Category: _Inbox

People may often do inconsiderate things when they are in groups, and people who strongly affiliate with one group of people may naturally want to harm outsiders who are not in that group.

• When people get together in groups, unusual things can happen — both good and bad.
• Groups create important social institutions that an individual could not achieve alone, but there can be a darker side to such alliances:
• Belonging to a group makes people more likely to harm others outside the group.
• In a study that recently went online in the journal NeuroImage, the researchers measured brain activity in a part of the brain involved in thinking about oneself.
• They found that in some people, this activity was reduced when the subjects participated in a competition as part of a group, compared with when they competed as individuals.
• Those people were more likely to harm their competitors than people who did not exhibit this decreased brain activity.

When good people do bad things - MIT News Office

Each technology we create is transforming society and we need to be careful about considering if and when different technologies may be affecting us either negatively or positively.

• A report commissioned by the National Science Foundation and made public today speculates that by the end of this century electronic information technology will have transformed American home, business, manufacturing, school, family and political life.
• The report warned that the new technology would raise difficult issues of privacy and control that will have to be addressed soon to ''maximize its benefits and minimize its threats to society.''
• There will be a shift away from conventional workplace and school socialization. Friends, peer groups and alliances will be determined electronically, creating classes of people based on interests and skills rather than age and social class.

Study Says Technology Could Transform Society - NY Times (1982)