Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Mirror mirror on the wall...

"Subjects tested in a room with a mirror have been found to work harder, to be more helpful and to be less inclined to cheat, compared with control groups performing the same exercises in nonmirrored settings...people in a room with a mirror were comparatively less likely to judge others based on social stereotypes about, for example, sex, race or religion."
...

"When people are made to be self-aware, they are likelier to stop and think about what they are doing...A byproduct of that awareness may be a shift away from acting on autopilot toward more desirable ways of behaving. Physical self-reflection, in other words, encourages philosophical self-reflection, a crash course in the Socratic notion that you cannot know or appreciate others until you know yourself."

From an NYT article

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