A few academic lifehacks I have learned from Paul Slovic or how to Save the life you can
Daniel Vstfjll What would Paul do? Life hacking refers to any trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty method that increases productivity and efficiency, in all walks of life Baz Luhrman Everybody's Free (to Wear Sunscreen) (original essay by Mary Schmich) If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists - What would Pauls advice be? (3 best of) 1. Make the world a better place (as a person and as a scientist)
Personal and professional interest in making the world better (e.g darfur genocide etc) The collapse of compassion
Slovic, JDM. The collapse of compassion Our capacity to feel (good or bad) is limited. Valuation depends on feelings (the affect heuristic). Lack of feeling leads to inaction as large losses of life occur. Collapse starts at n=2 (Vstfjll, Slovic, Mayorga & Peters, 2014) Single child condition
Rokia How much money would you donate to help save rokia? Two children condition
Rokia Moussa How much money would you donate to help save Rokia and Moussa? Results from Vstfjll et al., 2014
Affect Donations how do you feel about donating to rokia [moussa][rokia & Moussa]? -1 to 5 Fast empathy Google searches help refugees
How can we overcome psychic numbing and compassion collapse? 2. Never let old ideas/data die
7-8 yrs ago Paul revisited findings from: Fetherstonhaugh et al (1997): 4500 were valued less when paired with small (11.000) or large ( ) camp implying that all could not be helped Small et al (2007): Donations to Rokia was reduced by half when paired with statistics New data (then, 2007): 1 Child was helped more than 1 out of 2 (undetermined) New concept: Pseudoinefficacy People become demotivated to help the one that can be helped by awareness of the ones that cannot be helped 2. Never let old ideas/data die 2
Last couple of years Paul revisited findings from: Slovic 1975 (first data collected 1961!) and Tversky, Sattah and Slovic 1988 on prominence (the more important dimension determine choice, even for options equated in value, eg. quality is more important than quantity) Latest : National security trumps life-saving in decisions (see Numbers and Nerves book) Even if life-saving and security are both highly valued, security is prominent in many decisons and may lead to inaction in life-saving decisions Prominence thinking in political decisions Workshop w/ high-level DMs: Can Decision Analysis improve decision making about mass atrocities? 3. Do research with people you like to hang out with
Compassion week In sum Paul: lets hang out and discuss new and old data formany years to come! Still much that can be changed for the better in theworld Many experiments to be run and data to collect tohelp us think! We havent yet understood the mysterious mind Thank you for being the best colleague and friend!