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Are We Born Fearing Spiders and Snakes?
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Why Are More American Teenagers Than Ever Suffering From Severe Anxiety?
The disintegration of Jake’s life took him by surprise. It happened early in his junior year of high school, while he was taking three Advanced Placement classes, running on his school’s cross-country team and traveling to Model United Nations conferences. It was a lot to handle, but Jake — the likable, hard-working oldest sibling in a suburban North Carolina family — was the kind of teenager who handled things. Though he was not prone to boastfulness, the fact was he had never really failed at anything. Not coincidentally, failure was one of Jake’s biggest fears. He worried about it privately; maybe he couldn’t keep up with his peers, maybe he wouldn’t succeed in life.
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People Who Value Virtue Show Wiser Reasoning
We’re often better at working through our friends’ problems than our own—but people who are motivated to develop the best in themselves and others don’t show this bias.
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Work Before Fun? That Might Not Always Be Best
Work first, play later. That’s the conventional wisdom that promises to make people more productive at work and allow them to enjoy their fun stress-free. The truth may be very different. So says social psychologist Ed O’Brien in a recent paper published in the journal Psychological Science on the balance between leisure and work. “People have this strong intuition that the good stuff will be better if it comes after these difficult things,” says Dr. O’Brien, an assistant professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. But instead, he says, “cashing in now feels just as good.
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My Smartphone Died, and I Didn’t Miss It. Well, Maybe a Little.
Two weeks ago, my smartphone shut down because of a low battery as I was about to board a flight to Europe. That seemed odd, given that I had barely used it that day. I plugged it in on the plane, but seven hours later, it still wasn’t functioning. When I arrived at my hotel I tried a different charger, to no avail. The phone was dead — terminally so, it turned out. I hadn’t brought a laptop, so I had no access to the internet or email. I had no camera, no guidebooks, no maps. I took a deep breath and decided to make the best of it. I’m hardly a smartphone addict. I rarely look at social media. I had happily traveled in Europe in the years before cellphones.
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The Hidden Meaning of Kids’ Shapes and Scribbles
High on the list of awkward social interactions is the moment when a dentist or a coworker shows off her young child’s nonsensical art. A bystander might think the art—or at least the fact of its existence—is cute. Or she might think it’s ridiculous or downright terrifying. In either case, a common reaction is to smile and ask, “What’s it supposed to be?” After all, these creations rarely look like anything fully recognizable or “real.” I uncovered a host of idiosyncrasies after asking parents about their kids’ art. There was a sideways house (or was it a knife?); a giant tooth resembling candy corn; a supposed self-portrait consisting of an oval with some jagged lines in the middle.
