Brown and White Vol. 126 no. 10

              Vol. 126 No. 10
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
‘All the Lehigh News First’
THE BROWN AND WHITE
Lehigh University’s Student Newspaper Founded in 1894
SPORTS
Women’s basketball topples Lafayette
Page 12
ONLINE
Poll: What makes a good job applicant?
thebrownandwhite.com
Rainbow Room renovation
Page 5
LIFESTYLE
By GABY MORERA
The Multicultural Greek Council held its Spring Yard Show, in which seven multicul­tural fraternities and sororities performed step routines and introduced their core values to Lehigh students, last Friday night.
The event, held at Lamber­ton Hall, was hosted by Ralph Jean-Noel, ’15. The participating groups were Alpha Phi Alpha, Kappa Alpha Psi, Lambda Theta Alpha, Lambda Sigma Upsi­B&
W photo by ANDREA STIFFELMAN
Members of multicultural fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi perform at Friday’s Spring Yard Show.
Psych discussion analyzes ambition
Multicultural Greeks
host Spring Yard Show
Student comedians
compete in laugh-off
By LAURA MELONE
Lehigh’s psychology and manage­ment departments held a joint colloquium Thursday during which Dr. Malia Mason of Columbia University’s business school explained her research through a presenta­tion called “Feeling Good about Doing Bad in Mixed-Motive Decision Settings.”
A graduate of Dartmouth College, Harvard University and Columbia, Mason has used her knowledge of business and psychology to formulate a hypothesis as to why our ambitions and desires take prefer­ence over our mental resources.
“I wear many hats,” Mason said to begin her speech. “I work with cognitive neuroscience, social psychology and man­agement. And I tend to wear all three hats at once.”
Her research with determining how the mind figures out how to pay more atten­tion to a task intertwines the business and psychology worlds to fully paint a picture of human behavior.
As she said she has seen through her work, the mind tends to pay more attention to tasks when a mental conflict is triggered within itself.
“The mind is miserly in how it goes about its business,” Mason said. “But as the mental conflict arises within our brain, the anterior cingulate is stimulated which en­genders this thing we call a conscience.”
Mason said she refers to this part of the brain as the “Jiminy Cricket” of our per­sonality. The conflict-of-interest that arises in our minds due to the clash between the pursuit of the desirable and the pursuit of righteousness causes more attention to­wards a certain task, she said. As a person struggles between doing what is advanta­geous and doing what is right, an adjust­ment-feedback conflict within the brain surfaces.
Her two experiments — both relating to agency and the ability humans have to choose — show that this conflict-of-interest actually causes people to feel better about themselves when their bad choices or mis­takes hold more profit.
Mason’s first experiment focused mainly on how people aspire to be honest, but sometimes the truth comes with an oppor­tunity cost large enough to sway people’s moral judgment.
Mason said she believes that people hold honesty as central to their identities, but they contradict themselves when the truth cannot be apprehended in the face of desire. The experiment’s subjects were sat down at a screen and were told to clarify whether the right side or the left side of the screen had more dots on it.
Mason and her team made sure the cor­rect answer was always left for each trial. There were some charts that were very clear in having more dots on the left sides, and some charts were very unclear as to which side had more dots.
For every answer saying “left,” the subjects would earn $0.02, and for every answer saying “right,” the subject would earn $0.10. Through this experiment, Mason and her team recognized that there was more of an incentive to be incorrect, so many people chose the right side.
However, Mason and her team recog­nized that the people did not choose the right side for the reward. The reward areas of the brain were not highlighted in MRI scans during the experiment. In fact, there was greater activity in the reward area when the dots were clearly favoring the left. Actually, Mason found that people decided to choose the right side more often because they wanted to avoid internal conflict.
“People find being put into conflict situ­ation as aversive,” she said.
To avoid weighing the pros and cons
See SHOW Page 4
By JULIA BALTER
University Productions sponsored the Lehigh Laugh-Off comedy show at 8 p.m. Thursday in Lamberton Hall.
The comedy show fea­tured more than half a dozen performers, each of who per­formed for five minutes or more.
Each contestant performed until the manager of the show asked them to let the next per­son begin.
Jon Ross, ’17, was the first performer and demonstrated his affinity for humor about technology.
“I put my phone on this
B&W photo by CHRIS BARRY
Charlie Baldwin, ‘15, performs a standup comedy routine. The audience voted Baldwin the funniest performer of the night.
See LAUGH Page 4
See PSYCH Page 3
B&W photo by TONGXIN XU
Malia Mason discusses the factors that motivate people to place ambition over morality, particularly in business.
n A guest speaker addressed the intersection of business and psychology.