The seven helium-filled white globes that hover, swarm, and form kaleidoscopic patterns above visitors to Londons Roundhouse are neither friend nor foetheyre inanimate drones programmed by an algorithm to move, and to respond in turn to the various movements of people below them. And yet their behavior is familiarly, unsettlingly alive. They seem curious at some points, breaking away from their pack to investigate individuals on the ground. Theyre menacing at others, gliding gracefully into imposing structures overhead. Theyre sometimes clumsy, colliding with each other and veering awkwardly upward. And theyre mesmerizing, evoking entities as disparate as birds and bacteria in the ways they gently dance and dip under the Roundhouses domed ceiling.

The balloon-drones are Zoological, a flock of autonomous, flying spheres created for the installation +/- Human by the studio Random International, the artists best known for Rain Room. That work, which debuted at Londons Barbican in 2012, helped usher in a new age of Instagram-friendly immersive artworks, attracting day-long lines when it moved to New Yorks Museum of Modern Art prior to a 15-month stint at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. But where Rain Room allowed visitors to feel omnipotent, walking freely through a room of falling water without getting wet, Zoological encourages a sense of vulnerability. The ever-shifting constellations overhead are beautiful and unsettling: They catalog and respond to human behavior. This is an artwork that you observe while aware that its observing you right back.

Art for Instagrams Sake

+/- Human includes dance performances choreographed by Wayne McGregor, devised to provoke and create new patterns of movement as the dancers and the spheres interact. During the day, visitors can simply enter the Roundhouses space and move around underneath Zoological, which is accompanied by original music composed by Warp Recordss Mark Pritchard. The score is pivotal, offering ethereal layers of electronic harmonies, and then jarring, discordant sounds of exaggerated humming or screeching. At times the room feels like a scene from Denis Villeneuves Arrival; at others like a particularly traumatic episode of Black Mirror. The drones are benign, staying out of arms reach, but their behaviorboth pre-programmed and responsiveis impossible to predict.

Zoological, as a work, seems intended to play on subconscious anxieties about everything from driverless cars to alien invasions to mutating pathogens. The ways in which the spheres rise and fall around each other mimic the ways birds fly, and bugs swarm, and computers generate graphics that move to music. Its eerily familiar, but inhuman. Random International describes the work as an amplified and physical manifestation of our lived experience in a world increasingly run by algorithms, and its rendering of our uncertain, symbiotic, increasingly dependent relationship with machines and code captures the flux of an era in which technology is evolving faster than our ability to devise ethical frameworks for it. The spheres in Zoological are harmless, but for how long?

Its perhaps less instantly gratifying and joyful than Rain Room, but much more thought-provoking. Its also of a piece with other recent works of art and entertainment that try to wrestle with how drones are changing the nature of warfare or how technology will ruin humanity if were not perpetually vigilant. Its a theme Random International has considered over and over, in a series of Swarm Studies that examine and mimic collective behavior, and in works that reflect the human form in motion as pinpricks of light. Zoological, fascinating and occasionally alarming, encourages engagement, but the underlying note is one of caution.

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The Follow-Up to Rain Room Is Brilliant and Unsettling - The Atlantic

With the spectacular success of Hamilton, musical theater has moved from a niche market to the national stage in recent years. And for good reason the impact of Hamilton has has reached far beyond the entertainment world, spanning culture in general, rap, education and even Congress. Among other things, it has shown that musical theater can offer a fresh, exciting way to learn about history and culture, and it can offer much more than that even to those who dont aspire to perform on Broadway.

Indeed, musical theater is a powerful art form that can transform the lives of those who take part, but its power is often overlooked. Now is the time to pull the curtain back.

Reams of statistics show that learning a musical instrument can lead to a whole host of benefits, from improved discipline, perseverance and collaboration to enhanced cognitive skills and positive neurological effects. While these benefits are beyond dispute, its worth considering that musical theater mostly left out of conversations like this expand upon them.

Among other life lessons and traits, musical theater can teach and foster these important skills:

1) A deeper understanding of human behavior and psychology: Researchers have argued that psychologists can look to how actors create emotions to understand human nature in a new way. Thats because a performer must understand others actions and the meanings behind them to convincingly portray another character, environment and tone on stage. In doing this, they conversely learn to identify their own innate biases and practice empathy when interacting with the people around them.

2) A sense of ownership and independence: In a theater production, theres no sitting on the sidelines! Theres only one person for each role and a small margin for error, so performers must learn to work independently and arrive prepared. They are expected to pull their own weight and sometimes even more -- to produce the best show possible.

3) Creative thinking and problem-solving skills: Anyone partaking in a production is involved in the business of creation whether its building scenery, a script, a costume, props, and so on. On stage, performers create characters, moods and settings. They must also use problem-solving skills to decide how a character will react, what decisions they will make, and how their actions will help tell the story.

4) How to give and take feedback effectively: Giving and receiving constructive feedback is a regular part of any form of theater. Performers understand that feedback is a useful part of the learning process and how to channel it into success. At the same time, they are also challenged to give feedback to their peers that is respectful and useful. Critical thinking and listening are just as an important piece of the puzzle as performing on stage.

