Alexander Kobulnicky

A study was recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, suggesting that people who feel like victims are more selfish. The conclusion sounds reasonable enough, but I take issue with the method. “In Experiment 3,” we are told, “participants who lost at a computer game for an unfair reason (a glitch in the program) requested a more selfish money allocation for a future task than did participants who lost the game for a fair reason.

This is the year 2010. Studies like this are conducted every month, and the results endlessly reported, and there are still test subjects who believe scientists when they say, “oops, a computer glitch happened. How unexpected.” Likewise, there are research subjects who think they’re actually administering electric shocks to helpless victims, still unaware that researchers employ confederates to play the part of victims, screaming in mock-agony from the fake jolts.

It’s touching that there are still people this naive wandering among us, but I’m afraid what will happen if casino bosses catch wind of them. “Yes sir, the slot machines are certainly supposed to pay out when three gold bars come up. It must be a computer glitch.”