Jim Munroe is on to something...
Aug. 29th, 2010 02:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsJust hours after finishing Everyone in Silico, I was led (thanks to Zoe Pollock) to an article in Scientific American, in which researchers performed three tests with statistically large groups of people, giving them free sunglasses while informing half the recipients that their glasses were expensive designer models, and the other half that the glasses were cheap knockoffs of expensive designer models. Both groups, in fact, had received the real thing.
In three seperate tests, the two groups were asked to perform tasks that allowed for some cheating. 30% of the group told their glasses were real cheated. 70% of those who believed they were wearing counterfeits cheated.
In a follow-on test with another group, those told they were wearing counterfeits were more likely to assess their peers as less truthful and trustworthy than those wearing the original thing.
The researchers concluded:
This is why kids can, and do, play violent video games without as much scarring on their souls as the anxious morality mavens of our culture would have us believe.
Porn isn't inauthentic-- most of the time you're watching people have a genuine good time, even if it's a professional good time. What is inauthentic is having only porn to go on when you try and adapt what you know to real, human partners. What's inauthentic is acting like you know how to push the other person's buttons when you truly have no clue.
There's a megaton of inauthenticity in our lives. It took us forever to show Yamaraashi-chan the disconnect between the inauthenticity of television and her own experiences in real life. Munroe wrote a book about how different people make that distinction. And now research shows that knowingly putting up an inauthentic front corrodes your own soul and your sense of self-worth.
Omaha makes an interesting point: what if the researchers had brought the women back the next day, and told them they'd made a mistake and given them the other set of glasses? And then run through the tests again? I'd like to see those results.
In three seperate tests, the two groups were asked to perform tasks that allowed for some cheating. 30% of the group told their glasses were real cheated. 70% of those who believed they were wearing counterfeits cheated.
In a follow-on test with another group, those told they were wearing counterfeits were more likely to assess their peers as less truthful and trustworthy than those wearing the original thing.
The researchers concluded:
Wearing counterfeit goods not only fails to bolster our ego and self-image the way we hope, it actually undermines our internal sense of authenticity. "Faking it" makes us feel like phonies and cheaters on the inside, and this alienated, counterfeit "self" leads to cheating and cynicism in the real world.Video games may get away with phony reality because they're not phony of and by themselves; you're have an authentic gaming experience, and you don't expect it to be real life.
This is why kids can, and do, play violent video games without as much scarring on their souls as the anxious morality mavens of our culture would have us believe.
Porn isn't inauthentic-- most of the time you're watching people have a genuine good time, even if it's a professional good time. What is inauthentic is having only porn to go on when you try and adapt what you know to real, human partners. What's inauthentic is acting like you know how to push the other person's buttons when you truly have no clue.
There's a megaton of inauthenticity in our lives. It took us forever to show Yamaraashi-chan the disconnect between the inauthenticity of television and her own experiences in real life. Munroe wrote a book about how different people make that distinction. And now research shows that knowingly putting up an inauthentic front corrodes your own soul and your sense of self-worth.
Omaha makes an interesting point: what if the researchers had brought the women back the next day, and told them they'd made a mistake and given them the other set of glasses? And then run through the tests again? I'd like to see those results.