5) The importance of teamwork and the unique value that every individual brings: Musical theater is arguably the most collaborative form of creative expression. It takes a range of people writers, actors, designers, directors, choreographers, and more to put together a successful performance. Performers cant get on stage without the help of the off-stage crew; what happens behind the scenes is just as important as what happens when the curtain rises. Theater demands that anyone working on a project is an important part of the show the final product can never be completed unless every team member is working toward the same goal.

As executive director of Kaufman Music Center in New York City, Ive seen this first-hand at the organizations annual Summer Theater Musical Workshop, where young people of all backgrounds and interests learn to shine on stage. The workshop is primarily for kids with various interests, not just for those who want to spend their lives professionally on stage. For those who may already be instrumentalists, musical theater takes them further, allowing them to express their musical talent through their own body. It helps the shy or quiet child come out of his/her shell and boost confidence, and has been known to turn the class clown into a real star. For many people, theres something about singing with a group, working with others to pull off a number and flexing many different talents singing, dancing, acting, writing thats stimulating, moving, motivational, fun and inspirational. At the same time, it leads to a mastery of stage presence a boon for any musician, attorney, physician, teacher and the list goes on!

For an experience that will have a long-lasting and potentially life-changing impact, everyone and anyone should take part in musical theater. You might be surprised at the result, and have a lot of fun as well.

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Kids & Musical Theater: The Off-Stage Impact - HuffPost

People of all faith leanings, including non-believers,are apparently in general agreement on their shared distrust of atheists.

A new study published Monday in the academic journal Nature Human Behaviourfound that people around the world are more likely to believe that atheists are capable of committing extreme moral violations than people who are religious.

The results show that across the world, religious belief is intuitively viewed as a necessary safeguard against the temptations of grossly immoral conduct, and atheists are broadly perceived as potentially morally depraved and dangerous,wrote a team of international researchers.

In other words, the researchers added,people perceive belief in a god as a sufficient moral buffer to inhibit immoral behavior.

The study surveyed more than 3,000 people in 13 countries, spanning five continents. The researchers included people from both highly secular societies, like China and the Netherlands, and highly religious ones, like the United Arab Emirates and India in the study. Altogether the countries represented populations that were predominantly Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or secular.

For the study, researchers asked participants to read a description of a fictional man who tortured animals as a child and grew up to become a teacher who murders and mutilates five homeless people. Half of the group were asked about the likelihood the perpetrator was a religious believer, while the other half were asked how likely he was an atheist.

The study found that the participants were about twice as likely to say the killer was probably atheist than to say he was religious. Researchers found these results to be true even in largely secular countries, like Australia, China, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

I suspect that this stems from the prevalence of deeply entrenched pro-religious norms, Will Gervais, a psychology professor at the University of Kentucky in Lexington and one of the co-authors on the study, told AFP. Even in places that are currently quite overtly secular, people still seem to intuitively hold on to the belief that religion is a moral safeguard.

And lest we assumed such attitudes hold only in cases of extreme immorality, such as murder, the researchers conducted several supplementary studies that show the opposite.

In one supplementary study, the researchers tested for lesser moral violations in this case, not paying a dinner bill and participants still associated immorality more with atheists than with believers.

Another supplementary study investigated whether people would more frequently associate certain acts of immoral behavior, such as child molestation, with religious individuals, given recent scandals of that nature regarding Catholic clergy.The researchers found that people intuitively assume that a priest who molests young boys for decades is more likely to be a priest who does not believe in God than a priest who does believe in God, the study stated.

The study echoes the findings of a report by Pew Research Center, published in 2014, which found that majorities in 22 countries say a person must believe in God in order to be moral and have good values.

Though widespread, the belief that religiosity is a necessary component of morality isnt generally supported by science. Studies show that moral qualities like empathy and prosocial behavior may predate the development of religion in human evolution and are representative of biological adaptation.

What sets people of faith apart where morality is concerned, says prominent Humanist and former evangelical Christian Bart Campolo, is a shared language of what goodness means.

Whether or not our supernaturalist brothers and sisters actually love one another, care for those in need, or cultivate genuine gratitude for the privilege of human consciousness, theyve got loads of sacred texts, theological arguments and inspirational music which clearly communicate why and how they mean to do so, Campolo, a secular chaplain at the University of Southern California, told HuffPost.

He added that studies showing the pervasive distrust toward atheists should be a wake-up call for non-believers.

We secularists, who pursue goodness simply because we recognize it as the surest way to flourish, need to get a whole lot better at compellingly articulating our own good news, and maybe even learn to make it sing, he said.

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You may have guessed that Im a bit of a freak when it comes to personal finance. Only a freak would get up at 5:30 a.m. on a Saturday to write about money. Right?

Given that, it shouldnt surprise you that Freakonomics (www.freakonomics.com) is one of my favorite podcasts. Freakonomics explores the hidden side of human behavior and how we make decisions behavioral economics through stories and interviews.

A recent episode, called The Stupidest Thing You Can Do With Money, grabbed my attention.

The show addresses two options for investing:

1. Hire an investment adviser, who studies the financial markets using sophisticated tools and actively manages your money to get you the best return.

2. Do-it-yourself investing passively invest with a set-it-and-forget-it attitude.

Investment advisers give their clients advice about where and how to invest, charging fees either as a percentage of assets under management, typically 1 to 2 percent, or a flat amount. There are about 300,000 investment advisers in the United States. Most of them must beat the market, right? Why else would we keep paying them?

