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Hungry, Hungry Hippocampus: Why and How We Eat
Anyone who's tried (and failed) to follow a diet knows that food is more than fuel. The reasons we eat are even embedded in our language. When we're in an unfamiliar place, we yearn for comfort food. We take one too many scoops of ice cream because we stress eat. We connect to others by breaking bread. Having spent decades studying the interplay between food, identity, and culture, psychologist Paul Rozin has come to appreciate that hunger isn't the only reason we head for the kitchen. He says, "Food is not just nutrition that goes in your mouth or even pleasant sensations that go with it.
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How To Get Your Kids To Do Chores (Without Resenting It)
Back in the early 1990s, psychologist Suzanne Gaskins was living in a small Maya village near Valladolid, Yucatán, when she struck up a conversation with two sisters, ages 7 and 9. The girls started telling her — with great pride — about all the chores they did after school. "I wash my own clothes," the 7-year-old said. The older sister then one-upped her and declared, "I wash my clothes and my baby brother's clothes." Gaskins was so impressed by the girls' enthusiasm for helping around the house that she started to study how kids in the village spend their time.
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A Troubling Prognosis for Migrant Children in Detention: ‘The Earlier They’re Out, the Better’
Some youngsters retreat entirely, their eyes empty, bodies limp, their isolation a wall of defiance. Others cannot sit still: watchful, hyperactive, ever uncertain. Some compulsively jump into the laps of strangers, or grab their legs and hold on for life. And some children, somehow, move past a sudden separation from their parents, tapping a well of resilience. The Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents has alarmed child psychologists and experts who study human development. It is not clear how long the administration plans to hold onto the 2,000 children in detention centers near the border, nor how long before they are returned to their families.
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Around the World, People Have Surprisingly Modest Notions of the Ideal Life
Rather than being “maximizers,” people seem to aspire to moderate ideal levels of traits, such as pleasure, intelligence, personal freedom, and longevity.
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The Dangers of Distracted Parenting
Smartphones have by now been implicated in so many crummy outcomes—car fatalities, sleep disturbances, empathy loss, relationship problems, failure to notice a clown on a unicycle—that it almost seems easier to list the things they don’t mess up than the things they do. Our society may be reaching peak criticism of digital devices. Even so, emerging research suggests that a key problem remains underappreciated. It involves kids’ development, but it’s probably not what you think. More than screen-obsessed young children, we should be concerned about tuned-out parents. Yes, parents now have more face time with their children than did almost any parents in history.
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The Racist Trope That Won’t Die
The comedian Roseanne Barr resurrected one of the oldest and most profoundly racist slanders in American history when she referred to Valerie Jarrett, an African-American woman who served as an adviser to President Barack Obama, as the offspring of an ape. This depiction — promoted by slave traders, historians and practitioners of “scientific” racism — was used to justify slavery, lynching and the creation of the Jim Crow state. It made the leap to the silver screen in deeply noxious films like “The Birth of a Nation” and haunted American popular culture well into the 20th century. The toxically racist ape characterization has been pushed to the margins of the public square.
