Senior Women Web

Author: SeniorWomenWeb

  • The Devil Wears Prada? What psychological consequences do luxury goods have on people?

    Harvard’s Business School released a working paper that will probably only confirm those suppositions we’ve made about people and their affinity for luxurious goods:

    Executive Summary:

    Gandhi once wrote that “a certain degree of physical harmony and comfort is necessary, but above a certain level it becomes a hindrance instead of a help.” This observation raises interesting questions for psychologists regarding the effects of luxury. What psychological consequences do luxury goods have on people? In this paper, the authors argue that luxury goods can activate the concept of self-interest and affect subsequent cognition. The argument involves two key premises: Luxury is intrinsically linked to self-interest, and exposure to luxury can activate related mental representations affecting cognition and decision-making. Two experiments showed that exposure to luxury led people to think more about themselves than others. Key concepts include:

    • Luxury does not necessarily induce people to be “nasty” toward others but rather causes them to be less concerned about or considerate toward others.
    • Experiment 1 showed that when primed with luxury, people are more likely to endorse self-interested business decisions (profit maximization), even at the expense of others.
    • Experiment 2 further demonstrated that exposure to luxury is likely to activate self-interest but not the tendency to harm others.
    • Exposure to luxury goods may activate a social norm that it is appropriate to pursue interests beyond a basic comfort level, even at the expense of others. It may be this activated social norm that affects people’s judgment and decision-making.
    • Alternatively, exposure to luxury may directly increase people’s personal desire, causing them to focus on their own benefits such as prioritizing profits over social responsibilities.

    From the paper: “In other words, the very notion of luxury involves increasing pleasure beyond basic functionality, suggesting a motivation that focuses on hedonist experiences. Likewise, marketing researchers have shown that people buy luxury goods not merely to impress social others or gain symbolic status, but also to fulfill self-directed pleasures or gratification for themselves.”

    Read the entire paper at the Harvard Business School site

  • FDA Approves A High Dose Seasonal Influenza Vaccine Specifically Intended for People Ages 65 and Older

    Accelerated approval process used in vaccine approval

    The US Food and Drug Administration today approved Fluzone High-Dose, an inactivated influenza virus vaccine for people ages 65 years and older to prevent disease caused by influenza virus subtypes A and B.

    People in this age group are at highest risk for seasonal influenza complications, which may result in hospitalization and death. Annual vaccination remains the best protection from influenza, particularly for people 65 and older.

    Fluzone High-Dose was approved via the accelerated approval pathway. FDA’s accelerated approval pathway helps safe and effective medical products for serious or life-threatening diseases become available sooner. In clinical studies, Fluzone High-Dose demonstrated an enhanced immune response compared with Fluzone in individuals 65 and older.

    As part of the accelerated approval process, the manufacturer is required to conduct further studies to verify that the Fluzone High-Dose will decrease seasonal influenza disease after vaccination.

    “As people grow older, their immune systems typically become weaker,” said Karen Midthun, M.D., acting director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. “This is the first influenza vaccine that uses a higher dose to induce a stronger immune response that is intended to better protect the elderly against seasonal influenza.”

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  • Report of the Defense Task Force on Sexual Assault in the Military Services

    In compiling this report, the Task Force gathered and analyzed information from two detailed data calls to the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), the Combatant Commands, and the Military Services. We conducted site visits at sixty installations in the United States, the Middle East, the Pacific Rim, and Europe, including deployed locations. During these site visits, we interviewed key decision makers and service providers responsible for addressing sexual assault. We also conducted focus groups at each site to assess Service Members’ understanding of sexual assault, as well as military sexual assault prevention and response programs, policies, and practices. With the assistance of the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC), the Task Force developed, administered, and then analyzed results of surveys of Sexual Assault Response Coordinators (SARCs), their supervisors and Victim Advocates (VAs). Within the realm of military justice, we conducted extensive interviews with prosecutors, defense counsel, military judges, convening authorities, and senior policy officials, and we made site visits at the US Disciplinary Barracks (USDB) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Naval Consolidated Brig at Miramar, California, and Department of Defense forensic laboratory at Fort Gillem, Georgia. We considered results from our review of hundreds of criminal investigative files from the Military Services, as well as interviews with law enforcement officials during site visits and within the Washington, DC region. The Task Force sought public comment at each of our site visits and public meetings. More than sixty victims of sexual assault provided information for our consideration. We generated this report based upon the efforts outlined above, a thorough review of related reports, studies, and articles, and a series of subcommittee and full Task Force public meetings.

