Great Lines in Research
By Dave Anderson:
The New York Times on a Carnegie Mellon economic decision making experiment:
The so-called ultimatum game contains a world of psychological and economic mysteries. In a laboratory setting, one person is given an allotment of money (say, $100) and instructed to offer a second person a portion. If the second player says yes to the offer, both keep the cash. If the second player says no, both walk away with nothing.
Rational Expectations economics say that any offer should produce an agreement. Reality says that quite a few offers are rejected as being too "cheap"... but wait for it, the twist is how does inebriation impact decision making...
[The researchers] took a "data truck" to a strip of bars on the South Side of Pittsburgh (where participants were "often at a level of intoxication that is greater than is ethical to induce")
They also did testing in the lab with school provided booze, but that must have been a doozy of an IRB proposal on informed consent --- well you see, we need people who are blasted, but not so blasted that they can not give us informed consent here....
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