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Is The Resilience Of Millennials Underrated?
NPR: I'm a member of Generation Y, or the millennial generation. People like me were born in the '80s and early '90s. But I don't like to broadcast that fact. Millennials tend to get a bad rap. Journalists and commentators love ragging on us. They say we're ill-prepared to deal with life's challenges. And that, as a result, we have higher rates of mental health issues like depression and anxiety. ... Still, I wondered: Could it be true? Could it be that millennials really are more depressed and anxious than young people from generations past?
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The science of disgust: Why we (most of us) hate liver, brussels sprouts and cricket flour
The Washington Post: Whether you consider yourself a picky eater or an adventurous one, just about everyone has those foods they loathe or just won't touch. Polarizing foods, such as cilantro, mushrooms, or olives, can render a dish inedible for some. Others feel a bit queasy at the thought of eating offal, the internal organs of an animal, such as brain, testicles and heart. And to the average American, bugs are creatures never to be eaten except perhaps by accident. ...
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Our Brains Say That Corporations Are People, Too
The Wall Street Journal: I remember the day I decided that I liked Pepsi. I don’t mean “like” concerning its taste—I can’t really distinguish between Pepsi and Coke. And I don’t mean the adolescent “like” as in, “Do you like her, or do you like-like her?” I mean “like” in that I wanted to give Pepsi a warm, appreciative handshake. I was in grad school in New York and had spent an afternoon at a great sculpture garden, open to the public, on the grounds of Pepsi’s corporate headquarters just outside the city. Afterward, I realized that I liked Pepsi, the corporation.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Conceptual Conditioning: Mechanisms Mediating Conditioning Effects on Pain Marieke Jepma and Tor D. Wager Although researchers know that classical conditioning can modify pain responses, the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. Participants were conditioned to pair specific shapes with symbolic indicators of a high or low temperature. Participants' skin conductance responses were then measured as they completed a test phase in which the shapes preceded contact heat treatments.
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In The Classroom, Common Ground Can Transform GPAs
NPR: Many people have experienced the magic of a wonderful teacher, and we all know anecdotally that these instructors can change our lives. But what if a teacher and a student don't connect? How does that affect the education that child receives? Is there a way to create a connection where there isn't one? And how might that change things, for teachers and students alike? These are the sorts of questions that fascinated Hunter Gehlbach* and his colleagues at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Read the whole story: NPR
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Here’s Why Some People Are More Religious Than Others
TIME: When it comes to predicting the kind of people most likely to be religious, brainiac scientists used to be everyone’s last guess. The more educated a person was, the thinking went, the more likely they were to question the supernatural. But the supposed divide between science and religion—in which religion was seen as the less-educated person’s “science” of choice—has ironically been subject to little scientific debate, until recently. ... David Rand, who leads Yale University’s Human Cooperation Laboratory and studies decision-making, was one of the first to suggest that intuition and deliberation were key to a person’s religiosity in a paper he co-wrote in 2011.