The truth is most people are paying fees to their investment advisers for sub-par returns on their investments. Ninety-five percent of actively managed portfolios cant consistently beat the S&P 500 index after subtracting fees.

An S&P 500 index fund is a low-cost way to own a diversified portfolio. The fund owns stocks in 500 of the largest U.S. companies the S&P 500, which spans many different industries and accounts for about three-fourths of the U.S. stock markets value.

And its not just your investment adviser who cant beat the market. Harvard University has an endowment of $38 billion and access to some of the best and brightest minds and top computer-modeling tools. Yet, the universitys annualized net return on investment for the past 10 years was less than 6 percent. The S&P 500 earned 7.72 percent over the same period.

Welcome to the low-cost, index fund investing DIY revolution. Not only are low-cost mutual funds, such as S&P 500 index funds and total stock market index funds, beating actively managed portfolios, they are doing it at a lower cost.

Jack Bogle, founder of Vanguard and the worlds first index fund, says this about fees: If the market return is 7 percent and the active manager gives you 5 after that 2 percent cost, and the index fund gives you 6.96 after that four basis point cost you dont appreciate it much in a year but over 50 years, believe it or not, a dollar invested at 7 percent grows to around $32 and a dollar invested at 5 percent grows to about $10.

Its time to join the revolution.

Durango resident and personal finance coach Matt Kelly owns Momentum: Personal Finance. http://www.personalfinancecoaching.com.

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The stupidest thing you can do with money - The Durango Herald

The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug ofTrader Joe'sOrganic Fair Trade Sumatracoffee, grab a seat by the window waiting for the skies to clear, and get ready for our longer-formweekendreads:

Be sure to check out ourMasters in Businessinterviewthis weekendwithMatt Wallaert, a behavioral scientist and former director at Microsoft Ventures who works at the intersection oftechnology and human behavior.

Want to receive our daily reads in your inbox? Sign uphere!

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story: Barry Ritholtz at britholtz3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Brooke Sample at bsample1@bloomberg.net

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Money Problems and Millionaires - Bloomberg

Due to our earlier ancestors tribal rivalries, slavery, racism, segregation, oppressive issues, and racial profiling, Black people have yet to heal their Black wounds. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome is something that has impacted the Black race for many years to come. We have yet to heal those color complex wounds, and progress beyond it. Due to the Willie Lynch Syndrome, colorism, ageism, educational status, social economic status has created division within the Black race. With so many nationalities, groups, organizations, and running circles, Black people have learned to stay divided, verses working together in unison, while still respecting one anothers differences.

Due to our Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome, Black people need help to heal their wounds. Understanding the psychology of behavior and embracing the need for therapy could be helpful, except Black people have yet to respect therapy nor psychology. Due to syphilis studies completed on Black people, injustices with the judicial system and Black people being used as guinea pigs by white America, Black people have learned to distrust psychology, believing it's some sort of hocus pocus. Psychology is something Black people also do not trust, due to Pre- conceived notions about the field. Although many people of all races have misconceptions about the field of psychology, many Black people view Psychology as a form of mind manipulation, mind trickery and a way to control or mess with someones head. They also believe it is a White man's science that can only benefit the White race. When many Black people think of psychology, they have visions of Freud, White men, and hypnotherapy. People who misunderstand psychology have little to no understanding that, it is a science which studies human behavior, social influence and animal behavior. Psychology bases its studies on empirical evidence. Psychology is the study of the brain and mind and how earlier experiences, forming core beliefs effect present situations. Psychology is a healing field, designed to treat and diagnose those with psychopathology and or help people with normal stress. There are also different fields in psychology, like, Clinical Psychology; Neuro Psychology; Social Psychology; Forensic Psychology; Human Factors; Applied Behavioral Analysis etc Due to people being experts at being a human and having a great understanding of their self, their friends and family, they believe they have psychology nipped in the bud, without considering the fact of their own biases, transference issues, projections, which cloud their objectivity. These differences are what separates the field of psychology as a scientifically based field, versus normal populations with pre-conceived notions about the field of psychology.

Many people assume the field of psychology can be summed up with two theorists, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Although both are two important figures in psychology, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung were founding members of psychoanalysis. They did not begin the field of psychology. Many theorists in psychology exist and theorists continue to evolve. Psychology is ubiquitous and it is the study of people. Psychology began the moment humans were created. The moment Lucy, aka The Real Eve was created to be the mother of civilization, psychology begin to unfold then. The field was created to help bring an understanding to human behavior.

