and governance factors accounted for $13.3trn of assets under management in 2012; that sum was $22.9trn in 2016. Over a fifth of the funds under professional management in America fall into this category, up from a ninth in 2012.

From Nature Human Behaviour:
Women are known to have stronger prosocial preferences than men, but it remains an open question as to how these behavioural differences arise from differences in brain functioning. Here, we provide a neurobiological account for the hypothesized gender difference. In a pharmacological study and an independent neuroimaging study, we tested the hypothesis that the neural reward system encodes the value of sharing money with others more strongly in women than in men. In the pharmacological study, we reduced receptor type-specific actions of dopamine, a neurotransmitter related to reward processing, which resulted in more selfish decisions in women and more prosocial decisions in men. Converging findings from an independent neuroimaging study revealed gender-related activity in neural reward circuits during prosocial decisions. Thus, the neural reward system appears to be more sensitive to prosocial rewards in women than in men, providing a neurobiological account for why women often behave more prosocially than men.

From Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin:
We show that self-affirmation increases helping behavior toward others in need. We argue that as awareness of others’ pain causes discomfort, individuals are often motivated to ignore information about such pain. However, ignoring others’ suffering implies that one is not a good and caring person, which presents a threat to self-integrity. To resolve this conflict, people might downplay others’ pain. Studies show that self-affirmation intervenes in this process, thereby increasing willingness to help (Studies 1-4). Findings further show that self-affirmation leads people to attend more closely to information about others’ difficulties (Study 2) and to construe others’ pain as a pressing need instead of an ordinary hardship (Study 3). Study 4 provides evidence supporting the ego-defensive account and rules out an alternative account based on other-directed emotions. Studies 1 to 4 also reveal that the effect of self-affirmation is more pronounced among people who are less likely to identify with victims.

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