    An excerpt follows:

    Training and Socialization

    Each year, the Armed Forces bring in new Service Members with diverse experiences, values, beliefs, and cultural backgrounds. It is imperative that all military personnel be sufficiently trained to be capable and ready to respond to the many circumstances they may face, professionally and personally, regardless of their backgrounds. Structured and frequent training is integral to military culture and incorporates instruction in military skills, knowledge, and attitudes essential to performance as a member of the Armed Forces.  Initial military training serves as the primary socialization process for integrating and instilling in recruits a common sense of purpose, an understanding of military expectations, core values and standards, structure and discipline, teamwork, and pride. Socialization during military service is continual, and is used to reinforce standards as well as to effect change. In short, military training introduces and reinforces the culture necessary to ensure military effectiveness and mission readiness.

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  • WHO Surgical Safety Checklist, With and Without Humor

    Although the WHO (World Health Organization) Surgical Safety Checklist was published in a New England Journal of Medicine article last January, it bears repeating. Not only is it in a pdf form to be used by surgeons, operating room staff and others, it  can be found in a YouTube video.  Conversely,  a video of how not to do the checklist (in this case it’s adapted for England and Wales, hence the British accents) has also been provided which might lead to wary guffaws :



    Harvard Health explains the study and subsequent videos:

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  • Women Command Attention in Government, Hollywood and Broadcasting in 2009

    Nichola Gutgold writes:  In politics women replaced women in several elections pointing to the ever-growing number of women throwing their hats into the political ring; Hollywood showcased women outside the usual female prototype and for the first time two women and one man will deliver the evening news from the big three networks.

  • Written on Water; Literature of the Sea in the Age of Sail

    “My dear Louis. You are too far away — you are too absent, too invisible … friendship is too delicate a matter for such tricks — for cutting great gory masses out of ’em … Therefore come back. Hang it all — sink it all and come back.  A little more and I shall cease to believe in you… Your adventures, no doubt, are wonderful… .”

    — Henry James, writing to Robert Louis Stevenson in 1888

    “This online exhibition is based on an exhibition of nautical materials at Indiana University’s Lilly Library. It attempts to offer a small sampling of the wide variety of books and manuscripts dealing with ships and the sea during a time before steam-powered vessels. National boundaries and personal fortunes alike depended on wooden ships propelled by wind and canvas sails; the voyages themselves were often fraught with danger and physical difficulty. It is no surprise, then, that a vast body of nautical literature was produced during the period, from practical treatises aimed at improving ships’ performance to imaginative stories of the mystery and danger of the open sea.”

    The Lilly Library at Indiana University’s online Nautical Fiction exhibition contains files on Homer’s Odyssey, Daniel Defoe’s  The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner; Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island; and Joseph Conrad’s Typhoon and Other Stories … among others.

    The other sections of the exhibit include Practical Seamanship, War at Sea, Nautical Hardships and a subject that has become to the forefront again in the last years, Piracy.

    Nautical Hardships includes the following:

    Read more »

    Sad Nevvs from the Sea, Being a True Relation of the Losse of That Good Ship Called the Merchant Royall Which Was Cast Away Ten Leagues from the Lands End on Thursday Night Being the 23 of Septemb. Last, 1641. [London?],1641.