Psychology can help heal Black people. Due to many Black people lacking proper communication styles within their family systems, etc those attachment styles carry into their friendships and relationships. Many Black people would rather curse one another out and use defense mechanisms to cover their wounds. The proper psychology has not been learned to communicate pain in a healthy way. The average Black person will go from hurt, to combat in a matter of seconds, without understanding the neurotic vicious cycles which are created when one assumes something of another and projects that expectation, which triggers reactions in others. Black people have learned how to talk to one another harshly and use defense mechanisms to repair broken egos and narcissistic injury. Black people have even learned how to use retorts that appear cool so that humor makes up for hurtful situations (Laughing to keep from crying). The average Black person would rather trade wise cracks with one another, verses using healthy psychology and proper communication to hurt feelings. Respect is a huge thing one demands but never gives. Black people have yet to be apologized to by racist people, society nor the members in their family, significant others and friends that have hurt them. Therefore, they are unapologetic. Lacking empathy is a familiar trait in the Black race, because it is considered weak to show feelings. Anger is accepted but showing emotion is rejected. Whenever Black people show empathy, it must appear cool and be accepted by the race. For example, "RIP to all my n*****" or "Where i come from, it goes from respect, disrespect, total disrespect to eff everybody". Both examples communicate emotional pain, but it is communicated in a "I'm so cool and will not show weakness" kind of way. Many Black people have experienced harsh treatment and compassionless from outsiders, members in their own families, relationships and friendships, therefore, they have not learned to control their impulses nor empathize with those they harm. Hurt people are conditioned to hurt others. Instead of hiding behind narcissism, defense mechanisms, unconscious conflict, mommy and daddy issues and developing unhealthy relationship patterns, learn to embrace psychology healing you from dysfunctional behavior.

Black people are the mother and father of all races and they are strong and resilient, therefore, they have learned how to push forward in life and continue moving and living with hurt. Since slavery Black people have been mistreated and have not learned how to deal with their wounds and unconscious conflict. Transference is a form of earlier childhood experiences being projected onto new objects, for example, people, places and things. A good example is, someone who might be attracted to certain people, rather good or bad because they are familiar spirits, with characteristics of their earlier experiences. Transference shows up in many of the things we choose in life, from friendships, relationships, jobs, places etc. A woman who was abandoned by her mother or father may choose men or women in her life who are emotionally unavailable or unsupportive during the most important moments. A woman who wasn't raised with her father may have unresolved daddy issues, while men who were also not raised with their father have a need to be a woman's daddy, to make up for their loss manhood. The decisions we make are mostly unconscious, so this information may be rejected consciously because the intellectual mind does not understand why they would choose people who remind them of the disappointments of their earlier experiences, but the unconscious mind chooses people and situations to work through the conflict. The Black woman choosing men who will not father her children, consequently playing both the mother and father in her household has been common since the early 70s. The Black man missing from the household has also been common since the early 70s. Although some Black people were raised with both parents, many broken homes in the Black race exists. Due to this family dysfunction, many members within the Black race are choosing the wrong people and making many wrong decisions, because they have not worked through their transference issues. You will find many men who are misogynistic or disrespectful towards women because they have issues with their mother and they never saw a man love their mother properly, therefore, they grow up to be just as unloving and hateful until they become healed. We usually learn from and repeat what we see and experience. According to Melanie Klein, children learn about love from watching their parents. They repeat what they see and do not see in their relationships and friendships.

Psychology can help heal Black wounds. Dr. Joy DeGruy and Dr. Umar Johnson are both Black scholars who discuss the Black condition today.

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Healing Black People - HuffPost

August 11, 2017

The Texas Legislature's just-ended 85th session included bills that allow religion-based exemptions to certain laws, leading some to wonder how the term "sincerely held religious beliefs" is defined. Ultimately, we rely far more on general cultural norms as to what we wish to tolerate at a given time.

The Texas Legislature's just-ended 85th session included bills that...

Outmoded ideas

Regarding letter to the editor "Christian faith" (Page A13, Tuesday), no one is asking the Rev. F.N. Williams to abandon his apparently fervently-held beliefs; he's just being asked to not use them as a reason to discriminate against people who don't meet his rigid standards for "appropriate" behavior, including transgender folks.

As for showing your birth certificate before being allowed to use the restroom; who's going to enforce that? As far as I know, there is no Department of Potty Police, nor should there be. Rev. Williams, you are not being "classed" as a bigot because, as you state, "I will not allow transgenders....to change my faith and practices." You are being classed as a bigot because you fail to see the difference between belief and behavior. Beliefs are simply that: beliefs. They should not be used as WMDs because you disagree with another person's behavior. The reverend's narrow concept of human behavior is a dangerous precursor to imposing disconnected standards of behavior to outmoded ideas.

Neal Massey, Houston

To read this article in one of Houston's most-spoken languages, click on the button below.

Life choices

Rev. Williams states "The highest law of the land is God's law; not national, not state, not local laws..."

Believers of all faiths will agree that ultimately, God's law is supreme. However, because our varying faiths understand God's laws differently, it is left to our nation of men and women to create laws that recognize that diversity in our faith traditions. It is up to each individual to follow their own religious teachings about God's law in his or her own life choices and actions; however, it is up to our government to protect each individual's rights regarding those choices and actions.

Nancy Pryzant Picus, Houston

Secular laws rule

The highest law of this land is the U.S. Constitution. As the United States is a democratic republic, I do not have to follow any religious laws (Christian, Judaic, Islamic or any other faith) unless I subscribe to that faith and its tenets. On the other hand, I must obey all the secular laws (federal, state or local - whichever jurisdiction applies to me) or I can be sanctioned. No such sanctions can be imposed on me should I not following some specific religious law. This country is not now, nor has ever been, a theocracy.

