-
What’s Normal?
After election day, “This is not normal” became a rallying cry for Donald Trump’s opponents: Harry Reid warned against press coverage that normalized the president-elect; a John Oliver monologue about Trump being abnormal won 14 million YouTube views; this is not normal T-shirts popped up around the country. But in July, after critics opined that his bullying tweets were “not normal,” Trump tweeted back that his social-media usage, far from deviant, was simply “MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL.” Maybe he’s hit on an uncomfortable truth: Even abhorrent things can become standard. Could his behavior become normal? ... Complicating matters, our sense of what’s ideal can be fickle.
-
Are We Born Fearing Spiders and Snakes?
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
