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Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Whatcha readin' Wednesday

Still working my way through Sway: the Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior (had to renew it). I've learned some very interesting things so far.

Top of my list is a story about the French version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, where the contestant got flustered several questions in, and couldn't remember the answer to: What rotates around the Earth? A)The sun B)The moon C) Venus or D) None of the above.
Well, he had to use a lifeline. Which is laughable. But he asked the audience, and apparently so many of them were disgusted at his stupidity, they deliberately misled him and answered A) The sun. Dear Henri lost all his money.
On further discussion, we learn the audience in Russia's version of the show frequently misleads their contestants, because they don't like the idea of somebody else getting ahead. It's unfair. LOL. Only in the U.S. do we help our contestants unconditionally. Hmmm.

Another crumb for thought: When people hooked up to an MRI machine and offered money for winning rounds of a game something like Atari, or losing money for losing, and sometimes having no money on the line at all, researchers were able to determine the part of the brain that responds to offers of money is the same part--the pleasure center--which reacts to gambling, risk taking, and highs from drugs, ie cocaine. So the authors came to the conclusion that "monetary reward is--biologically speaking--is like a tiny line of cocaine". Heh. Probably too true, entirely. No wonder hubby keeps going to work...He should leave here SO happy every day!

Will keep reading.

Piper Denna
Romance is sexy!


1 comment:

Sutton Fox said...

Interesting. Americans are a bit different than the rest of the world. Must be the work/cocaine thing. lol.