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POPSIn Africa- The cellphone is the single most transformative technology for development" "Democratic Republic of Congo, with a population of 60 million, there are just 10,000 fixed-line telephones, but more than one million mobile subscribers. In Chad, the fifth-least-developed country in Africa, usage jumped from 10,000 to 200,000 in three years. At the end of 2007 there were more than 280 million mobile phone subscribers in Africa, representing a penetration rate of 30.4%." "now they can call around and know what the prices are. They can call their relatives in town, for example, and ask how much is a bunch of bananas, so they get an idea of what the price is for their produce"
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POPSAn evolved tendency to care about cheating? "Why does an image of a pair of eyes motivate cooperative behaviour? While it is possible that the eyes were simply more effective than the flowers at attracting people's attention to the notice, we do not believe that this is the explanation for our findings. The participants had all been informed prior to the experiment that they were supposed to pay for their drinks. Furthermore, the notice was positioned such that it was not possible that anyone making drinks would fail to see it, irrespective of the image displayed. Instead, we believe that images of eyes motivate cooperative behaviour because they induce a perception in participants of being watched. Although participants were not actually observed in either of our experimental conditions, the human perceptual system contains neurons that respond selectively to stimuli involving faces and eyes" "reputational concerns may be extremely powerful in motivating cooperative behaviour."