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The Hidden Rules of Bigotry
The Huffington Post: Who is good? And who is better? We make these value judgments all the time, and for good reason, about individuals. But most of us have been taught not to make such judgments about groups of people. Equality is a core principle of American society, and it's unjust -- or at least politically incorrect -- to subscribe to social hierarchies. But such explicit hierarchies have played a powerful role in American history, and many believe that they still do -- in a more subterranean fashion.
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Is Obesity A Disease?
NPR: Last year the American Medical Association voted to recognize obesity as a disease. In a June 18, 2013, press release, AMA board member Dr. Patrice Harris explained: "Recognizing obesity as a disease will help change the way the medical community tackles this complex issue that affects approximately one in three Americans." This may seem like a simple matter of nomenclature, but a new paper confirms that how obesity is described can have important implications for people's judgments and decisions.
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The Limits of Practice
The New York Times: I started playing the French horn in sixth grade. I was a rule follower, and so I practiced regularly, in addition to performing at concerts and parades and all the other glamorous events to which a teenage French horn player is routinely invited. And yet, six years later, I was only marginally less terrible than when I began. Those who, like me, have failed to become proficient at something despite working at it for a long time can take heart from a new paper in the journal Psychological Science. Brooke N. Macnamara and her co-authors analyzed 88 studies of the impact of practice on people’s prowess in such areas as music, sports and professional jobs.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: The Moral Ties That Bind . . . Even to Out-Groups: The Interactive Effect of Moral Identity and the Binding Moral Foundations Isaac H. Smith, Karl Aquino, Spassena Koleva, and Jesse Graham Moral foundations can bind a group together, but in doing so they can also promote out-group hostility. To examine whether the adoption of binding moral foundations unavoidably leads to out-group hostility, the authors asked participants to rate the extent to which they believed torture was a justifiable technique for interrogating suspected terrorists.
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We dislike being alone with our thoughts
Nature: Which would you prefer: pain or boredom? Given the choice, many people would rather give themselves mild electric shocks than sit idly in a room for 15 minutes, according to a study published today in Science. The results are a testament to our discomfort with our own thoughts, say psychologists, and to the challenge we face when we try to rein them in. “We lack a comfort in just being alone with our thoughts,” says Malia Mason, a psychologist at Columbia University in New York, who was not involved in the study.
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You Look More Powerful When You Avoid Talking Details, Study Shows
People may see you as powerful based not only on your job title or your income, but on the very words you use in conversation and speeches. That’s the conclusion from a new study on how power is signaled in interpersonal communications. Building on studies showing that people in positions of power use more abstract language (such as interpretive or visionary descriptions) than those with less clout, a trio of psychological researchers explored how people who use abstract language are perceived by others. Over seven experiments, Cheryl J. Wakslak and Albert Han of University of Southern California and Pamela K.
