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Americans’ views flipped on gay rights. How did minds change so quickly?
Steve and Teri Augustine met, fell in love and got married in a conservative evangelical Christian community. They grew up believing homosexuality was a sin, and that the “gay agenda” was an attack on their values. Then, six years ago, their son Peter — their youngest child who loved theater and his church youth group — returned home to Ellicott City, Md., from his freshman year of college and came out to his family as gay. Teri asked her son not to tell anyone else, and drove herself to a mall parking lot to cry. Steve questioned his son’s faith, reciting Bible passages from Corinthians.
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Testing Gallery
Small Caption with three full rows of thumbs.This is good stuffTesting
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New Research From Psychological Science
A sample of research exploring blinking and time perception, how words influence speech perception, and intentional binding without intentional action.
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Downward Head Tilt Can Make People Seem More Dominant
We draw social inferences from not only facial features but from the position of the head itself, research shows.
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Maslow’s pyramid of needs
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is probably the world’s most famous framework to explain human motivation. As a refresher: It would suggest that you were driven to open this newsletter by a “higher level” need to achieve and build esteem, in this case, by picking up a bit of knowledge. This indicates that, at the moment, your “lower level” needs for food and safety are sated, as are your desires for love and belonging, leaving you free to gaze higher, toward “self-actualization.” Since the 1950s, when Maslow’s hierarchy blew up, the framework has been associated with a rainbow-hued pyramid.
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Does reading fiction make us better people?
Every day more than 1.8 million books are sold in the US and another half a million books are sold in the UK. Despite all the other easy distractions available to us today, there’s no doubt that many people still love reading. Books can teach us plenty about the world, of course, as well as improving our vocabularies and writing skills. But can fiction also make us better people? The claims for fiction are great. It’s been credited with everything from an increase in volunteering and charitable giving to the tendency to vote – and even with the gradual decrease in violence over the centuries. Characters hook us into stories.
