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The Despondent Mind: Are Our Brains Wired for Doom and Gloom?
If it seems the state of the world is on an endless downward trajectory these days, take heart. Things might not be quite as bad as you think. New research, published on June 29 in Science, suggests that as social problems such as extreme poverty or violence become less prevalent, people may be prone to perceive that they linger—and are perhaps even getting worse. Led by psychologist Daniel Gilbert at Harvard University, the researchers found people readily and unconsciously change how they define certain concepts—ranging from specific colors to unethical behavior—based on how frequently they run into them. “On almost every dimension, the world is getting better.
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Can Crows Make Mental Pictures of Tools?
New Caledonian crows are known for their toolmaking, but Alex Taylor and his colleagues wanted to understand just how advanced they could be. Crows from New Caledonia, an island in the South Pacific, can break off pieces of a branch to form a hook, using it to pull a grub out of a log, for instance. Once, in captivity, when a New Caledonian male crow had taken all the available hooks, its mate Betty took a straight piece of wire and bent it to make one. “They are head and shoulders above almost every other avian subjects” at toolmaking, said Irene Pepperberg, an avian cognition expert and research associate in Harvard University’s department of psychology. “These crows are just amazing.”
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Mr. Rogers Had a Simple Set of Rules for Talking to Children
For the millions of adults who grew up watching him on public television, Fred Rogers represents the most important human values: respect, compassion, kindness, integrity, humility. On Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, the show that he created 50 years ago and starred in, he was the epitome of simple, natural ease. But as I write in my forthcoming book, The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers, Rogers’s placidity belied the intense care he took in shaping each episode of his program.
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Americans Exaggerate Their Home State’s Role in Building the Nation
Research on “collective narcissism” suggests many Americans have outsize notions about how much their home states helped to write the nation’s narrative.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: The Link Between Self-Dehumanization and Immoral Behavior Maryam Kouchaki, Kyle S. H. Dobson, Adam Waytz, and Nour S. Kteily The authors explored the relationship between one’s own immoral behavior and self-dehumanization. In several studies, they asked participants to describe a situation in which they did something ethical or something unethical (e.g., lying, cheating) and then measured dehumanization by using a scale focusing on two central dimensions of humanity: the abilities to have self-control and to experience emotion.
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The Question Dividing U.S. Soccer Fans: Is It OK to Root for Mexico?
American soccer fans had eight months to mull the question. Between the time the U.S. national team collapsed in World Cup qualifying last October to the moment the tournament kicked off here this month, they needed to decide which team to side with in the U.S.’s absence. For many, the answer was more obvious than a sombrero on the subway: American fans should support their neighbor to the south, Mexico. But they ran into vocal opposition from fans who think cheering for El Tri amounts to high sports treason. After all, Mexico is the U.S.’s fiercest soccer rival in the region—decades of hostility between the teams couldn’t simply be suspended for the summer.
