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Review: The Cruel and the Kind
Everyone, it seems, is fascinated by psychopaths. They make up an estimated 1% to 2% of the population, so there may be more than six million of them in the U.S. alone. Most of them, of course, are not sadistic murderers like Hannibal Lecter, but they all have one thing in common: an abnormal lack of empathy. But what is the cause of that lack, and can it teach us anything about ordinary moral behavior? In “The Fear Factor,” Abigail Marsh, a psychologist and neuroscientist, describes her research into that question with great verve.
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Anxiety Makes It Harder to Listen to Your Intuition
As an anxious person, I find the mantra “go with your gut” endlessly frustrating. What’s so trustworthy about my gut instinct, which has, at various times, convinced me I’m dying of brain cancer, or about to get on an airplane doomed to crash, or destined to be alone forever? My therapist has had to remind me many times over that my so-called instincts have been wrong before and will be wrong again. But I’ve remained somewhat convinced that there is a “real” gut instinct somewhere beneath all my fake ones, and if only I knew how to access it, I would finally be perfectly wise, centered, and calm.
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Body Cam Study Shows No Effect On Police Use Of Force Or Citizen Complaints
Having police officers wear little cameras seems to have no discernible impact on citizen complaints or officers' use of force, at least in the nation's capital. That's the conclusion of a study performed as Washington, D.C., rolled out its huge camera program. The city has one of the largest forces in the country, with some 2,600 officers now wearing cameras on their collars or shirts. "We found essentially that we could not detect any statistically significant effect of the body-worn cameras," says Anita Ravishankar, a researcher with the Metropolitan Police Department and a group in the city government called the Lab @ DC.
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Clinical Psychological Science: Investigating an Incentive-Sensitization Model of Eating Behavior: Impact of a Simulated Fast-Food Laboratory Michelle A. Joyner, Sally Kim, and Ashley N. Gearhardt The incentive-sensitization theory suggests that compulsive eating behaviors are driven more by "wanting" (the motivation to consume a substance) than by "liking" (hedonic pleasure). "Wanting" and "liking" are hypothesized to be distinct only in the presence of substance-related cues -- cues that may affect other motivations to consume food, such as hunger.
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HUMBLEBRAGGING JUST MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A FRAUD
I'm such a fool! When I was interviewing Eddie Izzard last week, I should have mentioned this new study about the dangers of humblebragging. He would have enjoyed riffing on it! If you found that self-deprecating yet self-promoting assertion annoying, you have confirmed the study's main conclusion. It reports humblebrags—ostensibly self-effacing statements that covertly aim to impress—seldom have the intended effect.
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Behavioral economics has a plan to fight poverty—and it’s all about redesigning the “cockpit”
Dr. Bryan Bledsoe was just trying to keep up. The ER at the small rural hospital was always packed and the top brass had urged him to move patients through more quickly, so when a woman in her sixties came in complaining of head and neck pain, he briskly examined her, hustled her off for an x-ray, gave her some pain medication for a pulled muscle, and dispatched her home. The next morning, though, she was back—this time in an ambulance. Bledsoe had missed the signs of an impending stroke. The woman died in the hospital that day. ...