Len Denney, Houston

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Saturday letters: Different beliefs - Houston Chronicle

MILWAUKEE, WI Just how does an elephant walk? Thats one of the questions the staff at the Milwaukee County Zoo will answer during the Saturday, Aug. 2, observance of World Elephant Day, a day set aside to raise awareness of the soul-crushing plight of elephants in the wild.

The Milwaukee Zoo activities take place from 11 a.m-1 p.m. Besides trying to walk like an elephant and pick up food with their trunks, visitors will also be able to tour the elephants night quarters and learn more about their lives.

Sentient, gentle elephants lead rich emotional lives with values similar to humans, but have been driven to the brink of extinction by habitat destruction for cash crops and, more jarring, hunters who mercilessly rip out their ivory tusks while theyre still alive, then leave them to die excruciating, slow deaths from hemorrhage.

(For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Milwaukee Patch, and click here to find your local Wisconsin Patch. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

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Conservationists warn that at the rate elephants are disappearing, their species could be wiped out in Asia and Africa with 12 years. Asian elephants number only about 40,000 and are classified as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. There are about 400,000 remaining in Africa, where they are classified as vulnerable.

A focus of the Milwaukee Zoo event will be to add more signatures to a petition for an ivory ban in Wisconsin. Last year, new rules announced by the Obama administration were a near-complete ban on the multi-billion-dollar ivory trade.

The rules outlawed ivory imports but had some exceptions for example, ivory legally imported before 1990, old ivory that is more than 100 years old, and ivory used in gun handles and musical instruments. Those rules prevent the trade of ivory between states but dont regulate the ivory trade in individual states.

Seven states have now added an extra layer of protection, and elephant advocates in a handful of others, including Wisconsin, are asking for similar legislation.

Ninety-six elephants die every day in Africa because of poaching, Milwaukee Zoo spokeswoman Jennifer Diliberti-Shea told Patch earlier this year, adding that the United States is one of the leading destinations for ivory imports. At that rate, an elephant dies every 15 minutes. Theyre dying at a higher rate than new calves are born the gestation period is 22 months and if the trend continues, African elephants will become extinct within 25 years.

Here are five things you can do right now to affect elephant survival rates:

1. Dont buy ivory, and if you have ivory heirlooms sitting around the house, crush them and have a burial ceremony with your kids in the back yard. Crushing events take place on massive scales just last week, state and federal environmental and conservation officials in Albany, New York, crushed a ton of illegal ivory trinkets worth a staggering $6 million and family-centered ivory disposals can help kids connect with a species that demonstrate what we consider the finest human traits: empathy, self-awareness and social intelligence, Vanity Fair Editor Graydon Carter said, adding: But the way we treat them puts on display the very worst of human behavior.

2. Support one of 10 elephant conservation projects in critical landscapes through The Bodhi Tree Foundations Power of 10 initiative. Each of the projects focuses on countering the forces that threaten elephants poaching, habitat loss, human-elephant conflict, and a lack of vital rehabilitation and veterinary care. Some of the projects are funded, but others are in dire need of support. The Bodhi Tree Foundation says 100 percent of donations go directly to the project of the donors choosing.

3. Be an informed consumer. Dont buy coffee that isnt fair-trade or shade-grown, and avoid products containing palm oil warning, thats going to be tough because its the most widely used vegetable oil in the world, but possible. Coffee and oil palm plantations have decimated elephant habitat. Also, make sure wood products are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

4. Adopt an elephant through organizations such as the World Wildlife Foundation, World Animal Foundation, Born Free and Defenders of Wildlife. Youll get pictures of your elephant, as well as the satisfaction that youre helping those organizations stop poaching and other threats to elephant survival.

5. If you want to experience elephants, be aware that many used for entertainment purposes are mistreated, sometime terribly so. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus decision to retire its last working elephants reflected the publics growing understanding of elephant intelligence and distaste for activities that exploit them, and the travel website Trip Adviser is no longer booking excursions to attractions with captive animals, including elephant rides, but exploitation still happens. If youre planning on experiencing elephants in the wild, make sure you choose eco-friendly tourism options.

If you want to know more about how human behavior is altering elephant behavior, check out the fascinating read published in 2006 by The New York Times titled An Elephant Crackup?

Among the conclusions: Young male elephants are running amuck across Africa, India and Asia, goring children in villages where they once peacefully co-existed with humans, because decades of ivory poaching, habitat loss and other threats have disrupted the fabric of elephant life and the societal and familial structures under which young elephants are raised and, essentially, kept in line.

The slaughter is traumatic for young elephants and profoundly changes them, psychologist Gay Bradshaw told The Times.

The loss of elephant elders and the traumatic experience of witnessing the massacres of their family, impairs normal brain and behavior development in young elephants, said Bradshaw, who at the time was doing research for what became the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Elephants on the Edge: What Animals Teach Us about Humanity.

Photo by Ian Walton/Getty Images News/Getty Images

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World Elephant Day 2017: Milwaukee Zoo Steps Up Ivory Ban Drive - Patch.com

Obedience, in human behavior, is a form of "social influence in which a person yields to explicit instructions or orders from an authority figure".[1] Obedience is generally distinguished from compliance, which is behavior influenced by peers, and from conformity, which is behavior intended to match that of the majority. Depending on context, obedience can be seen as immoral, amoral or moral.

