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Why Are Hundreds of Harvard Students Studying Ancient Chinese Philosophy?
The Atlantic: Picture a world where human relationships are challenging, narcissism and self-centeredness are on the rise, and there is disagreement on the best way for people to live harmoniously together. It sounds like 21st-century America. But the society that Michael Puett, a tall, 48-year-old bespectacled professor of Chinese history at Harvard University, is describing to more than 700 rapt undergraduates is China, 2,500 years ago. Puett's course Classical Chinese Ethical and Political Theory has become the third most popular course at the university. The only classes with higher enrollment are Intro to Economics and Intro to Computer Science.
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Conjuring Up Our Own Gods
The New York Times: “Americans are obsessed with the supernatural,” Jeffrey J. Kripal, a scholar of religion, told me here at Esalen, an institute dedicated to the idea that “we are all capable of the extraordinary.” Surveys support this. In 2011, an Associated Press poll found that 8 in 10 Americans believed in angels — even 4 in 10 people who never went to church. In 2009 the Pew Research Center reported that 1 in 5 Americans experienced ghosts and 1 in 7 had consulted a psychic. In 2005, Gallup found that 3 out of 4 Americans believed in something paranormal, and that 4 in 10 said that houses could be haunted.
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The Cost of Racial Bias in Economic Decisions
When financial gain depends on cooperation, we might expect that people would put aside their differences and focus on the bottom line. But new research suggests that people’s racial biases make them more likely to leave money on the table when a windfall is not split evenly between groups. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “It has been suggested that race bias in economic decisions may not occur in a market where discrimination is costly, but these findings provide the first evidence that this assumption is false,” explain psychological scientists Jennifer Kubota and Elizabeth Phelps of New York University.
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How to save more money: It’s a matter of time
Americans are living precarious lives. Nearly half of all families—many with homes and cars and jobs—are one misfortune away from financial disaster. A medical emergency or even a temporary loss of employment could gobble up their meager savings in six months or less. One in four Americans has zero savings. Many of these people are approaching retirement age, but they will never be able to retire the way they once imagined. There are many reasons for this dire financial situation, but one important one is that Americans simply don’t put enough money aside. Even when they have a little extra in their paycheck, they spend it, rather than socking it away for the future.
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The Why Factor: Swearing
BBC: Why do a few, select words have such power to shock and offend? With help from swearing historian Melissa Mohr, Mike Williams traces the history of taboo language from Roman times to the present day and hears how cultural taboos have shaped offensive language down the centuries. He talks to American psychological scientist Timothy Jay of the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts about why we swear and discovers that children start using profane language at a much earlier age than you might imagine. And he meets psychologist Dr Richard Stephens who persuades him to take part in two swearing experiments, one of them rather painful, with some surprising results. Read the whole story: BBC
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The Limits of Memory for Witnesses of Crime
Pacific Standard: Armed robbery. Bank hold-ups. Sleight-of-hand shoplifting. While not all of these crimes are violent, what they all have in common is the sudden, stressful position they can often put eyewitnesses and victims in—namely, the need to quickly assess a situation and react in just the right way. Does this robber really have a gun in her pocket? When the suspected shoplifter vehemently denies it, when is it time to search his bag? Our brains seek out, collect, and analyze countless cues in any given interaction, which all add up and tell us—consciously or no—who is lying, who is dangerous, and what action we should take.
