How to Be a Mentsh (and Not a Shmuck) by Wex, Michael (summer reading list txt) 📕

meditate upon it day and night” might have an inherently moral function completely independent of the sanctity that a Jew who studies the Torah is likely to attribute to the act of studying or the words of the sacred text.

In an experiment to measure hypocrisy, David DeSteno and Piercarlo Valdesolo offered a group of subjects a choice between two tasks, a short and easy one or one that was difficult and long. The subjects were told that they had to assign one of these tasks to themselves and one to a subject from another group (which didn’t really exist), who wouldn’t be told that the current subject had determined which task he or she would be performing.

The subjects were also told that tossing a coin would be the fairest way to make this decision, and they were supplied with a randomizing computer program that would simulate an actual coin-toss. Ninety-two percent immediately took the easy task for themselves; 8 percent used the randomizer. No participants assigned themselves the difficult task. Those who had used the randomizer were then eliminated from the group and the rest were asked to evaluate their actions for fairness. On a scale of 1 to 7, the average score fell well past the midpoint.

A different group was then assigned to watch others assign themselves the easy job and then rate them for fairness on the same scale. The observers’ fairness ratings were significantly lower than those of the first group.

Two more groups were then arbitrarily divided into subgroups based on the color of randomly distributed wristbands and then asked to evaluate the fairness of “participants” from either group who assigned themselves the easy task. The results were comparable to those from the first round, except that participants whose wristbands were the same color as the evaluators’ received even higher mean fairness ratings than the unaffiliated individuals had, and members of the other groups ranked lower than the people evaluated in the second group.

With this experiment, DeSteno and Valdesolo have confirmed many of our less rosy notions of human nature. “A person finds no fault with himself,” as it says (Kesubos 105b), and we now have a more accurate measure of how shameless people can be about applying one standard to themselves (and members of their group) and another to the rest of the world.

Things got even more interesting when they repeated the experiment, but with one slight difference: the addition of what is called a “cognitive constraint,” a mental task intended to divide or deflect the participant’s attention. Before answering the questions about fairness in assigning tasks, the participants were given a mental job to do. As the experimenters describe it:

Participants were told that the experimenters were interested in how people make judgments when they are distracted. To simulate distraction, they would be asked to remember a string of digits at the same time that they were responding to a series of questions. Participants were told that a string of seven digits would appear on the screen before each question. They would then have to answer the question within 10 seconds, immediately after which they would have to recall the digit string that had preceded the question. Participants were also told that it was extremely important to provide the most accurate answers possible for questions comprising the assignment evaluation measure.

The participants were thinking about the numbers rather than themselves. The cognitive constraint “resulted in the disappearance of the hypocrisy effect; participants experiencing load judged their own transgressions to be as unfair as the same behavior when enacted by another.” In other words, they were so busy trying to remember the numbers that they were unable to come up with any exculpatory bullshit. They didn’t actually behave any better than they did in the first experiment; they still gave themselves the easy job without regard for fairness to the next participant, but at least they got to a point where they were willing to acknowledge that they were behaving like shmucks. It might not be much, but it’s a start.

The findings of Valdesolo and DeSteno might lend a more functional or utilitarian cast to the long-standing Jewish emphasis on study. If the Torah never really departs from our mouths and we meditate on it day and night, as the book of Joshua tells us to do (and the word translated as “meditate” can also mean “speak, utter, recite”); if we set the Lord before us always (see Psalms 16:8), perhaps what we’re really doing is employing a religiously or community-mandated cognitive constraint that, even if it can’t keep us from doing the wrong thing, at least makes it more difficult for us to rationalize our wrongdoing. “Woe unto those,” says Isaiah, “who call evil good and good evil, who make darkness into light and light into darkness” (Isa. 5:20). We’ve come almost full circle: by thinking about something other than ourselves—whether it’s the glory of the Lord or a randomly generated string of numbers—we become able to see ourselves as we are.

Such an understanding of the purpose of constant study might help to explain some of the more troubling rabbinic pronouncements about what happens to those who aren’t paying attention:

Rabbi Jacob says: If somebody is walking along the road studying, but breaks off to say, “How beautiful is this tree, how beautiful is this field”—Scripture considers him guilty against himself.

(ovos 3:7)

“Guilty against himself” means “has put himself into a position in which he is liable to lose his life.” While Rabbi Jacob is alluding in part to the folk belief that no harm can come to a person while he is engaged in Torah study—or no harm from the kinds of demons who frequent roads and trails; brigands might be another question—the basic thrust of his comment, that leaving off study on account of any distraction is a capital sin, has troubled students and commentators for a very long time: you look at a tree