Humans have been shown to be obedient in the presence of perceived legitimate authority figures, as shown by the Milgram experiment in the 1960s, which was carried out by Stanley Milgram to find out how the Nazis managed to get ordinary people to take part in the mass murders of the Holocaust. The experiment showed that obedience to authority was the norm, not the exception. Regarding obedience, Milgram said that "Obedience is as basic an element in the structure of social life as one can point to. Some system of authority is a requirement of all communal living, and it is only the man dwelling in isolation who is not forced to respond, through defiance or submission, to the commands of others."[2] A similar conclusion was reached in the Stanford prison experiment.

Although other fields have studied obedience, social psychology has been primarily responsible for the advancement of research on obedience. It has been studied experimentally in several different ways.

In one classical study, Stanley Milgram (as part of the Milgram experiment) created a highly controversial yet often replicated study. Like many other experiments in psychology, Milgram's setup involved deception of the participants. In the experiment, subjects were told they were going to take part in a study of the effects of punishment on learning. In reality, the experiment focuses on people's willingness to obey malevolent authority. Each subject served as a teacher of associations between arbitrary pairs of words. After meeting the "teacher" at the beginning of the experiment, the "learner" (an accomplice of the experimenter) sat in another room and could be heard, but not seen. Teachers were told to give the "learner" electric shocks of increasing severity for each wrong answer. If subjects questioned the procedure, the "researcher" (again, an accomplice of Milgram) would encourage them to continue. Subjects were told to ignore the agonized screams of the learner, his desire to be untied and stop the experiment, and his pleas that his life was at risk and that he suffered from a heart condition. The experiment, the "researcher" insisted, had to go on. The dependent variable in this experiment was the voltage amount of shocks administered.[2]

The other classical study on obedience was conducted at Stanford University during the 1970s. Phillip Zimbardo was the main psychologist responsible for the experiment. In the Stanford Prison Experiment, college age students were put into a pseudo prison environment in order to study the impacts of "social forces" on participants behavior.[3] Unlike the Milgram study in which each participant underwent the same experimental conditions, here using random assignment half the participants were prison guards and the other half were prisoners. The experimental setting was made to physically resemble a prison while simultaneously inducing "a psychological state of imprisonment".[3]

The Milgram study found that most participants would obey orders even when obedience posed severe harm to others. In fact, about 2/3 of the subjects carried the procedure to its bitter end, fully realizing that they were posing a serious threat to the life and well being of the "learner." This result was surprising to Milgram because he thought that "subjects have learned from childhood that it is a fundamental breach of moral conduct to hurt another person against his will".[2]

Zimbardo obtained similar results as the guards in the study obeyed orders and turned aggressive. Prisoners likewise were hostile to and resented their guards. The cruelty of the "guards" and the consequent stress of the "prisoners," forced Zimbardo to terminate the experiment prematurely, after 6 days.[3]

The previous two studies greatly influenced how modern psychologists think about obedience. Milgram's study in particular generated a large response from the psychology community. In a modern study, Jerry Burger replicated Milgram's method with a few alterations. Burger's method was identical to Milgram's except when the shocks reached 150 volts, participants decided whether or not they wanted to continue and then the experiment ended (base condition). To ensure the safety of the participants, Burger added a two-step screening process; this was to rule out any participants that may react negatively to the experiment. In the modeled refusal condition, two confederates were used, where one confederate acted as the learner and the other was the teacher. The teacher stopped after going up to 90 volts, and the participant was asked to continue where the confederate left off. This methodology was considered more ethical because many of the adverse psychological effects seen in previous studies' participants occurred after moving past 150 volts. Additionally, since Milgram's study only used men, Burger tried to determine if there were differences between genders in his study and randomly assigned equal numbers of men and women to the experimental conditions.[4]

Using data from his previous study, Burger probed participant's thoughts about obedience. Participants' comments from the previous study were coded for the number of times they mentioned "personal responsibility and the learner's well being".[5] The number of prods the participants used in the first experiment were also measured.

Another study that used a partial replication of Milgram's work changed the experimental setting. In one of the Utrecht University studies on obedience, participants were instructed to make a confederate who was taking an employment test feel uncomfortable. Participants were told to make all of the instructed stress remarks to the confederate that ultimately made him fail in the experimental condition, but in the control condition they were not told to make stressful remarks. The dependent measurements were whether or not the participant made all of the stress remarks (measuring absolute obedience) and the number of stress remarks (relative obedience).[6]

Following the Utrecht studies, another study used the stress remarks method to see how long participants would obey authority. The dependent measures for this experiment were the number of stress remarks made and a separate measure of personality designed to measure individual differences.[7]

Burger's first study had results similar to the ones found in Milgram's previous study. The rates of obedience were very similar to those found in the Milgram study, showing that participants' tendency to obey has not declined over time. Additionally, Burger found that both genders exhibited similar behavior, suggesting that obedience will occur in participants independent of gender. In Burger's follow-up study, he found that participants that worried about the well being of the learner were more hesitant to continue the study. He also found that the more the experimenter prodded the participant to continue, the more likely they were to stop the experiment. The Utrecht University study also replicated Milgram's results. They found that although participants indicated they did not enjoy the task, over 90% of them completed the experiment.[6] The Bocchiaro and Zimbardo study had similar levels of obedience compared to the Milgram and Utrecht studies. They also found that participants would either stop the experiment at the first sign of the learner's pleas or would continue until the end of the experiment (called "the foot in the door scenario").[7] In addition to the above studies, additional research using participants from different cultures (including Spain,[8] Australia,[9] and Jordan)[10] also found participants to be obedient.

