Stanford University researchers exposed a randomly chosen set of online readers to a news account of a three-year rise in city crime rates that depicted crime as a ravaging beast. Other randomly chosen readers saw the same news account and statistics except for one word: the criminality was depicted as a ravaging virus. Later the survey asked them all to indicate their preferred solutions. In the most precise analysis of the results, readers who initially saw crime portrayed as a beast recommended catch-and-cage solutions rather than remove-unhealthy-conditions solutions. But the opposite
...more
