【推荐1】Although ethics classes are common around the world, scientists are unsure if their lessons can actually change behavior, evidence either way is weak, relying on laboratory tests or sometimes self-reports. But a new study published in Cognition found that, in at least one real-world situation, a single ethics lesson may have had lasting effects.

The researchers investigated one class session’s impact on eating meat. They chose this particular behavior for three reasons, according to study co-author Eric Schwitzgebel, a philosopher at the University of California, Riverside: Students’ attitudes on the topic are variable and unstable, behavior is easily measurable, and ethics literature largely agrees that eating less meat is good because it reduces environmental harm and animal suffering. Half of the students in four large philosophy classes read an article on the ethics of factory-farmed meat optionally watched an 11-minute video on the topic and joined a 50-minute discussion. The other half focused on charitable giving instead. Then unknown to the students, the researchers studied their anonymous meal-card purchases for that semester-nearly 14,000 receipts for almost 500 students.

Schwitzgebel predicted the intervention would have no effect; he had previously found that ethics professors do not differ from other professors on a range of behaviors, including voting rates, blood donation and returning library books. But among student subjects who discussed meat ethics, meal purchases containing meat decreased from 52 to 45 percent-and this effect held steady for the study’s duration of several weeks. Purchases from other group remained at 52 percent.

“That’s actually a pretty large effect for a pretty small intervention,” Schwitzgebel says, Psychologist Nina Strohminger at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the study, says she wants the effect to be real but cannot rule out some unknown confusing variable.

Schwitzgebel suspects the greatest impact came from social influence—classmates or teaching assistants leading the discussions may have shared their own vegetarianism, showing it as achievable or more common. Second, the video may have had an emotional impact. Least sparkling, he thinks, is rational argument, although his co-authors say reason might also play a big role. Now the researchers are probing the specific effects of teaching style, teaching assistants’ eating habits and students’ video exposure. Meanwhile, Schwitzgebel, who had predicted no effect, will be eating his words.

【推荐2】When given the choice, about 85% of people say they would not want to know about some negative event far in the future. Yet recently millions around the globe have downloaded FaceApp, which allows users to see how they might age in real life.

Many had fun with joking that they love the FaceApp old filter (滤镜). Beneath the humor is a serious subject: How do we learn to relate to our future selves? It’s important that we try to because it could help strengthen the long-term decisions that we make. However, we often fail to make sacrifices for the older versions of ourselves.

More than half of the respondents in a recent survey of 2, 800 Americans said they rarely or never thought about what their lives might be like 30 years from now. This isn’t surprising, since most of us are firmly rooted in the present and thinking about the distant future can seem like a distant priority. My ongoing research might also offer an explanation: We tend to think about our future selves as if they are someone different from who we are today. In an effort to narrow these empathy (共情) gaps, my research workmates and I have tried to humanize (使人性化) people’s future selves in the same way others have tried to humanize charity receivers. Given that a photograph of one hungry child can spark emotional reactions, and cause viewers to donate, we have provided participants with vivid images of their distant selves.

That seems helpful. In a recently completed project in Mexico, we found that exposure to future-self images led more people to add to their pensions (养老金). Despite this research, I’m not sure that the app users will suddenly increase their pension and care about their health. The silly app isn’t paired with an immediate opportunity to change any of these things.

The lesson from FaceApp shouldn’t be that we need to combine hi-tech visuals with savings for retirement. The lesson, then, leads to a question: What more can be done to urge us to think about, care for who we will one day become?