Scott Schieman, a professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, decided to look at people’s beliefs about divine intervention—the involvement of God in their everyday lives (he is currently working on a book on this topic). He found that most Americans—71 percent—believe that when good or bad things happen to them, these events are part of God’s plan, and 61 percent believe that God determines the course and direction of their lives. More than 80 percent say they rely on God for help and guidance when making decisions.
But Schieman also got interested in the question of whether beliefs about divine intervention differed across education and income levels. His conclusion:

Many of us might assume that people of higher social-class standing tend to reject beliefs about divine intervention. However, my findings indicate that while this is true among those less committed to religious life, it is not the case for people who are more committed to religious participation and rituals.

Many of us assign human characteristics to non-human entities, whether or not we’re conscious of it: We talk to our plants, name our cars, and try to coax our computers into processing more quickly. Understanding how and why we do this can have important consequences for understanding our tendencies to empathize with—or, conversely, dehumanize—other people, say a team of psychological scientists from Harvard University and the University of Chicago.
In Current Directions in Psychological Science, the team describes a three-pronged theory that may help explain anthropomorphism (the lending of human traits onto non-human agents). Not surprisingly, we assign human attributes to entities that resemble us at least to some degree in physical appearance or movement. People who lack social connection with other people may find that connection with inanimate objects, such as technological gadgets (the authors site as an example a British woman who, fearing rejection from other people, fell in love with a hi-fi system she named “Jake”). A lack of predictability or control might also lead us to assign human traits to non-human entities—a practice that may be at work in naming hurricanes.
The inverse of this theory may be behind our tendency to dehumanize, or fail to attribute basic features of personhood, to other people, the scientists write. Hence, we’re more likely to dehumanize others who are not so similar to us. Perhaps more surprising, research has backed up the idea that people who are more socially connected might be more apt to dehumanize others:

Participants in one experiment who were experimentally induced to feel socially connected were more likely to deny humanlike mental states to others and to endorse dehumanizing violence. … Historical examples of dehumanization, such as ongoing violence between the Palestinians and Israelis, the Nazis’ persecution of Jews during the Holocaust, and torture at Abu-Ghraib prison in Iraq, also suggest that perpetrators of dehumanization are often members of a socially cohesive in-group acting against an out-group. Social connection may have many benefits for a person’s own health and well-being but may have unfortunate consequences for intergroup relations by enabling dehumanization.

Experiments have shown that being in a position of power—as opposed to lacking control—increased the tendency to objectify subordinates and treat them as a means to one’s own end, rather than focusing on their innate human qualities. Bringing together different strands of research on anthropomorphism and dehumanization may have broad implications, in helping us to better understand why we treat others as we do.

Apparently so, according to a team of psychologists from the University of Toronto and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In one experiment, the researchers gave people 10 dollars and then asked them to take a test they would score themselves, keeping 50 cents for each correct answer. People in a dimly lit room cheated more —thereby keeping more unearned money—than those in a brightly lit room did.
In another experiment, the psychologists found that people wearing sunglasses behaved more selfishly than people wearing clear glasses when they were asked to divide up a sum of money, giving less to a stranger and keeping more for themselves. Interestingly, the researchers also found that the people wearing sunglasses felt more anonymous than those with clear glasses, even though they were obviously no more anonymous than the others.
As Chen-Bo Zhong of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management sums up in a write-up of the studies:

Imagine that a person alone in a closed room is deciding whether to lie to a total stranger in an email. Clearly, whether the room is well-lit or not would not affect the person’s actual level of anonymity. Nevertheless, darkness may license unethical behavior in such situations.

We’re a little late coming back to this, but a few weeks ago, we told you British psychologist Richard Wiseman was asking men and women to pick the three traits they find most desirable in a romantic partner. He now has the results in two word clouds:

Here’s what men say they want:

And here’s what women say they want:

What do you think about the differences (and similarities)? Do you see your words here?