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Is our constant use of digital technologies affecting our brain health? We asked 11 experts.
With so many of us now constantly tethered to digital technology via our smartphones, computers, tablets, and even watches, there is a huge experiment underway that we didn’t exactly sign up for. Companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, even Vox (if we’re being completely honest) are competing for our attention, and they’re doing so savvily, knowing the psychological buttons to push to keep us coming back for more. It’s now common for American kids to get a smartphone by age 10. That’s a distraction device they carry in their pockets all the time. The more adapted to the attention economy we become, the more we fear it could be hurting us.
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New Research From Psychological Science
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Liberals and conservatives see sexual harassment claims very differently. This explains why.
Over this past year, the #MeToo movement has put sexual harassment claims front and center in the news. Most recently, accusations of assault and harassment against President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett M. Kavanaugh, prompted widespread public debate. Although a majority of the country opposed Kavanaugh’s confirmation, polls found that Democrats and Republicans perceived the issue very differently: While 91 percent of Democrats opposed the confirmation, only 6 percent of Republicans did. Perhaps this large gap is a result of the fact that Kavanaugh’s views are very conservative, or because he attacked Democrats during his testimony.
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What Happens When You’re Convinced You Have Bad Genes
The first thing you should know is that the DNA-test results everyone got in this study were fake. That was on purpose. Over the course of a year, psychologists at Stanford University recruited 223 participants for a study that would help scientists create personalized nutrition and exercise programs—or so they were told. What the two researchers, Brad Turnwald and Alia Crum, most wanted to investigate was how the participants would react after they took DNA tests and learned their genetic propensities for exercise and diet.
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Our Fortunetelling Genes
When I was a graduate student in the early 1970s, psychology was dominated by environmentalism, the view that we are what we learn. It was dangerous professionally (and sometimes personally) even to raise the possibility of genetic influence. We were taught, for example, that schizophrenia was caused by what your mother did to you in the first few years of life. Since then, a mountain of evidence from twin and adoption studies has convinced most scientists that disorders like schizophrenia and traits like cognitive ability run in families for reasons of nature (genetics) not nurture (environment). What is new in the last few years is the DNA revolution.
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We Still Believe That Genius Is Male—and Women’s Careers Are Suffering as a Result
The notion that men are intellectually superior to women remains lodged in our collective psyches. New research offers evidence that this bias has pernicious real-world consequences. A new study finds that women are less likely to be referred to employers as promising potential hires if the position in question is said to require a particularly smart person. "Despite the objective evidence of women's intellectual and professional accomplishments, it seems that their ability to make intellectual contributions is still not seen as being on par with men's," writes a research team led by Cornell University psychologist Lin Bian.
