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We all know people who have suffered by trusting too much: scammed customers, jilted lovers, shunned friends. Indeed, most of us have been burned by misplaced trust. These personal and vicarious experiences lead us to believe that people are too trusting, often verging on gullibility.

In fact, we don't trust enough.

Take data about trust in the United States (the same would be true in most wealthy democratic countries at least). Interpersonal trust, a measure of whether people think others are in general trustworthy, is at its lowest in nearly 50 years. Yet it is unlikely that people are any less trustworthy than before: the massive drop in crime over the past decades suggests the opposite. Trust in the media is also at bottom levels, even though mainstream media outlets have an impressive (if not unblemished) record of accuracy.

Meanwhile, trust in science has held up comparatively well, with most people trusting scientists most of the time; still, in some areas at least, from climate change to vaccination, a share of the population doesn't trust science enough - with devastating consequences.

Social scientists have a variety of tools to study how trusting, and how trustworthy, people are. The most popular is the trust game, in which two participants play, usually anonymously. The first participant is given a small amount of money, $10 say, and asked to decide how much to transfer to the other participant. The amount transferred is then tripled, and the second participant chooses how much to give back to the first. In Western countries at least, trust is rewarded: the more money the first participant transfers, the more money the second participant sends back, and thus the more money the first participant ends up with. In spite of this, first participants on average transfer only half the money they have received. In some studies, a variant was introduced whereby participants knew each other's ethnicity. Prejudice led participants to mistrust certain groups - Israeli men of Eastern origin (Asian and African immigrants and their Israeli-born offspring), or black students in South Africa - transferring them less money, even though these groups proved just as trustworthy as more esteemed groups.

If people and institutions are more trustworthy than we give them credit for, why don't we get it right? Why don't we trust more?

In 2017, the social scientist Toshio Yamagishi was kind enough to invite me to his flat in Machida, a city in the Tokyo metropolitan area. The cancer that would take his life a few months later had weakened him, yet he retained a youthful enthusiasm for research, and a sharp mind. On this occasion, we discussed an idea of his with deep consequences for the question at hand: the informational asymmetry between trusting and not trusting.

When you trust someone, you end up figuring out whether your trust was justified or not. An acquaintance asks if he can crash at your place for a few days. If you accept, you will find out whether or not he's a good guest. A colleague advises you to adopt a new software application. If you follow her advice, you will find out whether the new software works better than the one you were used to.

By contrast, when you don't trust someone, more often than not you never find out whether you should have trusted them. If you don't invite your acquaintance over, you won't know whether he would have made a good guest or not. If you don't follow your colleague's advice, you won't know if the new software application is in fact superior, and thus whether your colleague gives good advice in this domain.

This informational asymmetry means that we learn more by trusting than by not trusting. Moreover, when we trust, we learn not only about specific individuals, we learn more generally about the type of situations in which we should or shouldn't trust. We get better at trusting.

Yamagishi and his colleagues demonstrated the learning advantages of being trusting. Their experiments were similar to trust games, but the participants could interact with each other before making the decision to transfer money (or not) to the other. The most trusting participants were better at figuring out who would be trustworthy, or to whom they should transfer money.

We find the same pattern in other domains. People who trust the media more are more knowledgeable about politics and the news. The more people trust science, the more scientifically literate they are. Even if this evidence remains correlational, it makes sense that people who trust more should get better at figuring out whom to trust. In trust as in everything else, practice makes perfect.

Yamagishi's insight provides us with a reason to be trusting. But then, the puzzle only deepens: if trusting provides such learning opportunities, we should trust too much, rather than not enough. Ironically, the very reason why we should trust more - the fact that we gain more information from trusting than from not trusting - might make us inclined to trust less.

When our trust is disappointed - when we trust someone we shouldn't have - the costs are salient, and our reaction ranges from annoyance all the way to fury and despair. The benefit - what we've learnt from our mistake - is easy to overlook. By contrast, the costs of not trusting someone we could have trusted are, as a rule, all but invisible. We don't know about the friendship we could have struck (if we'd let that acquaintance crash at our place). We don't realise how useful some advice would have been (had we used our colleague's tip about the new software application).

We don't trust enough because the costs of mistaken trust are all too obvious, while the (learning) benefits of mistaken trust, as well as the costs of mistaken mistrust, are largely hidden. We should consider these hidden costs and benefits: think of what we learn by trusting, the people whom we can befriend, the knowledge that we can gain.

Giving people a chance isn't only the moral thing to do. It's also the smart thing to do.

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The smart move: we learn more by trusting than by not trusting - Hugo Mercier | Aeon Ideas

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We all know people who have suffered by trusting too much: scammed customers, jilted lovers, shunned friends. Indeed, most of us have been burned by misplaced trust. These personal and vicarious experiences lead us to believe that people are too trusting, often verging on gullibility. In fact, we don't trust enough.

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Representative Debbie Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, speaking about the Violence Against Women Act on Capitol Hill last week. Homicides by intimate partners are rising after four decades of decline, a recent study has shown. Credit... Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Homicides by intimate partners are increasing, driven primarily by gun violence after almost four decades of decline, according to a recent study looking at gender and homicide.

The number of victims rose to 2,237 in 2017, a 19 percent increase from the 1,875 killed in 2014, said James Alan Fox, a criminologist and professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University and an author of the research. The majority of the victims in 2017 were women, a total of 1,527.

Over all, gun-related domestic killings increased by 26 percent from 2010 to 2017, which Dr. Fox said was cause for alarm. In 2017, 926 of the 1,527 women murdered by partners were killed with guns. In 2014, it was 752 of 1,321 women.

The study, which was written with a colleague, Emma E. Fridel, and published last month, used data obtained from the F.B.I. It was first reported by HuffPost.

Dr. Fox said he could not explain why homicides by romantic partners had risen and wondered if the increase was an anomaly. "I hope it is," he said. "But I am fearful that it might not be."

He said stricter gun laws were needed to stem further increases.

"There are states that do a better job than others," he said. "But the federal government has to step in, too."

