Eliot Spitzer and the Price-Placebo Effect: Spitzer’s poor moral, political and legal judgment is beyond question, but on the delicate question of whether Kristen was “worth it,” a host of unusual studies suggest the governor probably got his money’s worth. The question, as it turns out, has little to do with either Kristen or prostitution, and nearly everything to do with Spitzer himself. Specifically, an area of Spitzer’s brain known as the medial orbitofrontal cortex. This part of the brain makes judgments about pleasure, and intriguing new research has found that the price people pay for something can subtly and unconsciously change how much pleasure they derive from it. [Washington Post]
Clever people ‘are easier to con’: Doctors, architects, engineers and other white-collar professionals are being conned by e-mail fraudsters who lure them into contributing to fake ventures after taking their details from conference websites. [Times]
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