From the Christian Crusades to the Paris attacks, countless conflicts and acts of violence have been claimed to be the result of differing religious beliefs. These faith-based opinions are thought to motivate aggressive behavior because of how they encourage group loyalty or spin ideologies that devalue the lives of non-believers.

However, new research reveals the opposite: religious beliefs might instead promote interfaith cooperation.

"There may be other aspects of religion that lead to outgroup aggression," said Nichole Argo, a research scientist in engineering and public policy and social and decision sciences.

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CMU's George Loewenstein and Duane Seppi first introduced the "ostrich effect" in 2009 to describe how investors "put their heads in the sand" to dodge facing their financial portfolios when they're expecting bad news.

In a new study with colleagues from Columbia Business School and Vanguard, Loewenstein and Seppi found that ostrich behavior is widely prevalent, even with today's around-the-clock access to financial information, and is a stable personality characteristic in individual investors.

The research is the first large-scale investigation into when investors log in to check their portfolios and how logins affect trading activity.

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Cities and states across the U.S. are changing laws on marijuana, and Pittsburgh has joined the movement.

Drawing inspiration from Philadelphia's attempts to decriminalize possession of small amounts of the drug, City Councilman and Carnegie Mellon University alumnus Dan Gilman (DC'04), commissioned a study on the feasibility of doing the same in Pittsburgh.

Gilman turned to Dietrich College students to examine the issue, and five seniors majoring in Ethics, History and Public Policy (EHPP) rose to the challenge.

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Find out what's new with Margaret "Peg" Calder (MM'66), Eric Burns (DC'03), Corey Ginsberg (DC'05) and others in Class Notes. 

 

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