The House of Representatives recently reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act, a law passed in 1994 that is meant to help protect victims of sexual and domestic violence, adding stricter provisions regarding domestic abusers and gun ownership. In particular, the new provisions would close the so-called boyfriend loophole and bar those under a restraining order or who were convicted of abusing, assaulting or stalking a domestic partner from buying guns.
[The Violence Against Women Act is turning 25. Here's how it has ignited debate.]
The National Rifle Association opposed the legislation. The House bill has not been voted on by the Senate.

Dr. Fox said the results of his and Ms. Fridel's research were surprising given a decades-long slide in such homicides. In 1976, he said, 3,275 people were murdered by a romantic partner, well above the 2017 total. He attributed the decline in recent years to fewer and later marriages, an increase in divorce, and women escaping bad relationships by going to shelters or seeking help.

"Women didn't have to pick up a loaded gun to get out of a situation," Dr. Fox said.

However, he said, these factors benefited men, mostly, as the number of deaths among them dropped steadily.

"This is information we have to pay attention to," he added. "It can't be ignored."

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Murders by Intimate Partners Are on the Rise, Study Finds

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Homicides by intimate partners are increasing, driven primarily by gun violence after almost four decades of decline, according to a recent study looking at gender and homicide. The number of victims rose to 2,237 in 2017, a 19 percent increase from the 1,875 killed in 2014, said James Alan Fox, a criminologist and professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University and an author of the research.

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Rodney Reed, who is scheduled to be executed later this month, has spent the past two decades on death row for a murder he says he did not commit. Now, a new witness has come forward claiming that it was the victim's fiancé, a former police officer, who killed the woman, not Reed. The new information has shed light on what many criminal justice advocates say is a case of another black man caught up in a system that was stacked against him.

On October 30, Reed's lawyers and the Innocence Project, a nonprofit organization for criminal justice reform, filed an application for clemency with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles following the sworn affidavit of Arthur Snow, who says ex-officer Jimmy Fennell confessed to the murder of Stacy Stites when the two men were in prison together. In addition to Snow's testimony, several other witnesses have come forward with similar stories around Fennell and his disdain for his fiancé, who he suspected was sleeping with a black man behind his back.

Reed has long admitted to having been in a romantic relationship with Stites, but at the time of the trial, no witness would corroborate the affair. Now, Stites's cousin and a former coworker have both said the two were involved, according to the Innocence Project. The organization also claims that there were forensic problems with the investigation and points out that Reed was convicted by an all-white jury.

National attention to Reed's case - and a call to reexamine it - have grown in recent weeks. As of Tuesday morning, a petition on Change.org had over 160,000 signatures asking for the execution to be stopped and a new trial ordered with the new evidence introduced. Nearly 100 supporters of Reed also showed up to the capitol building in Austin, Texas, this past Saturday to urge Gov. Greg Abbott to show clemency. Celebrities like Rihanna and Meek Mill have also urged the governor to free Reed.

"Please @GovAbbott How can you execute a man when since his trial, substantial evidence that would exonerate Rodney Reed has come forward and even implicates the other person of interest. I URGE YOU TO DO THE RIGHT THING," tweeted Kim Kardashian, who also notably used her influence in the clemency cases of Alice Johnson and Cyntoia Brown in recent years.

Even though the urgency of Reed's case continues to spread, it remains to be seen if advocates and celebrities have the power to sway Abbott. Reed's execution is now only three weeks away.

Reed wasn't the first suspect in Stites's murder. It was her fiancé, Fennell.

In 1996, the body of 19-year-old Stacey Stites was found in a wooded area in Bastrop, Texas, having been assaulted, raped, and strangled. When the case was first opened, police initially questioned and suspected Fennell of committing the crime. Fennell went on to fail two lie detector tests administered by the police, but the DNA found on Stites's body didn't match Fennell's.

That's when the investigation shifted to Rodney Reed - his DNA was a match, according to police. Reed admitted that he and Stites were having a sexual relationship behind Fennell's back but maintained that he was innocent and was not involved her in death. Despite having another viable suspect in Fennell, police arrested Reed. He was tried, found guilty of murder, and sentenced to death.

Now nearly 21 years since the verdict, much is in question following the new evidence obtained by Reed's attorneys and the Innocence Project. On October 30, Snow filed a sworn affidavit stating that in 2010, Fennell admitted to killing Stites while the two men were both serving time at a DeWitt County, Texas, prison. According to the affidavit, Fennell, who was there on a rape conviction, was in need of protection from the Aryan Brotherhood, so he went to Snow, who was a brotherhood member, and confessed to the crime as a way to build trust.

"Toward the end of the conversation, Jimmy said confidently, 'I had to kill my n*****-loving fiancé,'" Snow wrote in the affidavit. Snow said he later realized that Reed was serving time for Stites's murder after reading an article about him; he has only come forward now after seeing a more recent story about Reed, he said.

Fennell's attorney responded to Snow's allegation by calling Snow a career criminal, according to CNN, and that following Fennell's release for rape, his client has converted to Christianity and begun helping people with drug addictions.

However, others have also claimed in recent weeks that it was Fennell who killed Stites. Heather Stobbs, a cousin of Stites's, now feels that Reed was wrongly convicted and even possibly framed. She told the Fox affiliate in Austin that she has no doubt in her mind that Fennell did it.

The movement to #FreeRobertReed is growing

Even before Snow came forward last week, a social media movement started putting pressure on Gov. Abbott to release Reed. Kardashian's tweet plea came several weeks ago. Meanwhile, Black-ish star Yara Shahidi quoted Audre Lorde in a tweet, "Without community there is no liberation," urging people to sign the petition. Cyntoia Brown, who was granted clemency earlier this year for killing a man who had allegedly solicited her for sex as a teen, also tweeted out the petition for Reed's clemency this weekend.

However, cases like Reed's do not historically end in his favor. According to a 2014 study, one in every 25 people with a death sentence is innocent. Between 1973 and 2014, 144 people on death row have been exonerated, or 1.6 percent of all death sentences. That means that many innocent people - over twice the number of those who've been spared - have likely been executed.

In a case similar to Reed's, Troy Davis was executed in 2011 for killing a cop in the state of Georgia. According to the Innocence Project, the organization sent a letter to commute Davis's sentence "due to serious questions about his guilt," along with a petition with more than 660,000 signatures, shortly before his death. But in a 3-2 vote, the members of the Board of Pardons and Paroles ultimately rejected the clemency bid.

