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The science behind Brian Williams’s mortifying memory flub
The Washington Post: When we tell stories about our lives, most of us never have our memories questioned. NBC's Brian Williams, like other high-profile people in the past, is finding out what happens when questions arise. Williams's faux pas – retelling a story of his helicopter coming under fire in Iraq a dozen years ago when it was actually the helicopter flying ahead of him – was much like Hillary Rodham Clinton's during the 2008 presidential campaign. Her story was about coming under fire during a visit to an airfield in Bosnia 12 years earlier. George W.
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How Do We Increase Empathy?
The New York Times: In my last column, I wrote about a high school buddy, Kevin Green, a warm and helpful man who floundered in a tough job market, hurt his back and died at the age of 54. The column was a call for empathy for those who are struggling, but, predictably, scolds complained that Kevin’s problems were of his own making. Grrrr. So what do we know about empathy and how to nurture it? First, it seems hard-wired. Even laboratory rats will sometimes free a trapped companion before munching on a food treat.
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Increasing Individualism in US Linked with Rise of White-Collar Jobs
Rising individualism in the United States over the last 150 years is mainly associated with a societal shift toward more white-collar occupations, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study, which looked at various cultural indicators — including word usage in books, trends in baby names, and shifts in family structure — suggests that a shift toward greater individualism is systematically correlated with socioeconomic trends, but not with trends in urbanization or environmental demands such as frequency of diseases or disasters.
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The new scientific revolution: Reproducibility at last
The Washington Post: Diederik Stapel, a professor of social psychology in the Netherlands, had been a rock-star scientist — regularly appearing on television and publishing in top journals. Among his striking discoveries was that people exposed to litter and abandoned objects are more likely to be bigoted. And yet there was often something odd about Stapel’s research. When students asked to see the data behind his work, he couldn’t produce it readily. And colleagues would sometimes look at his data and think: It’s beautiful. Too beautiful. Most scientists have messy data, contradictory data, incomplete data, ambiguous data. This data was too good to be true.
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Happier Tweets, Healthier Communities
Pacific Standard: Why does one community have higher levels of heart disease than another? Some of the reasons are obvious, such as income and education levels or local eating and exercise norms. But as epidemiologists have long argued, other likely factors are more ephemeral. Among them: how angry or content the residents tend to feel, and whether the environment fosters a sense of social connectedness. Measuring such things is tough, but newly published research reports telling indicators can be found in bursts of 140 characters or less.
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The Forgiveness Boost
The Atlantic: On New Year’s Eve in 1995, Frances McNeill, a 78-year-old woman who lived alone in Knoxville, Tennessee, went to bed early. Outside, someone watched the house lights flick off. Figuring its inhabitants were gone for the night, he made his move. McNeill awoke to the sound of the intruder rummaging through her bookshelves and drawers. She walked out of her bedroom and crept up behind him. He swiveled around, raised his crowbar high above his head, and bludgeoned McNeill to death. Afterward, he raped her with a wine bottle. The next morning, McNeill’s son, Mike, discovered her body on the blood-stained carpet.