    “On a return trip from Spain, the English ship the Merchant Royall sprung a leak below the waterline. When the chains for both of the ship’s pumps broke, the crew realized that the ship would soon sink. According to this pamphlet, the Merchant Royall was loaded at the time with “300000 pound in ready boloigne [bullion], 100000 pound in gold, and as much value in Iewels”. The crew and passengers were rescued by a nearby vessel, but the treasure went down with the ship. The loss was felt so deeply by the captain of the Merchant Royall that upon landing on shore, he “repaired to his house and family, and will not be seene or spoken with (as yet) by any his griefe is so great”. The illustration used on the title page was copied from William Bourne’s A Regiment for the Sea (1577), although it was altered to remove the original coats of arms on the sails.”

    The Piracy page includes:  “Alexandre Exquemelin spent twelve years among pirates serving as a surgeon, and this work is considered the most important early history of piracy. Originally published in Dutch in 1678, it was soon translated into a number of languages and reached a public that was hungry for stories of pirates and privateers. The distinction between the two classes is often imprecise, but essentially privateers acted during times of war under the recognition of a national government (which granted ‘letters of marque’ authorizing their holders to capture ships of hostile nations) but outside the confines of an established navy.”

    “Although piracy has attained a veneer of romanticism, Exquemelin makes no effort to conceal the frequent barbarities he witnessed among the pirates. The pages exhibited here depict the pirate Francis L’Ollonais, whom one author has described as ‘so utterly base that it would be impossible for anyone to look upon him as a hero’. “

     

     

  • Travel: The Splendor of India’s Royal Court and Palaces of the Maharajas

    “For confirmation of our love and friendship, I desire your Majesty to command your merchants to bring in their ships of all sorts of rarities and rich goods fit for my palace”

    — The Great Moghul Jahangir: Letter to James I, King of England, 1617 A.D.

    An exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London displays numerous photographs of maharaja’s palaces :

    “The word maharaja, literally ‘great king’, conjures up a vision of splendour and magnificence. The image of a turbaned, bejewelled ruler with absolute authority and immense wealth is pervasive and evocative, but it fails to do justice to his role in the cultural and political history of India. Maharaja: The Splendour of India’s Royal Courts re-examines the world of the maharajas and their extraordinarily rich culture.”

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  • How Seniors Change Their Asset Holdings During Retirement

    © 2009, by Karen Smith, Mauricio Soto, and Rudolph G. Penner from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College:

    More generally, our results indicate that most of the older population is extremely cautious in formulating their spending plans as they age. This may be because of a very strong bequest motive or because of a concern that they will face emergency expenditures, most probably related to health care. However, the conservatism is so extreme, especially among the more affluent, that one cannot avoid the suspicion that many are unnecessarily forgoing consumption.

    According to the results of our regressions, the nonannuitized assets held by the top quintile of the income distribution actually grew in value up to age 85, all else equal. In the three middle quintiles, asset values fell slightly with age, but at such a slow rate that households were likely to die long before exhausting their wealth. These results refer to averages in the various income quintiles. Undoubtedly, there are some in the population who spend too lavishly while others are very clearly being too  conservative.

    The picture changes significantly when we observe those who were in the bottom quintile of the income distribution in 2006. They spend down their annuitized assets quite quickly and end up relying on Social Security, DB pension plans, and welfare payments during their retirement. For those at the bottom who have worked fairly steadily at low incomes through their lifetime, Social Security generally provides an adequate replacement rate, especially for married couples. That may not be the case for those who have had low incomes because of an erratic work history.

    Read the entire executive summary and working paper at CRR

     

  • Goosed

    Julia Sneden’s writes: My husband’s Christmas is informed by a heavy dose of Dickens and merrie olde England. It’s not enough to watch every version of A Christmas Carol; he sings along both with Advent hymns on a Canterbury Cathedral Choir CD and The Boar’s Head in Latin as I carry in the roast. He reads Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales aloud on Christmas Eve and puts Christmas crackers at each place while reminding us of Boxing Day.

  • Book Review: The Education of a Black Radical: A Southern Civil Rights Activist’s Journey 1959-1964 

    Jo Freeman writes: D’Army Bailey was a sergeant if not exactly a foot soldier in the civil rights movement in two cities. Accounts like his are the building blocks of history. We should be grateful to him for telling us what happened at his two schools and their environs during the civil rights movement of the Sixties.