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Children Want Factual Stories, Versus Fantasy, More Often Than Adults
NPR: Childhood is a time for pretend play, imaginary friends and fantastical creatures. Flying ponies reliably beat documentaries with the preschool set. Yet adults are no strangers to fiction. We love movies and novels, poems and plays. We also love television, even when it isn't preceded by "reality. So, what happens as we make our way from childhood to adulthood? Do we ever reallyoutgrow a childlike predilection for make-believe? Or does our fascination with fiction and fantasy simply find new forms of expression?
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The Science Behind ‘They All Look Alike to Me’
The New York Times: The outcry was immediate and ferocious when a white New York City police officer tackled James Blake, the retired biracial tennis star, while arresting him this month in a case of mistaken identity. The officer mistook Mr. Blake for a black man suspected of credit card fraud, according to the police. Racism, pure and simple, some said. But was it? Scientists, pointing to decades of research, believe something else was at work. They call it the “other-race effect,” a cognitive phenomenon that makes it harder for people of one race to readily recognize or identify individuals of another.
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Weight and mortality
The Boston Globe: BEING OVERWEIGHT HAS been found to confer a survival advantage with age. But that’s assuming you don’t think others are treating you unfairly because of your weight. A new study suggests that individuals who think they’ve been treated unfairly because of their weight are likely to die sooner, even controlling for age, gender, race, education, body mass index, subjective health, diseases, depression, smoking, and physical activity. Read the whole story: The Boston Globe
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Is The Resilience Of Millennials Underrated?
NPR: I'm a member of Generation Y, or the millennial generation. People like me were born in the '80s and early '90s. But I don't like to broadcast that fact. Millennials tend to get a bad rap. Journalists and commentators love ragging on us. They say we're ill-prepared to deal with life's challenges. And that, as a result, we have higher rates of mental health issues like depression and anxiety. ... Still, I wondered: Could it be true? Could it be that millennials really are more depressed and anxious than young people from generations past?
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The science of disgust: Why we (most of us) hate liver, brussels sprouts and cricket flour
The Washington Post: Whether you consider yourself a picky eater or an adventurous one, just about everyone has those foods they loathe or just won't touch. Polarizing foods, such as cilantro, mushrooms, or olives, can render a dish inedible for some. Others feel a bit queasy at the thought of eating offal, the internal organs of an animal, such as brain, testicles and heart. And to the average American, bugs are creatures never to be eaten except perhaps by accident. ...
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Our Brains Say That Corporations Are People, Too
The Wall Street Journal: I remember the day I decided that I liked Pepsi. I don’t mean “like” concerning its taste—I can’t really distinguish between Pepsi and Coke. And I don’t mean the adolescent “like” as in, “Do you like her, or do you like-like her?” I mean “like” in that I wanted to give Pepsi a warm, appreciative handshake. I was in grad school in New York and had spent an afternoon at a great sculpture garden, open to the public, on the grounds of Pepsi’s corporate headquarters just outside the city. Afterward, I realized that I liked Pepsi, the corporation.
