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Booze, Binging and the Devil You Don’t Know
Imagine this scenario. You are meeting your boyfriend at a restaurant, intending to break up with him. You know this conversation is going to be tough, but you really don’t know what his reaction will be. He could end up sobbing, or shouting, or he could just sit there in uncomfortable silence. You arrive early and order a whiskey—a double—to steady your nerves. Will the whiskey have its desired effect? Drinkers clearly expect that alcohol will dampen the effects of stress—they often drink for precisely that reason—but in fact this dynamic is poorly understood.
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To Savor the Flavor, Perform a Short Ritual First
Birthday celebrations often follow a formula, including off-key singing, making a birthday wish while blowing out candles, and the ceremonial cutting of the birthday cake. New research suggests that this ritual not only makes the
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Go-carting babies reveal origin of fear of heights
New Scientist: STEPPING out onto the glass platform of the Willis Tower, 412 metres above the streets of Chicago is enough to make most people dizzy. Not so babies, who are born with no fear of heights. Now it seems that this wariness develops as a result of crawling. You might think fear of heights would be innate, since falling from high up can result in injury or death. But babies with little experience of crawling are not afraid of heights.
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A Better Way to Discover Your Strengths
LinkedIn: If you want to excel at anything, it’s not enough to fix your weaknesses. You also need to leverage your strengths. When Albert Einstein failed a French exam, if he had concentrated only on his language skills, he might never have transformed physics. When J.K. Rowling realized that she was highly disorganized, if she had focused solely on becoming more orderly, she might never have honed her storytelling skills to write Harry Potter. And had Dennis Rodman worked exclusively on overcoming his weakness in shooting free throws, he might have never become a seven-time NBA rebounding champion. Before you can leverage your strengths, you need to figure out what they are.
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How To Fight Racial Bias When It’s Silent And Subtle
NPR: In the popular imagination and in conventional discourse -- especially in the context of highly charged news events such as the shooting of Trayvon Martin -- prejudice is all about hatred and animosity. Scientists agree there's little doubt that hate-filled racism is real, but a growing body of social science research suggests that racial disparities and other biased outcomes in the criminal justice system, in medicine and in professional settings can be explained by unconscious attitudes and stereotypes. Subtle biases are linked to police cadets being more likely to shoot unarmed black men than they are unarmed white men.
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Wait, Have I Been Here Before? The Curious Case of Déjà Vu
Smithsonian Magazine: Déjà vu is a rare occurrence, but you know it when you feel it. As you walk through a new city for the first time, something familiar clicks in your mind, giving you pause. You’ve definitely been here before. But you haven’t. So what gives? Well, no one really knows for sure. The origin of déjà vu (French for “already seen”), a sense of familiarity with something entirely new, remains hidden somewhere deep in our brains. The phenomenon is difficult to study—most people, when they experience déjà vu, aren’t hooked up to a bunch of electrodes, with clipboard-toting researchers at the ready. ...