One of the major assumptions of obedience research is that the effect is caused only by the experimental conditions, and Thomas Blass' research contests this point, as in some cases participant factors involving personality could potentially influence the results.[11] In one of Blass' reviews on obedience, he found that participant's personalities can impact how they respond to authority,[11] as people that were high in authoritarian submission were more likely to obey.[12] He replicated this finding in his own research, as in one of his experiments, he found that when watching portions of the original Milgram studies on film, participants placed less responsibility on those punishing the learner when they scored high on measures of authoritarianism.[13]

In addition to personality factors, participants who are resistant to obeying authority had high levels of social intelligence.[14]

Obedience can also be studied outside of the Milgram paradigm in fields such as economics or political science. One economics study that compared obedience to a tax authority in the lab versus at home found that participants were much more likely to pay participation tax when confronted in the lab.[15] This finding implies that even outside of experimental settings, people will forgo potential financial gain to obey authority.

Another study involving political science measured public opinion before and after a Supreme Court case debating whether or not states can legalize physician assisted suicide. They found that participants' tendency to obey authorities was not as important to public opinion polling numbers as religious and moral beliefs.[16] Although prior research has demonstrated that the tendency to obey persists across settings, this finding suggests that at personal factors like religion and morality can limit how much people obey authority.

Both the Milgram and Stanford experiments were conducted in research settings. In 1966, psychiatrist Charles K. Hofling published the results of a field experiment on obedience in the nursephysician relationship in its natural hospital setting. Nurses, unaware they were taking part in an experiment, were ordered by unknown doctors to administer dangerous doses of a (fictional) drug to their patients. Although several hospital rules disallowed administering the drug under the circumstances, 21 out of the 22 nurses would have given the patient an overdose.[17]

Many traditional cultures regard obedience as a virtue; historically, societies have expected children to obey their elders (compare patriarchy, slaves their owners, serfs their lords in feudal society, lords their king, and everyone God. Even long after slavery ended in the United States, the Black codes required black people to obey and submit to whites, on pain of lynching. Compare the religious ideal of surrender and its importance in Islam (the word Islam can literally mean "surrender").[18]

In some Christian weddings, obedience was formally included along with honor and love as part of a conventional bride's (but not the bridegroom's) wedding vow. This came under attack with women's suffrage[citation needed] and the feminist movement. As of 2014[update] the inclusion of a promise to obey in marriage vows has become optional in some denominations.

Some animals can easily be trained to be obedient by employing operant conditioning, for example obedience schools exist to condition dogs to obey the orders of human owners.

Learning to obey adult rules is a major part of the socialization process in childhood, and many techniques are used by adults to modify the behavior of children. Additionally, extensive training is given in armies to make soldiers capable of obeying orders in situations where an untrained person would not be willing to follow orders. Soldiers are initially ordered to do seemingly trivial things, such as picking up the sergeant's hat off the floor, marching in just the right position, or marching and standing in formation. The orders gradually become more demanding, until an order to the soldiers to place themselves into the midst of gunfire gets an instinctively obedient response.

When the Milgram experimenters were interviewing potential volunteers, the participant selection process itself revealed several factors that affected obedience, outside of the actual experiment.

Interviews for eligibility were conducted in an abandoned complex in Bridgeport, Connecticut.[2][19] Despite the dilapidated state of the building, the researchers found that the presence of a Yale professor as stipulated in the advertisement affected the number of people who obeyed. This was not further researched to test obedience without a Yale professor because Milgram had not intentionally staged the interviews to discover factors that affected obedience.[2] A similar conclusion was reached in the Stanford prison experiment.[19]

In the actual experiment, prestige or the appearance of power was a direct factor in obedienceparticularly the presence of men dressed in gray laboratory coats, which gave the impression of scholarship and achievement and was thought to be the main reason why people complied with administering what they thought was a painful or dangerous shock.[2] A similar conclusion was reached in the Stanford prison experiment.

Raj Persaud, in an article in the BMJ,[20] comments on Milgram's attention to detail in his experiment:

The research was also conducted with amazing verve and subtletyfor example, Milgram ensured that the "experimenter" wear a grey lab coat rather than a white one, precisely because he did not want subjects to think that the "experimenter" was a medical doctor and thereby limit the implications of his findings to the power of physician authority.

Despite the fact that prestige is often thought of as a separate factor, it is, in fact, merely a subset of power as a factor. Thus, the prestige conveyed by a Yale professor in a laboratory coat is only a manifestation of the experience and status associated with it and/or the social status afforded by such an image.

