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Synesthesia: A Disorder That Blurs the Senses
The Wall Street Journal: For Sean A. Day, drinking coffee causes him to see a pool of dark, green oily fluid. The smell of fresh cut grass produces a dark, purple color. And when he hears a piano he sees a big cloud of sky blue mist with tiny drops of liquid plastic. Dr. Day, an anthropology instructor at Trident Technical College in Charleston, S.C., has three types of synesthesia, a rare trait or condition in which there is a merging of sensations that are normally experienced separately. “Diet cola produces a color that’s very unpleasant, a sweat-stained yellow,” said Dr. Day, 55-years-old. “So I never drink diet cola.” ...
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Raising a Transgender Child
The New York Times: In September 2015, Vanessa and JR Ford sent a group email to announce that their 4-year-old, whom their family and friends knew as their son, would be starting prekindergarten that year as “her true self” — a girl named Ellie. The Fords’ decision to help Ellie transition socially from boy to girl was not something they did on a whim. Starting well before age 4, Ellie showed countless signs of being unhappy as a boy: being sullen; drawing self-portraits as a stick-figure girl; pretending to be female superheroes; dressing up in princess costumes. ...
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We Don’t Gradually Glide Into Corrupt Behavior—We Jump Head First
Pacific Standard: So it’s a good time to take a step back and ask: What leads people to make dishonest, self-serving decisions? ... A research team led by psychologist Nils Kobis provide evidence of this dynamic in the journal Psychological Science. The first of their four experiments featured a five-round auction game “in which one of the two players gets the option to circumvent the fair-bidding process by bribing the allocator.” Read the whole story: Pacific Standard
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A healthy Super Bowl strategy to make you happier come Monday
The Buffalo News: Don’t beat yourself up too much the day after Super Bowl LI if you went overboard – especially if your favorite team lost (think early 1990s in these parts). People in cities with the losing team tend to eat 16 percent more saturated fat the day after the big game than on a typical Monday, according to a 2013 report in the journal Psychological Science, while fans of the winning squad eat 9 percent less. Read the whole story: The Buffalo News
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Political Affiliation Can Predict How People Will React to False Information About Threats
Social conservatives are more likely to believe untrue warnings about possible threats than are liberals, two studies show.
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6-Year-Old Girls Already Have Gendered Beliefs About Intelligence
The Atlantic: “There are lots of people at the place where I work, but there is one person who is really special. This person is really, really smart,” said Lin Bian. “This person figures out how to do things quickly and comes up with answers much faster and better than anyone else. This person is really, really smart.” Bian, a psychologist at the University of Illinois, read this story out to 240 children, aged 5 to 7. She then showed them pictures of four adults—two men and two women—and asked them to guess which was the protagonist of the story.
