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IT’S A FUNNY OLD WORLD

by | Mar 5, 2024 | Articles, It's a funny old world

In this column, we provoke fresh thinking and round up some of the weird, wonderful, quirky, surprising – and shocking – stories out there

 

You can’t be too kind

Underestimating how well others will respond to positive acts starts when we are young, finds research. 

Building on research among adults which has showed we underestimate how others respond to acts such as expressing gratitude, giving compliments and random shows of kindness, research from Stony Brook University and the University of Chicago carried out among both adults and children finds that this tendency starts when children are as young as four. 

The authors of the report published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, suggest that “miscalibrated psychological barriers to social connection may emerge early in life.”

In the first of two experiments, Echelbarger and Epley found that participating children, as well as the adults, underestimated recipients’ perceptions of scale of the act of kindness, and how much it improved their mood. As expected, the act of giving also boosted the mood of both the children and adults participating.

In a second experiment that was very similar but adapted for younger children, again, both child and adult givers underestimated how big their act of kindness would seem, and the boost it would make to the recipient’s mood. And as before, both children and adults also felt better after performing this random act of kindness. 

There were a few differences noted. Overall, the children predicted – and experienced – the act of giving as being bigger than the adults did, while among the children, younger children felt even better after receiving the gift than older children, or adults. 

 

Police officer loses trousers

A UK police inspector has been demoted after selling a pair of police uniform trousers on secondhand online marketplace Vinted for £4.

Owen Hurley admitted selling the trousers and told a Hertfordshire Constabulary misconduct hearing that the police trousers had been in his wardrobe a long time
and he wanted to “make space” after redecorating.

Hurley, who has been demoted to the rank of sergeant with immediate effect, told the hearing: “It was a mistake. I should have thought through the process but I just did it instinctively at the time.”

The sale of the trousers, which were plain and featured no police insignia, was reported to Hertfordshire Constabulary by a member of the public in summer 2023.

Counsel on behalf of Hurley argued that not all mistakes are “unethical” and that by selling the trousers under his own name the police officer was not concealing his behaviour in a way to suggest deliberate wrongdoing.

Hurley denied the sale amounted to gross misconduct and said he had engaged “proactively” in the investigation into his behaviour. He said the sale “wasn’t about money” but confessed listing the trousers on Vinted was a police issue.

Chief constable Charlie Hall found Hurley had ordered two new pairs of police trousers in January 2023, which were the same size as those listed on Vinted. Hurley described his old trousers as a poor fit.

Hall ruled that Hurley had breached the professional standards of integrity, discreditable conduct, and duties and responsibilities. “You have described it as a mistake… I would describe it as stupid,” he said, adding that taking no action may result in “a slippery slope, one that I cannot allow to get a foothold”. He said dismissal is “not proportionate”.

 

Secret squirrel

Keeping secrets can be positive at times, argue researchers in a paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition. 

Research by Michael Slepian of Columbia University and his colleagues finds that keeping positive information quiet can be energising. 

Participants in a first study who thought about their secret good news reported feeling more energised than those thinking about non-secret good news, whether or not they intended to share the news, although intending to share was also energising in and of itself. 

A second study found that keeping a secret due to external reasons was fatiguing, while keeping a secret because of internal reasons, such as intending to surprise someone, was energising. 

A third study compared positive secrets to other kinds of secrets. Not only did participants, unsurprisingly, feel good about positive secrets but were more likely to keep these secrets because they wanted to, rather than because they should. This motivation is what makes positive secrets more energising, suggest the researchers. A subsequent study supported this idea, finding that 78.4% of positive secrets are autonomously kept.