TABLE 2
RATE THE LIKELIHOOD OF ENGAGING IN IMMORAL BEHAVIORS LIKE DATE RAPE (A STRICT ORDER OF SEVERITY IS NOT IMPLIED)
Question | Nonaroused | Aroused | Difference, percent |
Would you take a date to a fancy restaurant to increase your chance of having sex with her? | 55 | 70 | 27 |
Would you tell a woman that you loved her to increase the chance that she would have sex with you? | 30 | 51 | 70 |
Would you encourage your date to drink to increase the chance that she would have sex with you? | 46 | 63 | 37 |
Would you keep trying to have sex after your date says “no”? | 20 | 45 | 125 |
Would you slip a woman a drug to increase the chance that she would have sex with you? | 5 | 26 | 420 |
TABLE 3
RATE YOUR TENDENCY TO USE, AND OUTCOMES OF NOT USING, BIRTH CONTROL
Question | Nonaroused | Aroused | Difference, percent |
Birth control is the woman’s responsibility. | 34 | 44 | 29 |
A condom decreases sexual pleasure. | 66 | 78 | 18 |
A condom interferes with sexual spontaneity. | 58 | 73 | 26 |
Would you always use a condom if you didn’t know the sexual history of a new sexual partner? | 88 | 69 | 22 |
Would you use a condom even if you were afraid that a woman might change her mind while you went to get it? | 86 | 60 | 30 |
CHAPTER 7
The Problem of Procrastination and Self-Control
Why We Can’t Make Ourselves Do
What We Want to Do
Onto the American scene, populated by big homes, big cars, and big-screen plasma televisions, comes another big phenomenon: the biggest decline in the personal savings rate since the Great Depression.
Go back 25 years, and double-digit savings rates were the norm. As recently as 1994 the savings rate was nearly five percent. But by 2006 the savings rate had fallen below zero—to negative one percent. Americans were not only not saving; they were spending more than they earned. Europeans do a lot better—they save an average of 20 percent. Japan’s rate is 25 percent. China’s is 50 percent. So what’s up with America?
I suppose one answer is that Americans have succumbed to rampant consumerism. Go back to a home built before we had to have everything, for instance, and check out the size of the closets. Our house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for example, was built in 1890. It has no closets whatsoever. Houses in the 1940s had closets СКАЧАТЬ