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National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
Learn about the most recent news and reports from the National Academy of Sciences.
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Why We Can’t Stop Bingeing Old Shows During The Pandemic
NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro speaks to media psychologist Pamela Rutledge about how our brains are responding to the pandemic and driving our TV viewing choices. Hint: We're craving predicability. LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST: * You may be finding yourself watching and re-watching and then re-watching the same TV shows during your quarantine. They're cozy. They're familiar. They're predictable and usually always happy. It turns out our brain science has something to do with why we're not venturing far from our favorite shows. Dr. Pamela Rutledge is a media psychologist and the director of the Media Psychology Center, and she joins us now from Orange County. Welcome. PAMELA RUTLEDGE: Thank you.
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Getting Tight — the Psychology of Cancel Culture
The current era of cancel culture is upon us. From former Senator Al Franken, to Ellen Degeneres and Amy Cooper, people everywhere are having their lives upended because they violated the current social taboos of their community. Of course, such communal forms of control through shaming and shunning are nothing new to our shores — they were a staple of the Puritanism of our early Pilgrims — and are today quite common in many religious communities. While these tactics can serve a purpose in shepherding more individualistic societies, they can also easily descend into mob-like forms of vigilante justice.
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Coronavirus Might Worsen The College Mental Health Crisis: Can Apps Help?
Despite what many public health experts might advise, some colleges are set to open in person soon and with that comes a new round of mental health needs in an already taxed student population. Prior to the pandemic, college students had high and increasing rates of depression and suicidal ideation, and a nearly two-thirds increase in diagnosed mental health conditions (22% to 36%) from 2007 to 2017. According to Dr. Victor Schwartz, Chief Medical Officer at The Jed Foundation and Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine, there are many reasons for these increases.
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Are You Overpraising Your Child?
“I love it!” It’s a phrase I’ve uttered countless times, typically in response to a new offering from our family’s artist-in-residence, also known as my 6-year-old daughter. I’m being honest — it’s a treat when she dedicates her work to me, rather than the parent with higher approval ratings (her mother, my wife), and I take a fatherly pride in her choice of colors and attention to detail. But it turns out, I’m also undermining her efforts, by putting myself, and my approval, at the center of the conversation. It seems like the right thing to say.
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The 1918 Flu Faded in Our Collective Memory: We Might ‘Forget’ the Coronavirus, Too
In 1924 Encyclopædia Britannica published a two-volume history of the 20th century thus far. More than 80 authors—professors and politicians, soldiers and scientists—contributed chapters to These Eventful Years: The Twentieth Century in the Making as Told by Many of Its Makers. But the book’s sprawling 1,300pages never mention the catastrophic influenza pandemic that had killed between 50 million and 100 million people worldwide only five years earlier. And many history textbooks in subsequent decades just note the 1918–1919 flu pandemic as an aside when discussing World War I, if at all.