In Davis's case, seven out of nine witnesses who aided in the guilty verdict all recanted their statements. Kimberly Davis, sister to Troy, told the Guardian, "If those seven witnesses were credible enough to put my brother on death row, then why weren't they credible when they recanted?"

She added, "My brother was murdered by the state of Georgia. For the Troy Davises who came before him and the Troy Davises who will come after him, we want to stop the killing of innocent men."

However, despite the new evidence and the petitions for clemency, Reed could face a fate similar to that of Davis if Abbott doesn't step in. The Texas governor could stay the execution by law for 30 days while awaiting a decision to be made by the Board of Pardons and Paroles. He could then free Reed with that recommendation.

Unfortunately, numbers are not on Reed's side when it comes to who Texas has granted clemency to over the past few years. In 2017, 92 Texans applied for clemency, the board recommended 16 for clemency, and Abbott only pardoned seven. Last year, Abbott pardoned just six people, all of whom had committed low-level crimes. Very rarely has clemency been granted in Texas to a person who's been convicted of a felony or violent crime, according to the Dallas Morning News.

What Reed does have working in his favor are the recent cases of redemption for Brown and Alice Johnson, a great-grandmother who was serving a life sentence for drug-trafficking. The power of social media, protest, and petition created enough pressure in both of those instances to sway the president of the United States and the governor of Tennessee, respectively, to grant clemency. Criminal justice advocates are hoping that same pressure will work for Reed.

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A black man faces death for murdering a white woman. A new witness says a former cop killed her.

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Rodney Reed, who is scheduled to be executed later this month, has spent the past two decades on death row for a murder he says he did not commit. Now, a new witness has come forward claiming that it was the victim's fiancé, a former police officer, who killed the woman, not Reed.

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Who hasn't been jealous at some point? On the standard view, jealousy is the emotion of being pained by a perceived threat from a third party to the attention of someone we care about and to which we feel entitled. The involvement of a rival distinguishes jealousy from mere fear of loss; the sense of entitlement over the threatened affection distinguishes jealousy from envy.

Jealousy can be horrible. But jealousy can also seem inevitable since we habitually compare ourselves to others, and unruly emotions are hard to tame. What is more, jealousy can seem valuable when viewed dispassionately. What is bad about wanting to retain valued affections? Aren't we suspicious of people who claim not to feel jealous? Some philosophers echo these sentiments in their defences of jealousy, suggesting that jealousy is integral to playful relationships, is an erotic catalyst, expresses care, prevents indifference, and promotes reflection.

Although occasional episodes of jealousy might have these benefits, jealousy should not be cultivated as a character trait. Many outbursts of jealousy are volatile and can fuel blame and anger, paralyse reflection, and make us feel pathetic. Much has to go right if jealousy is to be beneficial. Jealousy is hardly a universal aphrodisiac.

More worryingly, there is evidence that connects jealousy with aggression and manipulation, and so any instrumental benefits of jealousy have to be weighed against the risk of these harmful behaviours. The avoidance of harm takes priority in close relationships because intimacy can exacerbate cruelty.

Finally, jealousy is useful as a signal of care only because we struggle to understand and communicate our emotions within intimate relationships. Our romantic ideals valorise the implied and unspoken, not explicitness; and introspection and emotional articulacy are peripheral to masculine ideals. Once these norms and ideals are contested, as they should be, we see that there is a kinder way to signal love: say so.

Although jealousy is rarely of instrumental value, some think that jealousy is inherently valuable as a virtue. For example, Kristján Kristjánsson, a moral philosopher at the University of Birmingham in the UK, thinks that jealousy is often appropriate because it reflects what we deserve in our relationships. In his book Virtuous Emotions (2018), Kristjánsson writes that the failure to feel jealous when your beloved's affections are directed elsewhere can be:

the sign of such a lack of self-assertiveness and self-respect, such a cringing spirit of tolerance - not to mention lack of sensitivity to injustice - that it can only be deemed a moral failure

I doubt deservingness lies at the heart of jealousy. Instead, we need only experience a mismatch between our romantic expectations, which are culturally supported, and the reality of our relationship, rather than foster a sense of what we are owed in virtue of our character.

Even if jealousy should be understood in terms of romantic desert and justice, it remains an open question whether it is virtuous to actually feel jealous. The US philosophers Justin D'Arms and Daniel Jacobson have argued that we often have moral or prudential reasons within different contexts not to feel things that it would be appropriate to feel. For example, a solider seems courageous precisely because he is unafraid in a grave situation where fear would be appropriate. The soldier's loose connection between his feelings and what is appropriate helps him to thrive in battle.

Similarly, a loose connection between some of our feelings and their conditions of appropriateness can help us to thrive in love. Intimacy is stifled when we are fixated on desert and justice; and just as we might strive to not feel anger at a beloved's petty wrongdoing, or pity at their disappointment, so we might try to avoid feeling jealous - even if jealousy would be appropriate.

Finally, character traits must be considered holistically. Even if jealousy is a virtue, we would have to examine how it relates to other virtuous traits, and consider the practical matter of whether we should prioritise jealousy's active cultivation over those traits.

This last point will resonate with many nonmonogamous people. In addition to agreeing that jealousy is seldom valuable, they also believe that jealousy can be tamed. But not only that. Some think that we can cultivate a new trait of feeling good when our partners flourish with other people. They call this good feeling 'compersion' (the word is a neologism that reportedly originated on an Ouija board in a nonmonogamous commune in San Francisco).

Irrespective of our views about monogamy, we should consider seriously the idea that jealousy can be tamed and supplanted by positive feelings. We can all benefit from the ability to feel good about the flourishing and pleasures of people we care about, especially in situations where we risk being blindsided by competitiveness, vulnerability and anxiety.

But what is compersion, exactly? Might it be a form of pride, vicarious joy or masochistic enjoyment: feelings of which we are wary? More importantly, how do we become compersive? Although compersion would not be a staple of nonmonogamous discourse if it was impossible to feel, the idea that we can feel good in situations where jealousy is socially expected and justified might seem implausible.

In answering these questions, I will conclude that compersion is a distinct trait within the reach of everyone. While it is perhaps most salient or vitalising in nonmonogamous contexts, where jealousy can be acute, compersion can thrive and enrich a life wherever jealousy takes root.