According to Milgram, "the essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person's wishes, and he therefore no longer sees himself as responsible for his actions. Once this critical shift of viewpoint has occurred in the person, all of the essential features of obedience follow." Thus, "the major problem for the subject is to recapture control of his own regnant processes once he has committed them to the purposes of the experimenter."[21] Besides this hypothetical agentic state, Milgram proposed the existence of other factors accounting for the subject's obedience: politeness, awkwardness of withdrawal, absorption in the technical aspects of the task, the tendency to attribute impersonal quality to forces that are essentially human, a belief that the experiment served a desirable end, the sequential nature of the action, and anxiety.

Another explanation of Milgram's results invokes belief perseverance as the underlying cause. What "people cannot be counted on is to realize that a seemingly benevolent authority is in fact malevolent, even when they are faced with overwhelming evidence which suggests that this authority is indeed malevolent. Hence, the underlying cause for the subjects' striking conduct could well be conceptual, and not the alleged 'capacity of man to abandon his humanity... as he merges his unique personality into larger institutional structures."'[22]

In humans:

In animals:

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Obedience (human behavior) - Wikipedia

Although many people who studied psychology may work in jobs that perhaps do not, on the surface, seem "scientific," the practice and education of psychology is guided by research findings that are firmly grounded in the scientific method. There are some disciplines within psychology that are even more aligned with the natural sciences, such as neuropsychology, which is the study of the brain's influence on behavior. Psychology is commonly recognized as a social science, and is included on the National Science Foundation's roster of recognized STEM disciplines.

Many psychology undergraduate programs are shaped by the goals laid out in the American Psychology Association's "Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major", said Dr. Michelle Hill, senior associate dean of psychology programs at Southern New Hampshire University. Goal 2 of the American Psychology Association guidelines version 2.0 is "Scientific Inquiry and Critical Thinking," which includes the following subgoals: Use scientific reasoning to interpret psychological phenomena, demonstrate psychology information literacy, and interpret, design, and conduct basic psychological research.

More widespread recognition of psychology as a science is one of the points of emphasis in the APA guidelines, Hill said.

"Professionals in the field who 'do psychology' (e.g. research, teaching, psychotherapy) understand that psychology is a scientific discipline," said Nickolas H. Dominello, Ph.D., lead faculty for SNHU's undergraduate psychology program.

Psychology's status as a science is grounded in the use of the scientific method, said Dominello. Psychologists base their professional practice in knowledge that is obtained through verifiable evidence of human behavior and mental processes. Psychological studies are designed very much like studies in other scientific fields. It is through these studies that psychologists contribute to the body of research in their field.

Learning to design these studies and interpret the findings is a significant part of psychology education. Undergraduate students learn to develop a research question and select a data collection method, and have the opportunity to design and refine a hypothetical research investigation, said Dominello.

Psychology is always growing and always building on itself, he said. "The subject of psychological science, behavior and mental processes, is vast and complex," said Dominello. "Therefore, establishing conclusive evidence is challenging. Psychological research is cyclical, and published research findings often spawn additional inquiries. Each 'brick' of knowledge contributes to the overall structure of knowledge for a particular phenomenon."

So, if psychologists agree that psychology is a science, where does the confusion come from? What prompts some people to think of psychology as a soft science?

"I feel that in part, this misrepresentation of psychology stems from the diversity within the field (i.e. the various subfields) and the fact that psychological science findings often lead to more questions and avenues of future research. This contrasts with some of the more traditional sciences that only search for concrete, definitive answers," said Dominello.

Psychology also utilizes a wider array of qualitative methods than some traditional sciences.

"Although qualitative research provides a different route to understanding than traditional quantitative methods, I feel that is also 'scientific,' just grounded in different philosophical underpinnings," said Dominello.

Research methods can be categorized as either quantitative or qualitative. Quantitative research results in numerical data that can be analyzed. Qualitative research employs methods like questionnaires, interviews and observations. Qualitative research can be analyzed by grouping responses into broad themes. This melding of quantitative and qualitative methods is essential to understand the human factor inherent in psychology.

"Psychology as a science embraces this broader exploratory perspective in order to better understand human phenomena. When merged, qualitative data can breathe life into quantitative data," Dominello said.

"Psychology is unique in that it adds breadth and depth of knowledge in conjunction with so many other disciplines, because we are all curious about understanding human behavior to some extent, whether it's one's own behavior or the behavior of others," said Hill.

This rich combination of qualitative and quantitative skills makes psychology a good undergraduate degree that can prepare students for a wide array of careers. Individuals with a bachelor's degree in psychology can pursue careers in social services, education, human resources and medical fields, using their education and skills as a foundation for understanding and working with others, Dominello said.

Hill said that that a psychology undergraduate program's focus on effective communication, information literacy and understanding human behavior can lend itself to many areas outside psychology, including sales, marketing and many others.

Those who wish to practice as psychologists or work in academic research must pursue additional education beyond a bachelor's degree, often a Ph.D. This advanced education in psychology often involves a strengthening of research skills, and an increased focus on the scientific method and the design of research studies, according to Dominello.

Is psychology a science? The short answer is yes, but the long answer is much more expansive and flexible. Psychology begins with the scientific method, and researchers employ many of the same methods as their colleagues in the natural and physical sciences, but psychology also calls for a deep understanding of human behavior that goes beyond science alone.

Pete Davies is a marketing and communications director in higher education. Follow him on Twitter @daviespete or connect on LinkedIn.

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