Re: Mind's Eye Poverty and thinking

Ideally, if the mind is free of stress, of whatever kind, it works better. You need a little anxiety to work, but if the level increases your judgement becomes wrong. Your feelings impair your functionality.

On Fri 8 Feb, 2019, 7:33 AM archytas <nwterry@gmail.com wrote:

I've long thought our measures of intelligence are dire.  This is from Rutger Bregman's book 'Utopia for Realists'.  You can get the book free here http://www.basinkomstpartiet.org/uploads/5/3/4/7/53471687/utopia-for-realists-by-rutger-bregman.pdf

It all started a few years ago with a series of experiments conducted at a typical American mall. Shoppers were stopped to ask 

what they would do if they had to pay to get their car fixed. Some

were presented with a $150 repair job, others with one costing

$1,500. Would they pay it all in one go, get a loan, work overtime,

or put off the repairs? While the mall-goers were mulling it over,

they were subjected to a series of cognitive tests. In the case of the

less expensive repairs, people with a low income scored about the

same as those with a high income. But faced with a $1,500 repair

job, poor people scored considerably lower. The mere thought of

a major financial setback impaired their cognitive ability.

Shafir and his fellow researchers corrected for all possible variables in the mall survey, but there was one factor they couldn't

resolve: The rich folks and the poor folks questioned weren't the

same people. Ideally, they'd be able to repeat the survey with subjects who were poor at one moment and rich the next.

Shafir found what he was looking for some 8,000 miles away

in the districts of Vilupuram and Tiruvannamalai in rural India.

The conditions were perfect; as it happened, the area's sugarcane

farmers collect 60% of their annual income all at once right after

the harvest. This means they are flush one part of the year and

poor the other. So how did they do in the experiment? At the time

when they were comparatively poor, they scored substantially

worse on the cognitive tests, not because they had become dumber

people somehow – they were still the same Indian sugarcane

farmers, after all – but purely and simply because their mental

bandwidth was compromised.

Interesting.

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