Daily Tao – Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst – 2
This is precisely the case. The time pressure of snap judgments is a version of increased cognitive load. Likewise, people become more conservative when tired, in pain or distracted with a cognitive task, or when blood alcohol levels rise. Recall from chapter 3 that willpower takes metabolic power, thanks to the glucose demands of the frontal cortex. This was the finding that when people are hungry, they become less generous in economic games. A real-world example of this is startling (see graph on previous page)—in a study of more than 1,100 judicial rulings, prisoners were granted parole at about a 60 percent rate when judges had recently eaten, and at essentially a 0 percent rate just before judges ate (note also the overall decline over the course of a tiring day). Justice may be blind, but she’s sure sensitive to her stomach gurgling.
Thou shall not judge when one is hungry.
Being in stress, hunger or any other form of distress does take away from our ability to make good decisions. It is also another reason as to why people whom are in financial distress also tend to not to make the best decisions possible. It is something we should definitely take not of.
On another note, the anecdote above really does show the randomness of outcomes that we have, and that it is inherently impossible to truly achieve equality of opportunity in the world that we live in. While it is an ideal that we might want to achieve, the randomness of life affects outcomes in ways we can never plan for.
Personally, I’ve found that it is way easier to accept the cards that one is dealt with when you internalize the concept that fairness in outcomes don’t exist. Outcomes happens from actions and random chance. Concerning oneself with whether you or someone “deserves this” tends to only lead to more stress. Rather, one should simply accept the situation are in and guess the best course of action that we can take. That seems to be the best way to be sane in a random world.
