SOCIAL STUDIES
War games
One of the hot debates at the moment is whether the availability of less-destructive nuclear weapons — such as those with small yields or those that explode at high altitude to damage only electronics on the ground — increases the likelihood of nuclear war. Since it’s hard to test this in the real world, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley developed an online war game — aptly named the Strategic Interaction Game between Nuclear Armed Lands (SIGNAL) — that people played against one another with or without lessdestructive nuclear weapons in their nuclear arsenals. The good news is that the availability of these weapons had insignificant effects on the likelihood that nuclear weapons would be used. The bad news is that in a related survey experiment, people were significantly more inclined to recommend using nuclear weapons, particularly the less-destructive ones, if they had the latter in their arsenals. Perhaps this suggests there’s a lot of cheap nuke talk, but actually playing the game makes a difference. Reddie, A. & Goldblum, B., “Evidence of the Unthinkable: Experimental Wargaming at the Nuclear Threshold,” Journal of Peace Research (forthcoming).
Building support
After Benito Mussolini became the dictator of Italy in the 1920s, he instituted a large program to reclaim and develop the country’s malarial swamplands, something that the Roman Empire and Papal States had struggled to do. Many towns were created. A new study finds that support for Mussolini and the Fascist Party increased near these towns, and that increased support for fascism has persisted in these areas ever since. The effect could not be explained by preexisting fascist support in these areas, preexisting fascist support by settlers of these areas, or by geographic factors. Carillo, M., “Fascistville: Mussolini’s New Towns and the Persistence of Neo-Fascism,” Journal of Economic Growth (December 2022).
Surprise me
Just in time for Halloween, experiments find that people like a little surprise when they buy or are given something. For example, customers at an ice cream shop preferred to be gifted a surprise flavor from one of 10 possibilities instead of being given a prespecified popular flavor. The same was true for people who were offered any of several stress balls, hotel rooms, or music videos. They preferred what is known as “mysterious consumption” — getting something randomly chosen from a larger set instead of a prespecified item from that set. One proviso is that the items in the set have to be roughly similar in quality but sufficiently distinctive. For example, people preferred to be surprised when they were offered one in a set of different-colored face masks, but surprise didn’t matter to them when the masks were all different shades of the same color. Buechel, E. & Li, R., “Mysterious Consumption: Preference for Horizontal (Versus Vertical) Uncertainty and the Role of Surprise,” Journal of Consumer Research (forthcoming).
A new study indicates that people like “mysterious consumption” — the chance to be surprised by which item they receive from a set of similar items.