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Is cursing really such a big deal any more?
The Globe and Mail: Recently, on the sitcom Modern Family, a subplot concerned little Lily letting loose the mother of swear words to the consternation of one of her dads, and the giggles of the other. The child actress playing the kid said “fudge,” which was bleeped, but this didn’t stop something called the No Cussing Club (not known for its rockin’ parties) from requesting that ABC kill the episode. The Parents Television Council joined in lock step, and a spokesperson complained: “The more we see and hear this kind of language on television, the more acceptable and common it will become in the real world.” Who blames television for anything any more?
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‘Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World,’ by Sam Sommers
The Washington Post: Most of us consider ourselves to be objective, consistent people who make decisions that reflect our core principles, no matter what the situation. In “Situations Matter,” psychology professor Sam Sommers throws this common-sense notion out the window. Our environments are actually much more powerful than we think. Statistics show that people are more likely to marry someone who lives in the same neighborhood than someone from farther away. And the idea that women are more nurturing and less aggressive by nature?
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A Postwar Picture of Resilience
The New York Times: WHEN the United States announced last week that its combat troops in Afghanistan would be withdrawn by mid-2013, there was obvious relief. But it was followed by familiar concerns. One of the biggest of those concerns is the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder among the tens of thousands of returning veterans, which according to some media reports runs as high as 35 percent. These reports have incited fears that we will soon face a PTSD epidemic. But are such fears justified? According to mounting scientific evidence, they are not. In fact, the prevalence of PTSD among veterans of recent wars is about 10 percent — substantially lower than is commonly believed.
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Negative Nancy? Your Facebook friends might hate you for it: Study
Toronto Sun: Stop complaining on Facebook. Your "friends" are starting to hate you for it, a study from Ontario's University of Waterloo suggests. "People with low self-esteem seem to behave counterproductively, bombarding their friends with negative tidbits about their lives and making themselves less likeable," according to a new study to be published in the journal Psychological Science. Co-writers Amanda Forest and Joanne Wood took the last 10 status updates of students and had people rate how positive or negative they are. Participants then rated how much they liked the person who wrote them.
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Traumatic experience, silence linked
Yahoo! India: People who suffer a traumatic experience often don't talk about it, and many forget it over time. "There's this idea, with silence, that if we don't talk about something, it starts fading," says Charles B. Stone of Belgium's Universite Catholique de Louvain, the co-author of a study on the subject. But that belief isn't necessarily backed up by psychological research-a lot of it comes from a Freudian belief that everyone has deep-seated issues we're repressing and ought to talk about, the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science reports. The real relationship between silence and memory is much more complicated, Stone says, according to a university statement.
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Grading The Online Dating Industry
New Scientific Report Finds Some Positives, Many Areas for Improvement The report card is in, and the online dating industry won't be putting this one on the fridge. A new scientific report concludes that although online dating offers users some very real benefits, it falls far short of its potential. Unheard of just twenty years ago, online dating is now a billion dollar industry and one of the most common ways for singles to meet potential partners. Many websites claim that they can help you find your “soulmate.” But do these online dating services live up to all the hype?