Here are several recent definitions of compersion:

the joy at seeing one's partner(s) happily in love with others;

feelings of pleasure in response to a lover's romantic or sexual encounters outside the relationship;

a feeling of joy experienced when a partner takes pleasure from another romantic or sexual relationship;

acceptance of, and vicarious enjoyment for, a lover's joy.

These definitions risk conflating distinct phenomena, but we make sense of compersion by attending to how it feels and its evaluative content (ie, how the emotion construes situations). Feelings and evaluations can be valenced: described as positive or negative. Our emotional evaluations are shaped by our basic concerns: eg, the fact that we love someone shapes how we feel towards their presence or their death.

An asexual person might feel compersive when their allosexual partner has sex with someone else

Fundamentally, compersion is sensitive to how other people fare. First, we feel positive, we do not just believe that others fare well. Second, our positive feelings mirror our positive construal of the situation. Compersion is not like feelings of recalcitrant amusement or masochistic pleasure, where we seem to feel good towards things that our emotions simultaneously construe as bad. (In masochistic enjoyment, we often feel good because our emotions construe situations as bad.)

Third, we feel compersive about a situation that the people involved think is good. Thus, compersion is unlike pride. We might be proud that someone is nonmonogamous, or think it is cool, but pride does not require empathy. Compersion does. Fourth, we can be compersive without wanting what other people have. An asexual person, for example, might feel compersive when their allosexual partner (or partner who experiences sexual attraction to other people) has a sexual relationship with someone else. Compersion is therefore not 'vicarious enjoyment'.

If compersion were the mere acceptance of other people's flourishing, or recalcitrant admiration, pride, vicarious enjoyment or masochistic pleasure, it would be hard to see why nonmonogamous people held it as an ideal.

We cultivate compersion as a character trait by reducing our propensity to be jealous, and learning to appreciate the flourishing of others. To tame jealousy, we need to know why it arises. In turn, we understand why it arises by considering its underlying concerns. These concerns are Janus-faced: because we enjoy affection, jealousy is sensitive to other people; because we care about ourselves, jealousy is animated by self-love. To my mind, François de La Rochefoucauld in 1671 was right that 'In jealousy there is more self-love than love.'

Self-love is a response to the vulnerability that underpins most jealousy. We are vulnerable because other people shape our engagement with the world. From infancy, we become arationally attached (that is, an attachment not governed by reasoning or subject to rational appraisal) to people as sources of security. Attachment brings pleasure, but we remain highly dependent. Our flourishing is interwoven with the actions of others; our self-conceptions are relationally structured by social roles and identities that require other people to occupy complementary roles; and many evaluative concepts - of wealth, attractiveness, wit - involve comparisons with other people.

Dependency makes life risky. Harm and abandonment rob us of support, pleasurable company and aspects of a relational identity, and these losses undermine our self-conceptions. Because these risks are unavoidable, we are vulnerable.

In turn, vulnerability underpins possessiveness: the activity of seeking proximity to others. Possessiveness is rarely the product of reasoning: we just want to feel secure. 'Possessive' ambiguously denotes this psychological tendency and a normative attitude, but we can label the normative attitude entitlement, and reserve possessive for the psychological tendency. People who are possessive want the attention of others; entitled people think they are owed such attention.

Entitlement is constituted by beliefs that justify our possessiveness: beliefs about what is normal, natural and deserved. Entitlement mostly stems from social structures and norms such as patriarchal standards of feminine behaviour.

Contrary to some theories, both vulnerability and entitlement underpin jealousy. Jealous panic stems from vulnerability and potential loss; jealous indignation stems from the belief, usually misguided, that we are entitled to affection. To tackle jealousy, and cultivate compersion, we need to address vulnerability, possessiveness and entitlement. Tackling jealousy is therefore part direct reflection, part indirect nurturance. Approaches such as cognitive behavioural therapy that emphasise only the need to change beliefs overlook vulnerability's arational grip.

To understand our entitlement, we must reflect on romantic concepts and ideals such as commitment and exclusivity to consider whether we endorse their prevailing social interpretations. But to grasp these concepts fully, we must reflect holistically. To consider commitment, for example, we must contemplate communication, honesty and power. In turn, to interrogate power is to consider social structures, identities and norms, and to look at notions of consent, autonomy, misogyny, race, ability and gender, and so on.

Slow and incremental exposure to the idea of a beloved flourishing with others fosters resilience

More personally, we must consider our expectations and boundaries. What do we want from a romantic relationship, and why do we want that? Are we beholden to social archetypes or personal quirks? Are we too dependent on others? What triggers our insecurity, and how can that be managed? What affirmation do we want from a partner?

Reflection cannot completely tame jealousy because our vulnerability originates in arational attachments to other people, but we can tame jealousy's worst manifestations through indirect emotional management. Slow and incremental exposure to the idea of a beloved flourishing with others fosters resilience since we have more opportunities to feel competent, and for affirmation and support to resonate. We can also strive to communicate openly and to discuss some of our uglier feelings because jealousy, like fear, thrives in silence. And we can work to identify and criticise recurring thought patterns - 'What if they never come back?' 'What if he is better than me?' Finally, we can maintain nurturing homes and community by talking to friends, practising rituals of affirmation, and expressing love. These practices are discussed frequently in self-help books on nonmonogamy.

It is one thing to stop ruminating on threats to ourselves, however, and quite another to actively appreciate the flourishing of other people. Therefore, alongside our efforts to tame jealousy, we also need to cultivate what Iris Murdoch in The Sovereignty of Good (1970) called a 'patient, loving regard' towards people. This slow endeavour involves moral imagination in at least three ways.

First, we can redirect our attention by asking of a situation: what does this experience mean to them? In focusing on their good, in the plural, we are less likely to focus on a beloved's flourishing only insofar as it bears on ourselves.

Second, we have to interrogate our habits of thought, and resist construing other people as rivals, or social interactions as competitive. To resist these thought patterns, we have to critically consider common social portrayals of third parties; a difficult task when society rarely portrays nonexclusive forms of affection and concern beyond the family.

