a quarter of the land area Pennsylvania Congressional Districts, www.dos.state.pa.us/bcel/LIB/bcel/20/9/2000_stw_congress.pdf, 2002.
“Barack HUSSEIN Obama” Type the keywords “Palin rally,” “Johnstown,” and “Oct 11” into the YouTube search box at www.youtube.com for a number of videos.
when some Republican party leaders Peter Wallsten, “Frank Talk of Obama and Race in Virginia,” Los Angeles Times, October 5, 2008, p. A01.
“Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans” Kathy Kiely and Jill Lawrence, “Clinton Makes Case for Wide Appeal,” USA Today, www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-05-07-clintoninterview_N.htm, May 7, 2008.
comments made by John C. Hagee Michael Luo, “McCain Rejects Hagee Backing as Nazi Remarks Surface,” The New York Times, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/22/mccain-rejects-hagee-backing-as-nazi-remarks-surface/?scp=2&sq=mccain%20and%20pastor&st=cse, May 22, 2008.
“strike … the United States of America” Pastor Larry Kroon, “Sin Is Personal to God,” Wasilla Bible Church, www.wasillabible.org/sermon_files/2008_Transcripts/Sin%20is%20Personal%20to%20God.doc, July 20, 2008.
“In the fine, new American tradition” David Waters, “Palin’s Pastor Problem,” On Faith, The Washington Post, http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/undergod/2008/09/palins_new_pastor_problem.html, September 26, 2008.
“things I don’t always agree with” Brian Ross and Rehab El-Buri, “Obama’s Pastor: God Damn America, U.S. to Blame for 9/11,” http://abcnews.go.com/blotter/story?id=4443788, March 13, 2008.
the black infant mortality rate Philip J. Mazzocco, Timothy C. Brock, Gregory J. Brock, Kristina R. Olson, and Mahzarin R. Banaji, “The Cost of Being Black: White Americans’ Perceptions and the Question of Reparations,” Du Bois Review, Vol. 3, No. 2 (2006).
worse two hundred years ago Richard P. Eibach and Joyce Ehrlinger, “‘Keep Your Eyes on the Prize’: Reference Points and Racial Differences in Assessing Progress Toward Equality,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 32 (2006).
Chapter 10: The Telescope Effect
his service revolver to his head John Violanti, “Analysis of Risk Factors for Police Suicides and Homicides,” Research in Progress, 2008.
the relative risk of suicide Ibid. Violanti examined death certificates in Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
gun suicides account for more than Shankar Vedantam, “Packing Protection or Packing Suicide Risk?” Department of Human Behavior, The Washington Post, July 7, 2008, p. A02.
a reduced number of handgun suicides Colin Loftin, David McDowall, Brian Wiersema, and Talbert J. Cottey, “Effects of Restrictive Licensing of Handguns on Homicide and Suicide in the District of Columbia,” The New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 325 (December 5, 1991).
“for the purpose of immediate self-defense” Robert Barnes, “Justices Reject D.C. Ban on Handgun Ownership,” The Washington Post, June 27, 2008, p. A01.
high levels of gun ownership National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/. Information was gathered from various tables and reports.
957 of these victims—86 percent “Rates of Homicide, Suicide, and Firearm-Related Death Among Children—26 Industrialized Countries,” www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/00046149.htm, February 7, 1997.
guns in people’s homes were implicated Arthur L. Kellermann and Philip J. Cook, “Armed and Dangerous, Guns in American Homes,” in Lethal Imagination: Violence and Brutality in American History, ed. Michael Bellesiles, New York: New York University Press, 1999.
Congress slashed funding for CDC William Kistner, “Firearm Injuries: The Gun Battle over Science,” Frontline, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/guns/procon/injuries.html, May 1997.
“highest completion rates for suicide” Shankar Vedantam, “The Assassin in the Mirror,” Department of Human Behavior, The Washington Post, July 7, 2008, p. A02.
ninety seconds to read each page www.cdc.gov/ncipc/dvp/suicide/SuicideDataSheet.pdf. There is one suicide every sixteen minutes, on average, in the United States.
would be personally killed by terrorism Jennifer S. Lerner, Roxana M. Gonzalez, Deborah A. Small, and Baruch Fischhoff, “Effects of Fear and Anger on Perceived Risks of Terrorism: A National Field Experiment,” Psychological Science, Vol. 14, No. 2 (2003).
no one who could help Chris Lee and George Butler, “Complex Response to Tankship Insiko 1907,” Proceedings of the Marine Safety Council, Vol. 60, No. 1 (January-March 2003).
rescuers tried to tempt the terrier “Costly Effort to Rescue Dog Gives Some Pause,” Los Angeles Times, April 26, 2002, p. A34.
ABC News devoted eighteen minutes Paul Slovic, “‘If I Look at the Mass, I Will Never Act’: Psychic Numbing and Genocide,” Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 2, No. 2 (April 2007).
The philosopher Peter Singer once devised Peter Singer has mentioned the story about the drowning child in a number of publications, including his 2009 book, The Life You Can Save, Random House, Inc.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SHANKAR VEDANTAM is a national science writer at The Washington Post. Between 2006 and 2009, Vedantam authored the weekly Department of Human Behavior column in The Washington Post. He is the winner of several journalism awards. Vedantam is a 2009–2010 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife and daughter.
Copyright © 2010 by Shankar Vedantam
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
SPIEGEL & GRAU and Design is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vedantam, Shankar.
The hidden brain: how our unconscious minds elect presidents, control markets, wage wars, and save our lives / Shankar Vedantam.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-58836-939-0
1. Subconsciousness. 2. Perception. 3. Motivation (Psychology).
4. Selectivity (Psychology). 5. Discrimination—Psychological aspects. I. Title.
BF315.V399 2009 154.2—dc22 2009019717
www.spiegelandgrau.com
v3.0
The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives Page 31