CIENCIASMEDICASNEWS: Lying a slippery slope, says new study

domingo, 30 de octubre de 2016

Lying a slippery slope, says new study

Lying a slippery slope, says new study

Bioedge

Lying is a slippery slope, says new study in Nature Neuroscience

by Xavier Symons | 29 Oct 2016 | 2 comments

Telling small lies desensitises our brains to the associated negative emotions and may encourage us to tell bigger lies in future, according to a new study published by researchers from University College London.

The study, published in Nature Neuroscience, provides the first empirical evidence that self-serving lies gradually escalate and reveals how this happens in our brains.

Researchers recruited 80 volunteers who took part in a ‘team estimation task’ that involved guessing the number of pennies in a jar and sending their estimates to unseen partners using a computer. This took place in several different scenarios. In the baseline scenario, participants were told to aim at the most accurate estimate, while in other scenarios, over or under-estimating the amount would either benefit the participant at their partner’s expense, benefit both of them, benefit their partner at their own expense, or only benefit one of them with no effect on the other.

The researchers found that dishonesty increased over 60 presentations of the jar, but only when it was self-serving.

Twenty-five of the participants conducted the task in a functional MRI scanner, and researchers discovered that activity in amygdala -- a brain region that responds to and processes emotion -- decreased over time during the subsequent acts of dishonesty.

This study is the first empirical evidence that dishonest behavior escalates when it's repeated, when all else is held constant,” lead author Neil Garrett, a cognitive neuroscientist at U.C.L., told reporters at a recent press conference.

One of the researchers, neuroscientist Tali Sharot, says we might want to start looking at evidence-based ways to curb dishonesty.

Writing in The Conversation with Princeton psychologist Neil Garrett, Sharot said:

Previous research … shows that dishonesty can be curbed through interventions such as reminding people of their values, emphasising the honest actions of others and wiping the slate clean through acts of confession. Interventions like these could be used to nudge people away from dishonest acts before they escalate.

BioEdge

Suite 12A, Level 2 | 5 George St | North Strathfield NSW 2137 | Australia

Phone: +61 2 8005 8605

Mobile: 0422-691-615

Email: michael@bioedge.org

It appears that Canada has experienced a visitation from an “angel of mercy”, a media euphemism for a medical serial killer. Arrested this week, Elizabeth Wettlaufer allegedly killed eight patients in Ontario nursing homes since 2007. The Canadian media is describing her as one of Canada’s worst serial killers.

She faces stiff competition in other countries. In Italy, Daniela Poggiali, a nurse, was sentenced earlier this year over 13 deaths. In the US, Charles Cullen, a nurse. was sentenced in 2006 over the deaths of about 40 patients. In Germany Stephan Letter killed at least 29 patients in 2003 and 2004. And then there is Dr Harold Shipman, the quiet English doctor who killed 250 patients.

These horrors never seem to be mentioned when the legalization of euthanasia is being debated, but they should be. The existence of these mad “angels of mercy” demonstrates that some healthcare professionals feel compelled to kill the defenceless people entrusted to their care.

Legalisation creates a class of people who do the same thing but without the secrecy. In Belgium and the Netherlands, the bulk of the euthanasia business seems to be carried out by a handful of doctors. Some of them have killed scores of patients. What does that do to them? Why do they volunteer? Will there be more “angels of mercy” in jurisdictions where euthanasia is legal? These are all questions that need to be asked and answered.