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It’s Not That Easy Being Mean
An impatient commuter shoves us out of the way to get onto the subway train. The bullying boss enjoys berating us in front of colleagues. We routinely deal with people who seem socially reckless, quick to retaliate at any perceived slight, and unremorseful if not downright sadistic. And some of us ourselves can spew misery on our colleagues, friends, and family members. In truth, though, the modern mantra “mean people suck” fails to capture many underlying drivers of aggression, cruelty, and hostility — traits that often fire up rampant conflict in the workplace.
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Tiny Foragers: How Do We Know What’s Safe To Eat?
It’s the holiday season, and we’ll soon be decorating our home with greenery—holly sprigs, poinsettia, maybe a mistletoe, and of course the tree, probably some kind of spruce. We’ll have young kids around, and most of this greenery is benign. But some of these plants are toxic, possibly even deadly, if eaten. So what we are doing in effect is creating a treacherous world for our youngest revelers to explore. Re-creating really. Our holiday home will be a microcosm of the ancient world in which our early ancestors lived, and died. Throughout evolutionary history, humans have gathered leaves and berries to eat, but they have done this with little information to guide their choices.
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Money May Corrupt, but Thinking About Time Can Strengthen Morality
Experimenters have found that implicitly activating the concept of time seems to reduce cheating behavior by encouraging people to engage in self-reflection.
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Luxury Shopping, from the Other Side of the Register
The New Yorker: This holiday season, I’m working in sales at a store in a giant luxury mall, just outside Philadelphia and near one of the richest Zip Codes in the United States. Major employers in the area include defense contractors and pharmacy conglomerates. Every day, I park my run-down car among BMWs and hybrids. The mall’s interior is decked out for Christmas: light-studded garlands are strung in the eaves; colossal reindeer grace the entrances like sphinxes; security officers zoom by on Segways. The mall rats who hover around the doors smoking cigarettes wear brands of designer jeans I’ve only ever heard about in songs.
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Let Them Throw Cake: Messy Kids May Be Faster Learners
TIME: Parents who constantly find themselves wiping food off the high chair, the table, the walls, the ceiling and even the dog after a meal should take heart. A new study suggests that in making all that mess, their child is learning. Researchers from the University of Iowa (UI) studied how 16 month olds learn the words for non-solid objects—things as oatmeal or applesauce or milk—that infants generally take longer to learn and found that those who messed with the substance the most learned the words more quickly. The kids who had really got their hands—and sometimes the walls or floors—dirty, seemed to be the ones who understood the differences in texture or viscosity better.
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Alleged Perils Of Left-Handedness Don’t Always Hold Up
NPR: I recently stumbled upon a description of research out of Yale that suggested there was a link between left-handedness and psychotic disorders like schizophrenia. Forty percent of those with psychotic disorders are lefties, one of the researchers . That startled me. Only about 10 percent of people in the general population are left-handed. I'm one of them. I've often read that I'm going to die earlier. Also, I'm bad with scissors. And now, it seemed, I'm at high risk for mental illness. Was my hand preference a lifelong curse? The short answer: No. After getting both my hands on the , I found that the work, while intriguing, falls far short of being conclusive.
