BobHarris.com - New academic study conclusively shows why Bush is such a total dong

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Juan Cole

New academic study conclusively shows why Bush is such a total dong

Tag it now -

Tuesday, 20 June 2006

OK, I'm sort of reading that into things. But see if that's not far from your own understanding:

New Scientist magazine just posted a thing about a study that finds that overconfident people are more likely to (a) wage war and (b) muck up the ensuing battles completely.

Say, now. . . really?

They found this result by setting up wargames with a bunch of volunteers, who had the ability to either negotiate or attack their opponents, all while wearing Clockwork Orange-style brainwave scanners* and genital strain gauges** and guys in labcoats tracked their strategies and progress. Et voila:

"Those who expected to do best tended to do worst,” the researchers say. “This suggests that positive illusions were not only misguided but actually may have been detrimental to performance in this scenario. . ."

and

Those who launched unprovoked attacks also exhibited more narcissism. . .

Huh. Well, there it is. The scientists theorize that this sort of misguided optimism about one's judgment and self-worth was probably an evolutionary advantage when humans were fighting over things like who gets the fruit from a particular tree. Not so much now that we have, like, unmanned Predator drones and stuff.

Of course, you have to be a complete narcissist even to think you're worthy of running any government, I would think.

Thus, once again, science proves: we are all screwed.

And it's only Wednesday.

Thanks to Felicity in Australia for pointing this out. Please let me come down there and live in your basement or something. (Not that Australia is perfect, I know. But you have wallabies, at least. That is some consolation while the world goes insane.)

*I made this part up.

**I made this part up, too. But it was more fun to imagine, wasn't it?