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A Plea for Better Working Conditions for Young Scientists
It’s been a while since I took the lead on writing one of these columns. The last time I did so was in June 2020, when I wrote about my experiences as a Black scientist. I have been relatively quiet since then not because I haven’t wanted to share advice with our readers, but because lately I just really don’t know what to say to young scientists that would be helpful. When we started this column 4 years ago, I had just started my faculty position and I agreed to join the team because I believed in the theory of change that inspired the column’s creation.
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If You’re Finding This Stage of the Pandemic Especially Confusing, You’re Not Alone
The omicron surge is declining fast in the U.S. One state after another is lifting their mask mandates. But more than 175,000 people are still catching the virus, and more than 2,200 people are still dying from COVID-19, every day. And federal officials say it's too soon to loosen restrictions. Is your head spinning? Are you feeling anxious? It's not surprising, according to psychologists, sociologists and medical anthropologists. "It's very confusing," says Ayelet Fishbach, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago.
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I Gave Myself Three Months to Change My Personality
One morning last summer, I woke up and announced, to no one in particular: “I choose to be happy today!” Next I journaled about the things I was grateful for and tried to think more positively about my enemies and myself. When someone later criticized me on Twitter, I suppressed my rage and tried to sympathize with my hater. Then, to loosen up and expand my social skills, I headed to an improv class. I was midway through an experiment—sample size: 1—to see whether I could change my personality. Because these activities were supposed to make me happier, I approached them with the desperate hope of a supplicant kneeling at a shrine.
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Wharton Professor Promoted Love in the Workplace
Sigal Barsade, a professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, urged bosses to think more deeply about emotions, including love, swirling around the workplace. Dr. Barsade, who died Feb. 6 of a brain tumor at age 56, cautioned against trying to suppress or ignore emotions at work. “We literally catch emotions from one another like viruses,” she said. Bosses can’t prevent this “emotional contagion,” she said, and should try to encourage positive emotions while dealing with problems generating negative ones. She advised leaders to pay especially close attention to the emotional signals they emit through facial expressions, body language and other habits. ...
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Social Media is Riskier for Kids than ‘Screen Time’
Suppose your 13-year-old daughter wants to subsist on candy during this drawn-out pandemic, and she challenges you to prove that candy is bad for her. For help, you turn to the Internet — and find many newspaper articles with headlines like “Don’t freak out about sweets for teens!” You are surprised to find that many of the scientific papers these articles are based on use a very broad definition of “sweets” — one that included not only candy and soda but also fresh fruit, carrots, and beets because of their sugar content. But you wonder: What if the research had been based on what your daughter is really after — junk foods with lots of refined sugar, such as candy and soda?
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If Everything Is ‘Trauma,’ Is Anything?
The man had been effusive, at first — sending compliments, engaging in witty back-and-forths, making a playlist that included that song by Mazzy Star (you know the one). And then, suddenly, he wasn’t. As it turned out, the guy had sent that same playlist to multiple women. He’d allegedly sent at least one of them an unsolicited nude photo. As he woke up next to one woman, he was planning that night’s date with another. Like so many online daters before him, Caleb was a creep. But in the language of TikTok — and, perhaps, the language of our current moment — he was more than that: He was pathological.
