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Can you tell a real laugh from a fake one?
Some laughs are genuine reactions to hilarity. Others are more contrived—fake, even. But, according to a new study, people can usually tell real laughs from fake ones, regardless of cultural differences. In the first cross-cultural experiment of its kind, researchers asked 884 people from 21 different cultures in six regions around the world, from Peru to South Korea, to listen to recordings of real, spontaneous laughter, and fake, “volitional” laughter recorded from college-aged, U.S. women. On average, nearly two-thirds of listeners in each culture could tell the difference, the team reports in a study accepted for publication in Psychological Science.
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The psychology of why you feel alone even when you’re surrounded by people
Despite the world’s population creeping upward by around 200,000 people a day, many of us have never felt as alone. We are more connected than ever before, yet we somehow feel more isolated. We have the ability to reconnect with our high-school classmates and talk to our heroes on social media, yet we feel that we have less intimate connections than the generation before us. And it’s not just a nagging feeling in the back of our minds—it’s affecting our physical health, too.
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A Third of Your Freshmen Disappear. How Can You Keep Them?
When the first-year retention rate at Southern Utah University fell five percentage points over five years, college administrators there knew they had a problem. They just weren’t sure what to do about it. "They were at a loss, and frankly, we were, too," recalls Jared N. Tippets, who was hired three years ago to reverse the trend. The institution had tried several of the "high impact" practices that are supposed to help with retention — learning communities, common reading programs — but students kept leaving. By 2015, only 64 percent of freshmen were returning for their sophomore year.
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The Effects of Parental Separation on Children
Many medical associations and thousands of mental-health professionals have criticized the Trump administration’s policy of dividing immigrant families at the southern border, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association. In many cases, professionals cite the negative health effects parental separation has on children.
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The Perils Of Pushing Kids Too Hard, And How Parents Can Learn To Back Off
On New Year's Eve, back in 2012, Savannah Eason retreated into her bedroom and picked up a pair of scissors. "I was holding them up to my palm as if to cut myself," she says. "Clearly what was happening was I needed someone to do something." Her dad managed to wrestle the scissors from her hands, but that night it had become clear she needed help. "It was really scary," she recalls. "I was sobbing the whole time." Savannah was in high school at the time. She says the pressure she felt to succeed — to aim high — had left her anxious and depressed.
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Bias Is Blind: Partisan Prejudice Across the Political Spectrum
A scientific analysis upends the notion that people on the political right are more biased about their ideological views than are people on the left.
