To My Further Embarrassment

After the post I made in which I claimed that men who are opposed to prostitution don't see prostitutes, and the follow up in which I pointed out that that was an assumption with no empirical data backing it up, science has undermined my claim even further. It seems that peoples' actions often don't match their attitudes. I know, I know, that's not exactly news. Here's an article from PsychBlog.

The Attitude-Behaviour Gap: Why We Say One Thing But Do The Opposite

The article says that one of the reasons attitudes don't match behavior is that attitudes tend to reflect our prejudices, while actions tend to reflect realities. Relating this to prostitution, a man may be opposed to prostitution because he has a stereotype of prostitutes as streetwalkers. But when faced with an escort, he may temporarily set aside his prejudice. Or, since not everyone has the same prejudices, a man may be in favor of prostitution because he sees nothing wrong with making use of lower class women, but become squeamish when faced with an educated middle-class escort who reminds him of his own female relatives.

As the article says, we really don't know all the reasons we say one thing and do another.

In another post I said that neuroscientists study other peoples' brains, but not their own minds. Wouldn't you know it, here's a link to an article by a neuroscientist who suffered a stroke and recorded his mental reaction to the experience.

Shock Waves: A Scientist Studies His Stroke

I think I'm going to ask my congressman to withhold federal funding for science until it stops proving me wrong.