July 23, 2009
Newsmakers
EXCESSES OF SUCCESS: Mark Sanford, John Ensign, David Vitter, Mark Foley — why did they do it? U.S. News & World Report took up the question of why otherwise successful politicians threaten their careers and lives by infidelity and other ethical misdeeds. The article quoted Scott Reynolds, UW assistant professor of management and organization on success breeding poor decisions. “I think what’s more at play here is just the notion of invincibility, that sometimes when things go well for us and just again and again and again, we’re successful, we start to believe that nothing can go wrong.” He added, “We’re willing to take more risks; we’re willing to do more behaviors that are risky and we end up doing some things that aren’t very smart,”
AIR ANXIETY: In the wake of the June 1 Air France plane crash and its huge media coverage (now shrouded by more recent events), the author of Newsweek’s blog The Human Condition spoke with Jonathan Bricker, UW affiliate assistant professor of psychology, “to figure out why we need to know — and what all this information overload may be doing to our psyches.”
Asked about fear of flying and the fact that flying is statistically safer than driving, Bricker said he treats patients who “know in their rational mind that flying is safe and the likelihood that they would die in a plane crash is low. But if you are an anxious person, the way you interpret that statistic is ‘Yeah and I’m going to be that one in a million. I’m going to be the exception.’ When you’re an anxious person, the way you interpret the world is very different.” Read the whole post online here.
CERTIFIED SEAFOOD: The New York Times’ “Room for Debate” blog recently took up the question of sustainability and seafood under the headline “The Seafood Eater’s Latest Conundrum.” As they have before, the NYT talked with Ray Hilborn, UW professor of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, who discussed, among other things, certification systems consumers can use to learn which fish were sustainably managed.
“The real problem for consumers is actually finding certified seafood,” Hilborn wrote. “At present only a small fraction of the world’s fish stocks have been evaluated and are certified by the M.S.C. A few large chains such as Wal-Mart, Whole Foods and Safeway do offer M.S.C.-certified seafood and some have made commitments to offer nothing but certified seafood in the next few years. I have found that few restaurants know where their fish come from, and often don’t even know the species they are serving. Always ask, and if the seller seems uncertain, don’t buy it.”
HAAG’S GARDEN: The Wall Street Journal’s Life and Style section recently featured the incredible Seattle home of landscape architect Richard Haag. There, Haag has eschewed traditional landscaping for more exotic vegetation in a garden that is mostly edible. The article, under the headline “Stark Inside, Wild Outside,” quoted Thaisa Way, a UW assistant professor of landscape architecture, who is writing a book about Haag. Way said, “He showed us that spaces thought of as dead could come alive and that farms don’t have to be in the country.”
ON THE BBC: BBC radio came to visit and interview Rachel Severson and Jolina Ruckert, psychology graduate students who work with Peter Kahn, an associate professor, in the Human Interaction with Nature and Technological Systems (HINT) Lab. They spoke of interactions children had with AIBO, SONY’s robotic dog, asking if a robo pet can replace a real one. Perhaps not completely — the two said that children who interacted with AIBO and then were interviewed showed they bonded more with a real-live pet. Listen to the interview here — the UW researchers are in the last five minutes or so here.
Newmakers is a periodic column reporting on the coverage of the UW by the national press and broadcasting services.
