slacking

Back...Mostly

sastyk | March 23, 2010

Hi Folks - It has been a week since I hit the wall and took off from the computer, and I'm back, at least sort of. The combination of a lingering illness, exhaustion from trying to finish the book, stress from a book not doing what I wanted to and just way too much time in front of the computer hit me all at once, and I really needed to step away for a while. My wonderful editor at New Society (and the kind marketing director who I also dumped my stress on) have been really nice about my melt-down, and we're talking now about a new deadline and release date for the book. I'm very grateful…

Why punishment is worth it in the end

edyong | December 4, 2008

Is punishment a destructive force that breaks societies or part of the very glue that holds them together? Last year, I blogged about two studies that tried to answer this question using similar psychological games. In both, volunteers played with tokens that were eventually exchanged for money. They had the option to either cooperate with each other so that the group as a whole reaped the greatest benefits, or cheat and freeload off the efforts of their peers. In both studies, giving the players the option to punish each other soon put a relative end to cheating. Faced with the threat of…