Finally, I’m on Facebook
My publisher created a Facebook page for my soon-to-be-published book Beauty Pays. For the page to be effective, the Press told me that I had to add things; and in order to add things, I needed to sign up for Facebook. What to do?? My wife’s response, “Join the 21st century, Daniel.”
Being an obedient husband, I did so and just became the 500,000,000 and 1st Facebook enrollee. I’ve been on Linked-in for a while, but I doubt I’ll ever use it—so many more people are on Facebook. There are tremendous network externalities in social network sites—you want to be on the site with the most links to people with whom you want to be in touch. That is clearly Facebook. I’m not sure, though, that I like this aspect of the 21st century.
The Economic Part of Our Brains
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have conclusively identified a part of the brain that’s necessary for making everyday decisions about value. Previous magnetic imaging studies suggested that the ventromedial frontal cortex, or VMF, plays an evaluative role during decision-making. New research led by Joseph Kable, an assistant professor of psychology in Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences, shows that people with damaged VMF’s (victims of strokes, aneurysms, or brain tumors) are less able to choose things that are most valuable, and are also less consistent in their choices. The results were published in The Journal of Neuroscience. Read More »
Is the Idea of an Organ Market Losing Its Repugnance?
From a reader named Dmitry Mazin:
So I’m doing legalizing the organ market (selling your own organs only) for my speech class because I wanted to do something really repugnant and controversial.
Well, I passed out a survey to my class of about thirty people and two whole people were against this system. And this isn’t a progressive area — it’s in the Bible Belt of Southern California. Even Catholics were for it.
I think this corroborates that repugnance survey in the Freakonomics Radio episode “You Say Repugnant, I Say … Let’s Do It!”
So there you go.
Have a great day!
Hey, you have a great day too, Dmitry.
P.S.: I didn’t know there was a “Bible Belt of Southern California.” (Here’s a rare web cite about it; and here’s an earlier post called “We Pretend We Are Christians.”
Sexual Fidelity = Brand Loyalty?
Here’s an interesting piece from Yale Fox over at Darwinversusthemachine.com on how the fidelity we demonstrate in sexual relationships mimics the loyalty we have to brands.
Much research shows that if there are no consequences to cheating, or if we can get away with it, we are very likely to do so. However, brand conversion is more than having the user cheat on their product once. We want them to understand that they are trading up to the new brand. It’s always possible to convert someone to your brand permanently. This can be achieved if the right environmental pressures are in place to do so.
and 
. If you haven’t seen it yet, the movie features Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, and was made by a dream team of documentary directors. Paste Magazine named it one of the 