Australian IT professionals want greater visual representation of data within their business intelligence (BI) deployments, according to a survey conducted by Sydney-based Altis Consulting, an Australian-owned consultancy offering specialist expertise in data warehousing, business intelligence and information management.
Are you honest or dishonest? Scientists know!
By William Atkins
Monday, 27 July 2009 18:37
Page 2 of 2
During these activities, the Harvard researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans to show brain (neural) activity in the areas of the brain that control decision making and behavioral control.
Their brain activity was different when they had the chance to cheat and, in fact, did cheat.
The researchers knew this to be the case because “Many subjects behaved dishonestly, as indicated by improbable levels of ‘accuracy’.”
A toss of the coin has a 50% chance of being heads and a 50% chance of being tails each time. Anything deviating from this percentage is very unlikely, based on mathematical statistics.
Honest subjects did not show any differences in their brain activity, whether they predicted the outcome before or after the toss of the coin.
In other words, these people did not make a conscious decision whether to cheat or not. They automatically told the truth in all cases.
The two Harvard University scientists concluded that: “Our findings support the Grace hypothesis. Individuals who behaved honestly exhibited no additional control-related activity (or other kind of activity) when choosing to behave honestly, as compared with a control condition in which there was no opportunity for dishonest gain.”
And, “In contrast, individuals who behaved dishonestly exhibited increased activity in control-related regions of prefrontal cortex, both when choosing to behave dishonestly and on occasions when they refrained from dishonesty. Levels of activity in these regions correlated with the frequency of dishonesty in individuals.”
Please enable JavaScript in your browser to post your comment!





