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Study links bribery with collectivism
Toronto Sun: Bribery is viewed as morally wrong across cultures, but the question remains why some places are more prone to corruption than others. According to research by Pankaj Aggarwal and Nina Mazar, two professors at the University of Toronto, part of the answer seems to be the level of collective feeling in a society. The team discovered that people in more collectivist cultures – in which individuals see themselves as interdependent and as part of a larger society – are more likely to offer bribes than people from more individualistic cultures.
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Hearing Bilingual: How Babies Sort Out Language
The New York Times: Once, experts feared that young children exposed to more than one language would suffer “language confusion,” which might delay their speech development. Today, parents often are urged to capitalize on that early knack for acquiring language. Upscale schools market themselves with promises of deep immersion in Spanish — or Mandarin — for everyone, starting in kindergarten or even before. Yet while many parents recognize the utility of a second language, families bringing up children in non-English-speaking households, or trying to juggle two languages at home, are often desperate for information.
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When Should You Avoid Dealing With Emotions?
Huffington Post: One of the cornerstones of alcoholism recovery is what's called "emotional sobriety." The idea is that alcoholics and other addicts, if they hope to stay sober over the long haul, must learn to regulate the negative feelings that can lead to discomfort, craving and -- ultimately -- relapse. It's a lifelong project, a whole new way of thinking about life's travails. But the recovery literature also says "first things first" -- which simply means, "don't drink." Especially in the early days of recovery, alcoholics are counseled not to analyze why they are addicted, or how they might have avoided alcoholism: "Don't think and don't drink" is the maxim.
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Study: Nurturing mother plays role in future health
Chicago Sun-Times: Poor children are more likely to become unhealthy adults — vulnerable to infection and disease — than kids from higher-income families, according to a new study. However, the study findings revealed, some disadvantaged children grow up into healthy adults. Their secret: a nurturing and attentive mother. Upward mobility also has been cited as a reason that children from low-income families become healthy adults, the study pointed out. Yet the researchers found that income in adulthood didn’t offset childhood poverty.
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Virginia Tech announces national addiction registry
Virginia Tech News: ROANOKE, Va., Oct. 6, 2011 – C.W. started getting high when he was only 13. "I started off sniffing gasoline out of a lawnmower, then moved on to beer, wine, and marijuana," he said. Soon he was snorting cocaine, taking speed, and basing major life decisions — dropping out of high school, leaving the military, quitting a stable job, even abandoning his family — on his need to get high. He eventually found himself dodging drug dealers who were threatening to kill him over his mounting debt. It was a near-fatal accident that ended up saving C.W.'s life.
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<em>Psychological Science</em> Authors Honored With Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine
Watching Nobel laureates dancing the sirtaki and witnessing a flight of 1,200 paper airplanes were two of the unconventional events used to honor the winners of the 2011 Ig Nobel Prizes. Among the winners were Mirjam Tuk, Debra Trampe, and Luk Warlop, who received this year’s Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine for research demonstrating that people with full bladders make less impulsive choices. Their work was published earlier this year in Psychological Science. At first, Tuk wasn’t sure what to make of the prize. “I was curious to what extent this reward only highlights hilarious research [as opposed to] serious research, which mine was in the end.
