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Why Do People Stay When a Hurricane Comes?
Hurricane Florence is currently battering the Carolina coast. A weakened yet still severe storm, experts expect flooding, high winds and torrential rains in the area, possibly for days. After issuing a mandatory evacuation order, Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina warned, “If you wait until conditions get bad, it may be too late to get out safely.” Tens of thousands of Carolinians scrambled to leave. Others, however, stayed put and are weathering the storm. One local fisherman told television reporters: “I was born and raised right here. I’m a local and it takes a little more than a storm to run us out.” He continued, “I’m going to stick it out.
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New Research From Psychological Science
New research exploring overlap between self- and other-oriented brain responses among altruists, spatial interference from linguistic cues, and brain structure and function in relation to action control.
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Why some people never evacuate during a hurricane, according to a psychologist
The forecast for Hurricane Florence is ominous. Storm experts are projecting the storm will make a direct hit on the North Carolina shore, north of Wilmington, as a Category 3 storm. The National Hurricane Center says storm surge — which is often the deadliest component of a hurricane — could top 6-to-12 feet in some areas. Meanwhile, 15-to-20 inches of rain from the storm may cause flooding, both alongshore and inland. Due to the severity of the forecast, more than 1.4 million people have been told they must evacuate from the shorelines of North and South Carolina, as well as parts of Virginia.
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People Can Infer Which Politicians Are Corrupt From Their Faces
People can make better-than-chance judgments about whether unfamiliar politicians have been convicted of corruption simply by looking at their portraits.
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A psychologist helps us understand why life is so different around the world
Michele Gelfand used to be “a sheltered Long Island kid who only saw New York and the world through a cartoon lens.” In college, she went to London for the first time and, surprised by the culture shock, decided to learn more about what makes cultures so different around the world. Today, Gelfand is a cultural psychologist at the University of Maryland and author of Rule Breakers, Rule Makers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World, which is out on September 11th from Scribner. Gelfand’s key insight is that “tight” societies care more and “loose” cultures care less about enforcing social norms.
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For the first time, a neural link between altruism and empathy toward strangers
Giving up a kidney to a stranger requires a certain sense of selflessness, what’s come to be known in social science as extraordinary altruism. University of Pennsylvania psychologist Kristin Brethel-Haurwitz wanted to understand the connection between this trait and empathy, specifically empathy for distress emotions. Using fMRI scans, Brethel-Haurwitz and colleagues from Georgetown University discovered that these altruistic kidney donors were more sensitive to a stranger’s fear and pain than a control group, with activation happening in a brain region called the anterior insula, which is key for emotions like pain and disgust.
