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How Our Friends Affect Our Food
In 2013, Jon Stewart, then the host of The Daily Show, set aside the program’s usual focus on politics to talk about something more important: pizza, specifically Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. “Deep-dish pizza is not only not better than New York pizza,” Stewart explained. “It’s not pizza.” Then, after several more minutes railing against the dish, he concluded, “Here’s how I know I’m right: You call it ‘Chicago-style pizza,’ ‘deep-dish pizza,’ ‘stuffed pizza.’” The New York City–born comedian pulled a thin slice of pizza from under his desk. “You know what we call this? Pizza.” Taste is an interesting thing.
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The Real Reason You and Your Neighbor Make Different Covid-19 Risk Decisions
Some people are comfortable going to concerts and clubs now. Others draw the line at indoor dining. And some are avoiding nearly all gatherings. People’s assessment of what is safe has varied wildly during the Covid-19 pandemic—often leaving us baffled about why our risk decisions differ so sharply from those of our neighbors, friends and family members. Now, scientists are starting to better understand why. Recent research shows that, while politics and geography play a role, other factors are often more important in determining how we make decisions about Covid-19 risks.
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Group Think
How do the groups you identify with shape your sense of self? Do they influence the beer you buy? The way you vote? Psychologist Jay Van Bavel says our group loyalties affect us more than we realize, and can even shape our basic senses of sight, taste and smell. ...
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What We Do and Don’t Know About Kindness
Since the pandemic began, people tell me they've been thinking a lot more about kindness. Maybe they've noticed the mutual aid groups that have sprung up around the world to help during lockdowns, or perhaps it's because the cessation of normal everyday life has forced them to reconsider their values and what really matters in life. Kindness might once have been considered something of a soft topic, but it has begun to be taken seriously within academic research. When developmental psychologist Robin Banerjee – who is leading a new study on kindness in partnership with the BBC – surveyed past research, he found just 35 papers on kindness in psychology journals in the whole of the 1980s.
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Apple is Studying Mood Detection Using iPhone Data. Critics Say the Tech is Flawed
New information about a current study between UCLA and Apple shows that the iPhone maker is using facial recognition, patterns of speech, and an array of other passive behavior tracking to detect depression. The report, from Rolfe Winkler of The Wall Street Journal, raises concerns about the company’s foray into a field of computing called emotion AI, which some scientists say rests on faulty assumptions. Apple’s depression study was first announced in August 2020. Previous information about the study suggested the company was using only certain health data points, like heart rate, sleep, and how a person interacts with their phone to understand their mental health.
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You Can’t Say That!
Many years ago, as a social psychologist specializing in gender equity, I was invited to attend a weekend workshop at the Air Force Academy. I was there to suggest ways to reduce prejudice against women, who were inching up to 10-percent of enlistees. At one of our first sessions, the topic of sexist humor arose. A senior officer grumbled that he always asked his junior officers if it was OK if he told them a joke, and they invariably said yes. Here was his joke: Q: Why do doctors always spank a newborn baby? A: So the penises will fall off the dumb ones.
