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Why attack ads? Because they work
Los Angeles Times: In poll after poll, Americans say they don't like negative campaigning. Yet in the final week of the Florida primary, more than 90% of the ads broadcast were attack ads. That's not likely to change in the run-up to Super Tuesday. So why do candidates rely so heavily on a kind of advertising voters say they abhor? Because it works. To understand why, you have to consider what we know about how emotions work — and the different ways our conscious and unconscious minds and brains process "negativity" during elections. In 2008, my colleague Joel Weinberger and I tested voters' conscious and unconscious responses to two ads.
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For Those With Low Self-Esteem, Facebook Makes Things Worse
The Atlantic: Facebook can be a boon for the socially awkward, a place where they can express themselves openly and connect more easily with others than they do in everyday life. But research from the University of Waterloo suggests that people with low self-esteem may end up making life harder for themselves with their Facebook posts. This happens because of the high negativity of their posts. Most people don't take well to negativity. In day to day life, they offer feedback on this with their comments or their body language or by walking away. On Facebook, they rarely respond to negative posts. The negativity still adds to their dislike of the poster, but the poster never hears about it.
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The Wages of Eco-Angst
The New York Times: Even today, when media warnings about the latest health or safety risk are commonplace, the incessant drumbeat of reported environmental hazards can be truly alarming, leaving us worried, like the followers of Chicken Little, that the sky really is falling. But while plenty of these threats are serious, some of the most frightening eco-bogeymen are not nearly the dangers that many presume. Nuclear radiation, for example, still tangled in many minds with images of atomic blasts, mutant Godzillas and rampant cancer, is nowhere near as harmful to human health as most believe.
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A Gesture of Authority: What’s the Point?
The Huffington Post: My very first classroom teacher had a long wooden pointer, and she wielded it like a weapon. At least that's my gauzy recollection. Many of the lessons were written on the blackboard, and she would use her pointer to direct our attention to this or that bit of information. She was an absolute and unquestioned authority in my small world, and her ubiquitous pointer served to reinforce that perception. Pointing remains a basic tool of instruction, both in the classroom and beyond. Elementary school teachers still use pointers, though these days most of them are plastic and colorful, with clownish hands attached. Read the whole story: The Huffington Post
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The Ever-Expanding Definition of “Diversity”
Diversity has become a goal for all sorts of institutions—but what it means may depend on who you ask. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that people’s ideologies help determine what they count as “diverse.” Miguel Unzueta, the study’s lead author, notes that “diversity” historically meant inclusiveness toward historically disadvantaged groups. Now, however, the term is commonly used to refer to people who are different in any way (even personality traits and food preferences)—and that, Dr. Unzueta argues, may be making the concept useless. Dr.
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Broken Hearts Are Truly Painful, Research Shows
The Huffington Post: If you've ever gone through extreme grief, a rough divorce or a break-up, you'll know this to be true: that aching feeling in your heart truly hurts, and now research backs it up. New research, published in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, examines a number of studies to find that social pain and rejection are quite real. One study showed that brain activity is similar in people when they talk about both moments of social rejection and physical pain. "We were sitting next to each other and noticed how similar the two brain images looked," study researcher Naomi Eisenberger of the University of Califiornia-Los Angeles said in a statement.
