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Sad movies help us bond with those around us—and alleviate pain
Science: If you were old enough to see a PG-13 movie in 1997, chances are you went to see Titanic. And chances are you cried. You might have even seen the film multiple times, doing your part to make it the highest-grossing sob fest in movie history. Now, a new study suggests why people want to see tragedies like Titanic over and over again: Watching dramas together builds social bonds and even raises our tolerance for physical pain. “Why on Earth would we waste so much of our time and money going back to novels and films that make us cry?” evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and his team asked at the beginning of the new study. ...
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The Weak Evidence Behind Brain-Training Games
The Atlantic: If you repeat a specific mental task—say, memorizing a string of numbers—you’ll obviously get better at it. But what if your recollection improved more generally? What if, by spending a few minutes a day on that simple task, you could also become better at remembering phone numbers, or recalling facts ahead of an exam, or bringing faces to mind? ... And they might be wasting their money, according to a team of seven psychologists led by Daniel Simons at the University of Illinois.
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Social Science Researchers Explore ‘Unethical Amnesia’
NPR: There's an old saying - one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Turns out, that's not insane. It's kind of normal. Many of us make the same mistake twice or many times, and for some people, it is an unethical act. NPR's social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam is here to talk about some research into this. Hi, Shankar. SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: Hi, Steve. INSKEEP: So why don't we learn from past mistakes? VEDANTAM: Well, I read an interesting study by Maryam Kouchaki at Northwestern, Steve, that offers some insight into this behavior.
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One City’s Ambitious Plan To Ease Overcrowded Trains? Pay Riders
Fast Company: BART, the regional transportation system in the San Francisco Bay Area, has a new strategy to help cope with commute-hour congestion that's packing train platforms and cars to the gills: BART Perks, a rewards program that uses cold hard cash to make off-peak travel more enticing. BART's leadership is betting that this unconventional short-term solution will be a big enough patch until longer term plans come to fruition. As cities grapple with ways to better manage their transit systems, BART is using a psychology-fueled strategy to solve the age-old problem of getting people to work efficiently and on time.
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Brain-Training Claims Not Backed by Science, Report Shows
A scientific review puts the claims behind brain-training games and apps to the test.
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Police Body Cameras Are Pointless Unless Cops Use Them Correctly
The Huffington Post: Officers involved in at least two controversial fatal police shootings this month failed to activate their body-worn cameras, leaving critical gaps in evidence that threaten to undermine the primary purpose of the devices. Police in Charlotte, North Carolina, have come under fire for how they have handled video recordings related to the shooting death of Keith Lamont Scott, a 43-year-old black man killed by an officer on Sept. 20. The department’s patrol division is equipped with body cameras, but its tactical division ― to which many of the involved officers belong ― is not. ...
