A blog about economics instruction. "Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler."--Albert Einstein

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Make 'Em Feel the Pain, if You're a Man, That Is

Here's another one of those stories about gender differences. I'll leave it to the reader to decide if this particular difference has any relevance to the teaching of economics.

Tanya Singer and Dr. Klaas Stephan, both of University College London, are coauthors of a new study, the results of which have been published in Nature. Here are the basic findings:

... a new brain-scanning study suggests that when guys see a cheater get a mild electric shock, they don't feel his pain much at all. In fact, they rather enjoy it.

In contrast, women's brains showed they do empathize with the cheater's pain and don't get a kick out it.

The two scientists offered the usual caveat, "more studies are needed, blah, blah, blah." The bottom line, though, is expressed in the title of the ABC News story: Men Enjoy Seeing Bad People Suffer. Assuming that's true as the study suggests, I suppose that if I were a prosecutor seeking the death penalty for a defendant, I would try to stack the jury with men. I also suppose if I were a novelist writing Westerns, then the lynch mob in my story would be made up of men.

In the classroom, maybe there's a lesson here that could be applied to prevent cheating on exams. If I ever figure out the lesson, I'll let you know. By the way, I can't resist adding that some of the history of Nazi Germany suggests that women concentration camp guards enjoyed seeing the inmates suffer as much as the men guards did. Hmm. I think after the war some of those men and women who enjoyed seeing people suffer emigrated to America and taught at my high school : - )

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