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There's a good moral in this data:your brain, and by extension you,might care more about the very negative, immoral things another person has done compared to the very positive, moral things, but it's a direct result of the comparative rarity of those bad behaviors.We're more used to people being basically good, like taking time to help a stranger in need. In this context, bad might be stronger than good, but only because good is more plentiful.Think about the last time you judged someone based on their behavior,especially a time when you really feel like you changed your mind about someone.Was the behavior that caused you to update your impression something you'd expect anyone to do,or was it something totally out of the ordinary?

In other words, the brain seems to be tracking low-level, statistical properties of behavior in order to make complex decisions regarding other people's character.It needs to decide is this person's behavior typical or is it out of the ordinary?In the situation with the obnoxious-football-fan-turned-good-samaritan,your brain says,Well, in my experience,pretty much anyone would lend someone their umbrella,but the way this guy acted at the football game,that was unusual.And so, you decide to go with your first impression

So, what's happening at the level of the brain when we're updating our impressions?Using fMRI,or functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging,researchers have identified an extended network of brain regions that respond to new information that's inconsistent with initial impressions.These include areas typically associated with social cognition,attention,and cognitive control.Moreover, when updating impressions based on people's behaviors,activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and the superior temporal sulcus correlates with perceptions of how frequently those behaviors occur in daily life.

Certain types of learning don't seem to lead to this sort of negativity bias.When learning about another person's abilities and competencies,for instance,this bias flips.It's actually the positive information that gets weighted more heavily.Let's go back to that football game.If a player scores a goal,it ultimately has a stronger impact on your impression of their skills than if they miss the net.The two sides of the updating story are ultimately quite consistent.Overall, behaviors that are perceived as being less frequent are also the ones that people tend to weigh more heavily when forming and updating impressions,highly immoral actions and highly competent actions.

On one hand, learning very negative,highly immoral information about someone typically has a stronger impact than learning very positive, highly moral information.So, unfortunately for our new friend from the football game,his bad behavior at the game might outweigh his good behavior at the park.Research suggests that this bias occurs because immoral behaviors are more diagnostic,or revealing,of a person's true character.Okay, so by this logic,bad is always stronger than good when it comes to updating.Well, not necessarily.

We manage to do this with little effort,inferring stable character traits from a single behavior,like a harsh word or a clumsy step.Using our impressions as guides,we can accurately predict how people are going to behave in the future. Armed with the knowledge the guy from the football game was a jerk the first time you met him,you might expect more of the same down the road.If so, you might choose to avoid him the next time you see him.That said, we can change our impressions in light of new information.Behavioral researchers have identified consistent patterns that seem to guide this process of impression updating.

Imagine you're at a football game when this obnoxious guy sits next to you.He's loud,he spills his drink on you,and he makes fun of your team.Days later, you're walking in the park when suddenly it starts to pour rain.Who should show up at your side to offer you an umbrella?The same guy from the football game.Do you change your mind about him based on this second encounter,or do you go with your first impression and write him off?Research in social psychology suggests that we're quick to form lasting impressions of others based on their behaviors.

So it may have been the emergence of speech,not of language itself, that led to the dominance of our species.Language is so intimately tied to complex thought, perception, and motor functions that it difficult to untangle its biological origins.Some of the biggest mysteries remain:to what extent did language as a capacity shape humanity,and to what extent did humanity shape language?What came first, the vast number of possible scenarios we can envisage,or our ability to share them?

The abstraction of gestural communication would have removed the need for visuals,setting the stage for a transition to spoken language.That transition would have likely come later, though.Articulate speech depends on a vocal tract of a particular shape.Even our closest ancestors, the Neanderthals and Denisovans,had vocal tracts that were not optimal,though they likely had some vocal capacity,and possibly even language.Only in humans is the vocal tract optimal.Spoken words free the hands for activities such as tool use and transport.

Great apes gesture to each other in the wild much more freely than they vocalize.Language may have begun to take shape during the Pleistocene,2 to 3 million years ago, with the emergence of the genus Homo that eventually gave rise to our own species, homo sapiens.Brain size tripled, and bipedalism freed the hands for communication.There may have been a transition from gestural communication to gestural language from pointing to objects and pantomiming actions to more efficient, abstract signing.

So what does language mean for humanity?What does it allow us to do, and how did we come to have it?Exactly when we acquired this capacity is still an open question.Chimps and bonobos are our closest living relatives,but the lineage leading to humans split from the other great apes more than four million years ago.In between, there were many species all of them now extinct,which makes it very difficult to know if they had language or anything like it.Great apes give one potential clue to the origins of language, though:it may have started as gesture rather than speech.