Finally, we can think empathetically about others. We frequently view people schematically without appreciating their perspective, interests and personality. It is hard to feel good for people who are portrayed poorly. In typical jealousy-eliciting situations, where a beloved flourishes with someone else, a point of departure for greater empathy is to recognise the similarities between us and this 'someone else'; in particular, our affection for the same person.

Jealousy is hard to defend. There is no unproblematic connection between jealousy and a good relationship, and jealousy does not help us appreciate the flourishing of those we care about. Moreover, nonmonogamous people, and their experiments in living, give us reason to think that jealousy is neither indispensable nor untameable.

But suppose I am wrong about jealousy's value. Even if jealousy were virtuous, we still have to consider it alongside compersion because it is possible that both dispositions are good. But if they are, we have to consider the practical issue of how and whether they can be actively cultivated together. Practically speaking, jealousy and compersion are in tension. In our society, the deck is stacked against feeling compersive because our attention is selective, we are vulnerable and often aggressive, and jealousy is frequently praised. Therefore, it would be hard to cultivate compersion while simultaneously developing a nuanced sense of jealousy.

More importantly, the risks of going awry while cultivating jealousy, like being aggressive or jealous in contexts where it is unreasonable, outweigh any purported risks associated with cultivating compersion, such as being insensitive to disrespect. When coupled with the fact that compersion also offers the instrumental benefits of jealousy in manifesting our affection, but without the threat of aggression, it seems clear that, when viewed holistically, we should favour the practical cultivation of compersion over jealousy. To do so would set us down the road of being less possessive and entitled, more able to manage our vulnerability, and better placed to appreciate and enjoy the good things in the lives of other people. To invert La Rochefoucauld's maxim: in compersion there is more love than self-love.

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Love without jealousy: consider the benefits of compersion - Luke Brunning | Aeon Essays

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Who hasn't been jealous at some point? On the standard view, jealousy is the emotion of being pained by a perceived threat from a third party to the attention of someone we care about and to which we feel entitled.

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Imagine that you have tried to reach a friend with whom you have an ambivalent relationship by phone or email, leaving messages, yet receiving no call in return. In a situation like this, it is easy to jump to conclusions in an intuitive manner that your friend wants to avoid you. The danger, of course, is that you leave this belief unchecked and start to act as though it were true.

Confirmation bias occurs from the direct influence of desire on beliefs. When people would like a certain idea or concept to be true, they end up believing it to be true. They are motivated by wishful thinking. This error leads the individual to stop gathering information when the evidence gathered so far confirms the views or prejudices one would like to be true.

Once we have formed a view, we embrace information that confirms that view while ignoring, or rejecting, information that casts doubt on it. Confirmation bias suggests that we don't perceive circumstances objectively. We pick out those bits of data that make us feel good because they confirm our prejudices. Thus, we may become prisoners of our assumptions. For example, some people will have a very strong inclination to dismiss any claims that marijuana may cause harm as nothing more than old-fashioned reefer madness. Some social conservatives will downplay any evidence that marijuana does not cause harm.

Confirmation bias can also be found in anxious individuals, who view the world as dangerous. For example, a person with low self-esteem is highly sensitive to being ignored by other people, and they constantly monitor for signs that people might not like them. Thus, if you are worried that someone is annoyed with you, you are biased toward all the negative information about how that person acts toward you. You interpret neutral behavior as indicative of something negative.

Wishful thinking is a form of self-deception, such as false optimism. For example, we often deceive ourselves, such as stating: just this one; it's not that fattening; I'll stop smoking tomorrow. Or when someone is "under the influence" he feels confident that he can drive safely even after three or more drinks.

Self-deception can be like a drug, numbing you from harsh reality or turning a blind eye to the tough matter of gathering evidence and thinking. As Voltaire commented long ago, "Illusion is the first of all pleasure." In some cases, self-deception is good for us. For example, when dealing with certain illnesses, positive thinking may actually be beneficial for diseases such as cancer, but not diabetes or ulcers. There is limited evidence that believing that you will recover helps reduce your level of stress hormones, giving the immune system and modern medicine a better chance to do their work.

In sum, people are prone to believe what they want to believe. Seeking to confirm our beliefs comes naturally, while it feels strong and counterintuitive to look for evidence that contradicts our beliefs. This explains why opinions survive and spread. Disconfirming instances are far more powerful in establishing the truth. Disconfirmation would require looking for evidence to disprove it.

The take-home lesson here is to set your hypothesis and look for instances to prove that you are wrong. This is perhaps a true definition of self-confidence: the ability to look at the world without the need to look for instances that please your ego.

For group decision-making, it is crucial to obtain information from each member in a way that they are independent. For example, as part of a police procedure to derive the most reliable information from multiple witnesses to a crime, witnesses are not allowed to discuss it prior to giving their testimony. The goal is to prevent unbiased witnesses from influencing each other. It is known that Abraham Lincoln intentionally filled his cabinet with rival politicians who had extremely different ideologies. When making decisions, Lincoln always encouraged vigorous debate and discussion.

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Imagine that you have tried to reach a friend with whom you have an ambivalent relationship by phone or email, leaving messages, yet receiving no call in return. In a situation like this, it is easy to jump to conclusions in an intuitive manner that your friend wants to avoid you.

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"A large state does not behave at all like a gigantic municipality" - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

What does this statement make you think? Disagree at all? When I first read that line, I thought " Oh really? Here are some reasons why a large state could in fact behave like a gigantic municipality..." I was inclined to find fault with the statement even if there is some merit.

But it's not the author's fault: persuasion is hard. Here are some of the most fascinating studies, that if we just glance at them, make us believe that we almost don't trust anyone:

Studies have shown how little people generally trust strangers. Surprisingly, studies have even shown that people trust loved ones even less than strangers, suggesting that even familiarity doesn't compel us to trust people or believe what they say. Furthermore, the fact that people are subject to the false-consensus bias - we tend to believe that people agree with us when they do not - obscures when we need to be persuasive.

This exacerbates the divide between stakeholders with different perspectives. It also makes it harder to persuade people because we may not realize that they even need to be persuaded. Let's take this example from a recent study at Yale:

If something is against your self-interest, it rarely matters whether it is true or false, you are much more likely to be mistaken with your choice. This is a graph about the likelihood of schoolchildren making a mistake if it's in their self-interest or if it isn't:

Thus, credibility, data, and familiarity are not the only, or most effective, tools for persuasion. After all, the above claim about large states and gigantic municipalities, is part of a renowned book from acclaimed author Nassim Taleb. It is a fairly logical claim, and the source is credible. Yet I still had my skepticism about its validity.

