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How a Public Suicide Harms the People Who See It
One evening last March, Nancy Bacon saw a stranger die. She had just touched down in Toronto and set off for a business meeting, chatting on her phone as she navigated the rush-hour traffic of the financial district. She was jaywalking, hurrying across a particularly busy street, when a fire extinguisher seemed to fall from the sky, smashing to the ground just a few feet away from her. “I was actually annoyed,” she says. Her first thought was that some mischievous kid had thrown the extinguisher through a window high above. But when she lifted her gaze, Bacon’s annoyance turned to horror. What she witnessed next would haunt her for months. “I saw the guy falling,” she says.
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How researchers are teaching AI to learn like a child
It's a Saturday morning in February, and Chloe, a curious 3-year-old in a striped shirt and leggings, is exploring the possibilities of a new toy. Her father, Gary Marcus, a developmental cognitive scientist at New York University (NYU) in New York City, has brought home some strips of tape designed to adhere Lego bricks to surfaces. Chloe, well-versed in Lego, is intrigued. But she has always built upward. Could she use the tape to build sideways or upside down? Marcus suggests building out from the side of a table. Ten minutes later, Chloe starts sticking the tape to the wall. "We better do it before Mama comes back," Marcus says in a singsong voice.
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Why Delayed Gratification in the Marshmallow Test Doesn’t Equal Success
If you give a kid a marshmallow, she’s going to ask for a graham cracker. And maybe some milk. Eventually, she’ll want another marshmallow. (Or so the popular children’s book goes.) But if you ask a kid to wait 15 minutes before eating that marshmallow, promising a second if she holds out, she’s going to have a hard time complying. This dilemma, commonly known as the marshmallow test, has dominated research on children’s willpower since 1990, when Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel and his colleagues published their groundbreaking study on the topic.
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Feeling Burned Out? Here Are 3 Things That Can Help
Here’s a confession: For the last week or so I’ve felt a little drained. Low energy, low motivation, a sense that something is a little off. It’s nothing serious, but one of those passing phases we’re all familiar with when things feel overwhelming. As an old editor of mine used to put it: My mojo is a little off. There are countless reasons we get in these funks, ranging from tough deadlines and scheduling conflicts to problems with co-workers or new stressors at home. Sometimes there isn’t even a reason and you’re just having one of those weeks. It’s normal to go through these phases. According to a recent study, one in five highly engaged employees is at risk of burnout.
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Bad Vibes? Heavy Marijuana Users Hold on to Negative Feelings
Many people tend to look back on the past with rose-colored glasses, remembering the good times and the good feelings, while forgetting the bad. But a new study suggests that heavy marijuana users may have some trouble letting go of negative emotions tied to memories — a phenomenon that's also seen in people with depression. Earlier research has also linked marijuana use with depression. Although the new results are very preliminary, the findings, presented here Friday (May 25) at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, may offer clues about the link between marijuana use and depression.
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How competition fuels inequality and conflict
Inequality is one of the best predictors of conflict ever found. Except when it isn’t. Consider homicide in the United States. In 1990 and again in 2010, there was an impressive correlation between income inequality and the homicide rate. Among the states where inequality was high, so was homicide; and where inequality was low, homicide was too. But over those same 20 years, inequality grew while homicides fell — the opposite of what you would expect. Call it the inequality paradox: The effect of inequality on conflict depends profoundly on the way it’s measured. --- With the help of a colleague, I tested this idea in an experiment just published in the journal Psychological Science.