For example, a monkey species might have a specific warning call that corresponds to a particular predator,like a snake but with language, there are countless ways to say atch out for the snake.So far no animal communication seems to have the open-endedness of human language.We don't know for sure what going on in animals's heads,and it's possible this definition of language,or our ways of measuring it,don apply to them.But as far as we know, only humans have language.And while humans speak around 7,000 distinct languages,any child can learn any language,indicating that the biological machinery underlying language is common to all of us.

What we call language is something more specific than communication.Language is about sharing what in our minds:stories, opinions, questions, the past or future,imagined times or places, ideas.It is fundamentally open-ended,and can be used to say an unlimited number of things.Many researchers are convinced that only humans have language,that the calls and gestures other species use to communicate are not language.Each of these calls and gestures generally corresponds to a specific message,for a limited total number of messages that aren combined into more complex ideas.

In the 1980s, a bonobo named Kanzi learned to communicate with humans to an unprecedented extent?not through speech or gestures,but using a keyboard of abstract symbols representing objects and actions.By pointing to several of these in order,he created sequences to make requests,answer verbal questions from human researchers,and refer to objects that weren physically present.Kanzi exploits ignited immediate controversy over one question:had Kanzi learned language?

The killer, meanwhile, was never caught.Burke decision prevented further deaths from the initial poisoning,but the federal government investigated\ hundreds of copycat tampering incidents involving other products in the following weeks.Could these have been prevented with a different response?Was Burke acting in the interest of the public or of his company?Was this good ethics or good marketing?As with all ethical dilemmas, this has no clear right or wrong answer.And for your meatless burger empire,the choice remains yours.

Johnson & Johnson recalled and destroyed an estimated 32 million bottles of Tylenol valued at 250 million in today dollars.1.5 million of the recalled bottles were tested and 3 of them all from the Chicago area were found to contain cyanide.Burke decision helped the company regain the trust of its customers,and product sales rebounded within a year.Prompted by the Tylenol murders, Johnson & Johnson became a leader in developing tamper-resistant packaging and the government instituted stricter regulations.

Second is the Family Test:How would you feel explaining your decision to your family?Third is the Newspaper Test:how would you feel reading about it on the front page of the local newspaper?And finally, you could use the Mentor Test:If someone you admire were making this decision, what would they do?Johnson & Johnson CEO James Burke faced a similar challenge in 1982 after a criminal added the poison cyanide to bottles of Tylenol in Chicago.Seven people died and sales dropped.Industry analysts said the company was done for.In response, Burke decided to pull Tylenol from all shelves worldwide,citing customer safety as the company highest priority.

Though you have no evidence that these crimes are an international threat,this option provides the greatest customer protection.Given the conflict between the interests of your customers versus those of your investors and employees,which strategy is the most ethical?To make this decision, you could consider these tests:First is the Utilitarian Test:Utilitarianism is a philosophy concerned with maximizing the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people.What would be the impact of each option on these terms?

As a result, you'll have to lay off some employees,and investors will suffer minor losses.But more customers could die if the killer poisoned packages elsewhere.The second option is expensive in the short-term and will require greater employee layoffs and additional financial loss to investors.But this option is safer for customers in the city and could create enough trust that sales will eventually rebound.The third option is the most expensive in the short-term and will require significant employee layoffs and investor losses.

She recommends the first option doing nothing because recalling the product could look like an admission of fault.But is that the most ethical strategy?To gauge the ethicality of each choice,you could perform a takeholder analysis.This would allow you to weigh the interests of some key stakeholders?investors, employees, and customers?against one another.With the first option your advisors project that the crisis will eventually blow over.Sales will then improve but probably stay below prior levels because of damage to the brand.

Your burgers were immediately removed from the two stores where the victims bought them.The deaths are headline news,the killer is still at large, and sales have plummeted.You must quickly develop a strategy to deal with the crisis.Your team comes up with three options:1. Do nothing.2. Pull the products from grocery stores citywide and destroy them.Or 3. Pull and destroy the product worldwide.Which do you choose?Your company lawyer explains that a recall is not required by law because the criminal is fully responsible.

A few years ago, you founded a company that manufactures meatless burgers.Your product is now sold in stores worldwide.But you're recently received awful news:three unrelated people in one city died after eating your burgers.The police concluded that a criminal targeted your brand,injecting poison into your product in at least two grocery stores.The culprit used an ultrafine instrument that left no trace on the packaging,making it impossible to determine which products were compromised.