So, let's rephrase Nassim Taleb's statement from above:

"A large state does not behave at all like a gigantic municipality, much as a baby human does not resemble a smaller adult." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"Wow. You're right, Nassim. Babies are not simply smaller adults. I guess large states really are not like gigantic municipalities" is what I thought to myself. Indeed, this was the actual statement used in his book. It is far more persuasive.

By asserting an obvious, uncontroversial statement and drawing a comparison to the more controversial assertion, you can get your listener to assign the same belief they have in the uncontroversial statement to the more controversial assertion. While I have my doubts about the first relationship Taleb posited - between states and municipalities - Taleb got me to quickly nod along with his argument by using the power of analogy and drawing a comparison.

I agreed with the second relationship he posited regarding babies and small adults and how they are not the same. There is a fundamental difference between babies and adults beyond physical size. Importantly, Taleb also managed to get my assent to the more controversial statement by making a logical leap through his comparison: Baby Human : Smaller Adult = Large State : Gigantic Municipality.

Why Drawing Comparisons with Analogies and Metaphors are key to Persuasion

By claiming that the first relationship is effectively the same as the second, doubts about how a large state does not behave at all like a gigantic municipality just faded away. Robert Cialdini, a professor and author of the best-selling Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion has brilliantly documented how uncovering real similarities can be fundamental to forging bonds - often between people - but also between ideas in the course of debate or conversation.

Analogies, similes, and metaphors are tools to surface similarities and draw comparisons. Thus, these can be very powerful tools for persuasion.

But what is it exactly about drawing comparisons that can turn questionable assertions into believable statements? Effective comparisons are simple, distracting, and depersonalized, and these characteristics help make assertions believable and people persuasive.

Simplicity Provides Meaning To Your Audience

"...a baby human does not resemble a smaller adult" is a simple idea. Think baby. Think short or skinny adult. Babies and adults are fundamentally different in many ways - emotional maturity, mental complexity, and so on.

The idea that a baby does not resemble a smaller adult is easy to understand. However, states and municipalities are complex, intellectual concepts that each raise lots of questions for people. This complexity makes it hard to achieve agreement - not because the statement is necessarily controversial, but because it is complicated and people may not feel like they understand the relationship.

By taking a very complicated idea that may make someone raise an eyebrow, and framing it in a much simpler context, you can give people a better understanding of the point you are making. When people understand your argument, it helps reduce skepticism borne from the unknown. It is almost as if one simply takes the simplicity from the latter idea and applies it to the more complicated idea.

Shift the focus away from the point you want to get across - the famous Gorilla Test

Had the sentence only been "A large state does not behave at all like a gigantic municipality" one would be fixated squarely on just that argument. However, it begins there, but finishes by comparing babies and adults, which shifts the focus away from states and municipalities onto the simpler comparison.

By diverting people from the complicated, nuanced argument that is initially put forth with a simpler ending, the author shifted scrutiny away from the most controversial part of the statement. In doing so, people are not focusing their energy on picking apart states and municipalities, which lowers the barriers to getting buy-in, but instead are thinking about babies and adults.

Credit: Daniel J. Simons, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

In this famous selective attention test, the audience is instructed to focus on how many times the basketball is passed among players wearing white t-shirts. Many people miss the "invisible gorilla" that passes through because their attention was diverted by a specific task.

Try to depersonalize: It reduces uncertainty and emotional resistance

People can get defensive about change for reasons like loss of control or loss of face (i.e. they look bad). When persuading people, it is hard for it to not be personal: you are changing their world view. In doing so, if people feel attacked, inferior, or wrong, it naturally sparks a desire to resist that change or assertion.
The characters in The Godfather are notorious for claiming to not take things personally. It clouded judgment.
By drawing a comparison to a neutral subject, like babies and adults, the author reduces the likelihood that you will have a negative, visceral reaction to his statement. Imagine instead if the author suggested that the large states and gigantic municipalities share the same relationship as your family and your neighborhood, and that a large version of your family is not simply the same as a big neighborhood.

Now one must be thinking "Well, my family is...[insert a slew of personal details]". Not only does making the comparison personal introduce a lot of uncertainty (How can the author know what each reader's family life is like?), but that uncertainty and the reality of one's family life may invalidate his comparison. Perhaps that person's family would indeed represent a neighborhood if it were much larger, and now one has made a claim that contradicts the reader's own beliefs about their family.

The uncertainty and emotional resistance that comes out of making statements personal, especially when one doesn't know the personal reality for each audience member, makes it very difficult to be successfully persuasive. Depersonalizing the assertion strips the emotion out of the argument and reduces the likelihood of putting someone on guard.

Persuasion in Practice

Imagine the argument when Founder A wants to build a feature for a technology product and Founder B disagrees.

Founder A: "We should build infinite scroll. It's going to be a winner."

Founder B: "No, I disagree. Neither of us has the data, but I think you're wrong. Listen to me."

This simply boils down into one person's subjective outlook against another's. It is not simple because both arguments have obscured rationale. Founder B does not create a diversion with Founder A through a relevant comparison. And Founder B makes it less likely that Founder A will agree by making the argument extremely personal.

But, what if Founder B compares this moment to a relevant shared experience, and draws comparisons between this moment and a previous moment both founders experienced together.

Founder A: "We should build infinite scroll. It's going to be a winner."

Founder B: "No, I disagree. This is just like that time when we tried building our own relational database. We wasted 3 months of work."

It's simple to recall a previous experience that was painful. It creates a diversion from the current feature by focusing on a precedent. And it's not about Founder A being wrong - it's depersonalized and about the resources that the team cannot afford to waste.

"Wow. Building that database really costs us a lot. I don't want to face down that beast again" may be what Founder A now thinks. The comparison is simple, diverting, and depersonalized.

