Class discussion

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Class discussion

• Benito Arruñada

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Outline Our mind our institutions
Cognitive specialists Rationality (decisional mechanism) Cooperation (main ambit of interest) Institutions
Modular mind Instinctive Instinctive Co-opt instincts
Maladapted mind Ecological Ecological Fill adap-tation gap
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Applications to projects?

1. Ideas beliefs
2. Career
3. Expectations
4. Women men
5. Contracting financial services
6. Reforming public services
7. Reputation of business
8. Online universities
9. Institutional reform

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Which sport is tougher?

• Psychologically?
• In which is more painful to lose?
• Chess, why?
• Because there are not referees
• Whats the moral?

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Are smarter, better-educated individuals better
at avoiding the traps of unreasonable beliefs?

• The power of rationalization
• Individual examples perhaps the most prominent,
  on our own performance examples? E.g., next
  slide?
• The power of socialization
• Social examples collective killings (Nazi
  Germany) and suicides (from Numantia to
  Jonestwon)
• How do we react when friends who stop believing /
  start thinking differently?
• Big risk we all suffer it in different areas
• How to cure or prevent? I.e., how to grow up from
  beliefs into ideas?
• Diverse socialization How homogenous are our
  groups?
• Dilute stereotypes by knowing different persons,
  groups

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Example

• How to calibrate accusations that a teacher
• constantly despites students? (E.g., crosses
  the line of critique into scorn, jibe, sarcasm)
• Hypotheseshow to test, verify?
• Teacher does despise students
• Students in denial rationalize their own failures
• What are the effects of soft versus clear
  criticism? Do we prefer to be told we do well
  even we do not? Have we?
• Application to course projects

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Deflecting hard questions

• Proposal
• Identify the particular challenges of men and
  women in pursuing their professional careers
• Project
• Emphasis on how the environment must or can be
  changed
• Triple deflection
• Only women
• Changed to make our lives easier
• Avoid hard personal questions
• Risk work hard ? self-justifyng

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Deflecting hard questions

• Proposal
• think strategically about professional career
  development, identify challenges from the
  environment, assets and possible deficits in
  emotional intelligence or technical competencies
• Project
• How firms must adapt to young grads emotions
• Example Puppies rebellion (ES)
  http//ow.ly/kXRdH any changes since 2007?

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Trained to deflect criticism?

• The best educated generation ever
• myth or reality?
• Averages and statistical distributions
• Quantity and quality intangibles ?
• Education aptitude attitude
• Aptitude knowledge, general abilities, etc.
• Attitudecrucially ability to productively
  accept criticism

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How do we react to criticism?

• Defensively taking it as personal attack
• Rationalization producing excuses
• Why do brilliant people often under-perform? Use
  their higher mental power to produce better
  excuses
• Advice
• No excuses your default should be the critique
  is right, in some way, and you must discover
  that way
• Take critiques as signals of failure, not as
  solutions
• e.g., in correcting texts, teachers shouldnt
  provide alternatives but just mark mistakes. When
  seen that the alternative is worse, students
  tempted to think there was no problem
• Distance yourself from your work ? you do not
  like it

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Do some beliefs provide an excuse for failure?

• Discrimination?
• By sex, race, etc.
• The best educated generation ever?
• Socialism?
• Any other?