michaelkeenan comments on Self control may be contagious - Less Wrong

12 Post author: Psy-Kosh 14 January 2010 03:41AM

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Comment author: michaelkeenan 14 January 2010 06:18:48AM 6 points [-]

Some of the experiments involved contagion effects from friends with high or low self-control. I wonder if we see the opposite effect when our enemies display these traits. It has previously been shown that when we see outsiders cheating, we cheat less, but when in-group members cheat, we cheat more.

Comment author: Psy-Kosh 14 January 2010 03:04:40PM 0 points [-]

That... is an interesting question. What happens when we explicitly see outsiders cheating less, though? ie, do we effectively do a "I'm better than them, so if they can be that good, I can be better"? or something else?

Comment author: thomblake 14 January 2010 04:11:23PM 2 points [-]

I wonder if self-control might be seen as a bad thing in that case - like in that study with the eagles and rattlers where arbitrary qualities were seen as "good" by one group and therefore "bad" by the other.