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The Emotions That Prosecutors Elicit to Make Jurors Vote Guilty
Pacific Standard: In May, an off-duty British Army soldier named Lee Rigby was murdered, in broad daylight, in what is likely the most incredibly brazen and baffling act of violence the neighborhood of Woolwich, London, had ever seen. Two men purposely ran over Rigby with their car, then got out and attacked him with knives and meat cleavers until he died.
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Millennial Searchers
The New York Times: FOR Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor who wrote the best-selling book “Man’s Search for Meaning,” the call to answer life’s ultimate question came early. When he was a high school student, one of his science teachers declared to the class, “Life is nothing more than a combustion process, a process of oxidation.” But Frankl would have none of it. “Sir, if this is so,” he cried, jumping out of his chair, “then what can be the meaning of life?” The teenage Frankl made this statement nearly a hundred years ago — but he had more in common with today’s young people than we might assume.
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No Pictures, Please: Taking Photos May Impede Memory of Museum Tour
Visit a museum these days and you’ll see people using their smartphones and cameras to take pictures of works of art, archeological finds, historical artifacts, and any other object that strikes their fancy. While taking a picture might seem like a good way to preserve the moment, new research suggests that museum-goers may want to put their cameras down. In a new study, psychological scientist Linda Henkel of Fairfield University presents data showing that participants had worse memory for objects, and for specific object details, when they took photos of them. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Bra Sensors Could Monitor Overeating
Mashable: Recent studies show that up to half of the U.S. population complains that they eat more when they are stressed, a condition that has also led to high rates of obesity -– and often a negative cycle of eating more, gaining weight and then getting stressed out about gaining weight -– especially during Thanksgiving. Researchers have been designing new kinds of ways to help anxious overeaters reduce this habit, or at least make them aware of when it’s happening.
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Liberals, conservatives differ in estimating consensus within their group
MinnPost: As I’ve mentioned before in this column, recent years have seen an explosion of research into the psychological underpinnings of the ideological differences between liberals and conservatives. These studies have found in general that conservatives tend to be more fearful of threats and losses, less tolerant of ambiguity, and more likely to value order, structure and stability. They are also more likely to develop punitive judgments about people who violate social norms. Liberals, on the other hand, tend to be more open to new experiences, more accepting of ambiguity and change, and more egalitarian in their attitudes toward others.
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How to Raise Thankful Kids
Slate: A few nights ago, after cleaning up from the play date I had organized for my 2½-year-old, changing his diaper, and refilling his water, I was about to start cooking him dinner before giving him a bath when the subject of Thanksgiving came up. He didn’t know what it was, so I tried to explain it to him. But somewhere between It’s a special day when we all think about how grateful we are for what we have and So, basically, it’s all about giving thanks, my son took off to terrorize our dog, and I was left stirring pasta that, five minutes later, I had to remind my son to thank me for.