To be fair, a discerning person would of course question the comparison - is infinite scroll really like building your own relational database? Are the risks the same? Perhaps not. But it would require a willingness to disagree and an ability to call someone out to defend against what is otherwise effective persuasion.
How have you drawn comparisons to win people over and persuade? Let us know in the comments below, we'd love to hear your thoughts. About the author:
A person is listening to you, digesting what you say, and even if they disagree about the precision of your argument...you have now put them in a lens of thinking about the comparison you have made, not its fundamental, independent validity.

Jason Shah is a product manager at Yammer and the creator of HeatData, an analytics tool that shows you where people tap, swipe, zoom, and more on your mobile websites and apps.

He blogs about user experience and personal growth at blog.jasonshah.org, and you can follow him on Twitter @jasonyogeshshah.

Photocredit: Digitallifeplus, Costumeshopper

Originally written Aug 12, 2013. Last updated Jun 16, 2015

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The Science of Persuasion: How to Get People to Agree With What You Say - The Buffer Blog

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How does the science of persuasion really work? Here are the secrets of why we believe what we believe from the science of persuasion

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Dr Helen Fisher is the author of five books including Why Him? Why Her?, Why We Love, The First Sex, Anatomy of Love and The Sex Contract. She has conducted extensive research and written books on the evolution and future of human sex, love, marriage, gender differences in the brain and how your personality type shapes who you are and who you love.

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Centuries before the same-sex marriage movement, the U.S. government, its constituent states, and their colonial predecessors tackled the controversial issue of " miscegenation": race-mixing. It's widely known that the Deep South banned interracial marriages until 1967, but less widely known that many other states did the same (California until 1948, for example) -- or that three brazen attempts were made to ban interracial marriages nationally by amending the U.S. Constitution.

Maryland passes the first British colonial law banning marriage between whites and slaves -- a law that, among other things, orders the enslavement of white women who have married black men:

"[F]orasmuch as diverse freeborn English women forgetful of their free condition and to the disgrace of our Nation do intermarry with Negro slaves by which also diverse suits may arise touching the [children] of such women and a great damage doth befall the Masters of such Negroes for prevention whereof for deterring such freeborn women from such shameful matches,

"Be it further enacted by the authority advice and consent aforesaid that whatsoever freeborn woman shall intermarry with any slave from and after the last day of this present Assembly shall serve the master of such slave during the life of her husband, and that the [children] of such freeborn women so married shall be slaves as their fathers were. And be it further enacted that all the [children] of English or other freeborn women that have already married Negroes shall serve the masters of their parents til they be thirty years of age and no longer."

This leaves unaddressed two important questions:

1. This law draws no distinction between slaves and free blacks, and

2. This law doesn't say what happens to white men who marry black women, rather than vice versa.

As you might imagine, the white nationalist colonial governments did not leave these questions unanswered for long.

The Commonwealth of Virginia bans all interracial marriages, threatening to exile whites who marry people of color. In the 17th century, exile usually functioned as a death sentence:

"For prevention of that abominable mixture and spurious [children] which hereafter may increase in this dominion, as well as by negroes, mulattos, and Indians intermarrying with English, or other white women, as by their unlawful accompanying with one another,

"Be it enacted ... that ... whatsoever English or other white man or woman being free, shall intermarry with a negro, mulatto or Indian man or woman bond or free shall within three months after such marriage be banished and removed from this dominion forever ...

"And be it further enacted ... that if any English woman being free shall have a bastard child by any negro or mulatto, she pay the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, within one month after such bastard child shall be born, to the Church wardens of the parish ... and in default of such payment she shall be taken into the possession of the said Church wardens and disposed of for five years, and the said fine of fifteen pounds, or whatever the woman shall be disposed of for, shall be paid, one third part to their majesties ... and one other third part to the use of the parish ... and the other third part to the informer, and that such bastard child be bound out as a servant by the said Church wardens until he or she shall attain the age of thirty yeares, and in case such English woman that shall have such bastard child be a servant, she shall be sold by the said church wardens (after her time is expired that she ought by law serve her master), for five years, and the money she shall be sold for divided as if before appointed, and the child to serve as aforesaid."

Leaders in Maryland's colonial government liked this idea so much that they implemented a similar policy a year later. And in 1705, Virginia expanded the policy to impose massive fines on any minister who performs a marriage between a person of color and a white person -- with half the amount (ten thousand pounds) to be paid to the informant.

In Pace v. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules that state-level bans on interracial marriage do not violate the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The ruling will hold for more than 80 years.

The plaintiffs, Tony Pace and Mary Cox, were arrested under Alabama's Section 4189, which read:

"[I]f any white person and any negro, or the descendant of any negro to the third generation, inclusive, though one ancestor of each generation was a white person, intermarry or live in adultery or fornication with each other, each of them must, on conviction, be imprisoned in the penitentiary or sentenced to hard labor for the county for not less than two nor more than seven years."

They challenged the conviction all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Stephen Johnson Field wrote for the Court:

"The counsel is undoubtedly correct in his view of the purpose of the clause of the amendment in question, that it was to prevent hostile and discriminating state legislation against any person or class of persons. Equality of protection under the laws implies not only accessibility by each one, whatever his race, on the same terms with others to the courts of the country for the security of his person and property, but that in the administration of criminal justice he shall not be subjected, for the same offense, to any greater or different punishment ...

"The defect in the argument of counsel consists in his assumption that any discrimination is made by the laws of Alabama in the punishment provided for the offense for which the plaintiff in error was indicted when committed by a person of the African race and when committed by a white person ... Section 4189 applies the same punishment to both offenders, the white and the black. Indeed, the offense against which this latter section is aimed cannot be committed without involving the persons of both races in the same punishment. Whatever discrimination is made in the punishment prescribed in the two sections is directed against the offense designated and not against the person of any particular color or race. The punishment of each offending person, whether white or black, is the same."

More than a century later, opponents of same-sex marriage will resurrect the same argument in claiming that heterosexual-only marriage laws don't discriminate on the basis of sex since they technically punish men and women on equal terms.

Rep. Seaborn Roddenbery (D-GA) makes a second attempt to revise the U.S. Constitution in order to ban interracial marriage in all 50 states.

Roddenbery's proposed amendment read as follows:

"That intermarriage between negroes or persons of color and Caucasians or any other character of persons within the United States or any territory under their jurisdiction, is forever prohibited; and the term 'negro or person of color,' as here employed, shall be held to mean any and all persons of African descent or having any trace of African or negro blood."

