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Controlling Our Thoughts Is Harder Than It Seems
Research shows that even when we think we’ve successfully suppressed a thought, its traces may still linger outside conscious awareness.
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How The Brain Shapes Pain And Links Ouch With Emotion
When Sterling Witt was a teenager in Missouri, he was diagnosed with scoliosis. Before long, the curvature of his spine started causing chronic pain. It was "this low-grade kind of menacing pain that ran through my spine and mostly my lower back and my upper right shoulder blade and then even into my neck a little bit," Witt says. The pain was bad. But the feeling of helplessness it produced in him was even worse. "I felt like I was being attacked by this invisible enemy," Witt says. "It was nothing that I asked for, and I didn't even know how to battle it." So he channeled his frustration into music and art that depicted his pain. It was "a way I could express myself," he says.
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These Days, It’s Not About the Polar Bears
Climate science has struggled mightily with a messaging problem. The well-worn tactic of hitting people over the head with scary climate change facts has proved inadequate at changing behavior or policies in ways big enough to alter the course of global warming. --- Dr. Cook has designed a high school curriculum as well as a popular online course that presents students first with facts and then a myth about climate change; the students are then asked to resolve the conflict. In Europe, Sander van der Linden, a social psychologist at the University of Cambridge, codesigned an inoculation-based online game with doctoral researcher Jon Roozenbeek.
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Political Passion Inspires Trust—Even From Opponents
There's a lot of evidence suggesting that Americans trust each other less and less. But new research suggests an unorthodox solution to our political divide: firmly expressing our political opinions, even when they might prove unpopular. "Across five studies using a variety of contentious social issues, I found evidence that people trust others who demonstrate strong feelings about social issues, even when they disagree with or dislike them," reports Julian Zlatev of Harvard Business School.
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Do Not Trust That Stranger’s 5-Star Review
Last Saturday, I was desperate for Mozart sheet music. It had to be for piano, and it had to be easy to play. Out of 84 options on Amazon, a book with 4.7 stars caught my eye — good enough for a 9-year-old’s music-class presentation. Later that afternoon, I needed to book a hotel for our summer vacation and I trusted the 1,310 reviewers on TripAdvisor who gave my pick an average of four stars, along with a good number of “fantastics” and “wonderfuls.” Dinner was a 4.5 star meatloaf recipe.
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‘For-Now Parents’ and ‘Big Feelings’: How Sesame Street Talks About Trauma
ASTORIA, NEW YORK—Inside the Sesame Street studio in Queens, Elmo is playing “monsterball” with his friend, a new Muppet named Karli who has lime-green fur and two ponytails. (Monsterball, for what it's worth, appears to be the same as soccer, but with a furry ball.) Puppeteers, with their hands raised high and their heads cranked to the side to stay out of the camera’s shot, run around, making Elmo and Karli kick, laugh, and throw the ball. Outside, it’s a chilly gray December Monday, but on set the monsterball park is brimming with plant life, and butterfly puppets held up on long metal wires flap their wings.