Later theories of physical anthropology will suggest that every human being has some African ancestry, which could have rendered this amendment unenforceable had it passed. In any case, it didn't pass.

Congress passes the Cable Act.

While most anti-miscegenation laws primarily targeted interracial marriages between whites and African Americans or whites and American Indians, the climate of anti-Asian xenophobia that defined the early decades of the 20th century meant that Asian Americans were also targeted. In this case, the Cable Act retroactively stripped the citizenship of any U.S. citizen who married "an alien ineligible for citizenship," which -- under the racial quota system of the time -- primarily meant Asian Americans.

The impact of this law was not merely theoretical. Following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Thind that Asian Americans are not white and therefore cannot legally become citizens, the U.S. government revoked the citizenship of natural-born U.S. citizens such as Mary Keatinge Das, wife of the Pakistani-American activist Taraknath Das, and Emily Chinn, mother of four and wife of a Chinese-American immigrant.

Traces of anti-Asian immigration law remained until the passage of the ​ Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, though some Republican politicians, most famously Michele Bachmann, have suggested a return to the earlier racial quota standard.

In McLaughlin v. Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules that laws banning interracial sex violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

McLaughlin struck down Florida Statute 798.05, which read:

"Any negro man and white woman, or any white man and negro woman, who are not married to each other, who shall habitually live in and occupy in the nighttime the same room shall each be punished by imprisonment not exceeding twelve months, or by fine not exceeding five hundred dollars."

While the ruling did not directly address laws banning interracial marriage, it laid down the groundwork for a ruling that definitively did.

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturns Pace v. Alabama (1883), ruling in Loving v. Virginia that state bans on interracial marriage violate the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

As Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote for the Court:

"There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy ...

"The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men ... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State."

From this point on, interracial marriage is legal throughout the United States.

Following a November 7th ballot referendum, Alabama becomes the last state to officially legalize interracial marriage.

By November 2000, interracial marriage had been legal in every state for more than three decades thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in (1967) -- but the Alabama State Constitution still contained an unenforceable ban in Section 102:

"The legislature shall never pass any law to authorise or legalise any marriage between any white person and a Negro or descendant of a Negro."

The Alabama State Legislature stubbornly clung to the old language as a symbolic statement of the state's views on interracial marriage; as recently as 1998, House leaders successfully killed attempts to remove Section 102.

When voters finally had the opportunity to remove the language, the outcome was surprisingly close: although 59% of voters supported removing the language, 41% favored keeping it. Interracial marriage remains controversial in the Deep South, where a 2011 poll found that a plurality of Mississippi Republicans still supports anti-miscegenation laws.

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How Interracial Marriage Laws Have Changed Since the 1600s

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Centuries before the same-sex marriage movement, the U.S. government, its constituent states, and their colonial predecessors tackled the controversial issue of " miscegenation": race-mixing. It's widely known that the Deep South banned interracial marriages until 1967, but less widely known that many other states did the same (California until 1948, for example) -- or that three brazen attempts were made to ban interracial marriages nationally by amending the U.S.

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domestic (intimate partner) violence fast facts - cnn

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Domestic (Intimate Partner) Violence Fast Facts

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View CNN's Fast Facts on domestic (intimate partner) violence and learn more about violence against women, intimate partners and teens.

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Grappling with the way books make students feel-not just analytical skills-should be part of the high-school English curriculum.

Eric Audras / PhotoAlto / Corbis

I'd drawn a little tombstone on the board. I was in the middle of leading a class of 10th-grade English students through Piggy's death scene in Lord of the Flies: the rock, the shattered conch, Piggy's long fall, the red stuff flowing out, the twitching legs. The corners of her eyes bubbling, a 15-year-old girl dashed for the door.

When I spoke with her after class, the student explained that she identified with Piggy. Being studious, fearful of bullies, and a bit of an outsider, it upset her to casually discuss his violent death. Piggy's demise was not the symbolic death of order or logic, but the murder of a kid like her.

In my experience teaching and observing other teachers, students spend a lot of time learning academic skills and rarely even talk about the emotional reactions they may have to what they read-even when stories, as they often do, address dark themes. The Common Core Standards push students to become clinical crafters of arguments and masters of academic language. While these are essential skills to possess, the fact that my other students appear perfectly comfortable not acknowledging and discussing emotional responses to literature may be as revelatory as this one student's teary dash from class. Inundated with video games, movies, and memes, teenagers often seem hard to shake up. Characters are fictitious abstractions, and, without actors to bring them to life and makeup and digital tricks to make the drama feel real, students may strictly do the analytical work teachers expect without the interference of a significant emotional response. That's a bad thing. An emotional response should be part of the curriculum.

Since August, my 10th- and 12th-grade literature students have read about pre-adolescent boys who bully and murder one another; a man, fearing shame and betrayal, who smothers his wife and commits suicide; and another man who hangs himself as colonizers pulverize his culture. They've also read about a woman who kills her baby daughter so she won't experience the physical and emotional horrors of slavery. They've been introduced to a man who shoots a guy on a beach because the sun is in his eyes, relishing, as he later marches to the gallows, the prospect of incurring society's hatred.

Related Story

The Wisdom Deficit in Schools
These stories should be familiar. My colleagues at public, charter, and private schools also build study units around Lord of the Flies, Othello, Things Fall Apart, Beloved, and The Stranger. A 1990 Center for Teaching and Learning survey identified the 10 most commonly taught texts in high school; 1990 was a long time ago relatively speaking, but all but one of the texts are still taught at my school today. Pearson Education, Inc. advises that high-school students read more than half of the texts I am required to teach in a year. And Appendix B of the Common Core Standards lists fiction "exemplars" that hedge toward personal, political, and societal tragedies like The Great Gatsby, The Bluest Eye, and The Scarlet Letter. All this is to say that high-school students don't exactly do a lot of light reading.

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Why Emotions Have a Place in English Class

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Grappling with the way books make students feel-not just analytical skills-should be part of the high-school English curriculum. I'd drawn a little tombstone on the board. I was in the middle of leading a class of 10th-grade English students through Piggy's death scene in Lord of the Flies: the rock, the shattered conch, Piggy's long fall, the red stuff flowing out, the twitching legs.