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Cycles of Dread: The Terror in Terrorism
Almost 3000 people died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That includes the victims in or near the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and all the passengers in the four commandeered jets, including the flight that went down in rural Pennsylvania. But it does not include the many hidden victims of lingering terror—an additional 1500 whose dread of another attack led, indirectly and much later, to their deaths. This is the gist of the so-called “dread risk effect”—first hypothesized in 2004. The idea is that terrorist acts indeed create terror.
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Red Mind, Blue Mind: Are There Any Real Independents?
Many voters have already made up their minds about who they will vote for in November. Indeed, for the reddest of the red and the bluest of the blue, there was never any doubt about how they would cast their ballots. But interestingly, as the country has grown more and more polarized over the past half century, more and more voters have rejected partisan identities altogether, choosing to call themselves Independents. Some polls put the number of Independent voters as high as four in ten today, which means that the next President will be the candidate who captures the minds of this vast middle. But who are these so-called Independents? And how many true Independents are there?
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Los adultos mayores tienen amistades y relaciones más estrechas
NeoMundo: La mayoría de las personas mira la vejez con un poco de miedo, pero esta edad tiene más de un tesoro escondido. Los adultos mayores parecen disfrutar de relaciones y amistades más profundas, concluyó una investigación. Los científicos de la Universidad de Purdue (Estados Unidos) explicaron que “mientras las habilidades físicas y cognitivas declinan con la edad, las relaciones mejoran. ¿Qué es tan especial de la ancianidad? Encontramos en nuestro estudio que la percepción de que queda poco tiempo, el estar predispuesto a perdonar y los estereotipos y actitudes hacia la tercera edad tienen un rol en la calidad de las relaciones”, dijo Karen Fingerman, uno de los autores.
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What Do Spoilers Spoil?
The New York Times: Over 10 percent of the comments on my “Hunger Games” column brought up the question of spoiler alerts. “Haven’t you heard of a spoiler alert?”, one exasperated reader asked. Another reader, Jim, reported that he was “trying rapidly to withdraw my forward of the article to my wife who’s in the midst of the 2nd book.” He didn’t want his wife’s experience spoiled as it would be, he assumed, if she knew how things turned out. A recent study indicates that Jim’s assumption may be incorrect.
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Reduce Dumb Decisions by Thinking in a Foreign Language
ABC News: Forget about dropping that Korean or Spanish or Japanese lesson, and not just because sticking with it might make it easier to navigate a polyglot world. It can pay off in other ways too. People who think problems through in a foreign language – and it doesn’t matter which one – make more rational decisions and are more apt to take smart risks, especially in the financial realm, according to a recent study in the journal Psychological Science. Left to follow their gut instincts, people are naturally loss-averse, sometimes myopically so, and often pass up favorable opportunities as a result, says Boaz Keysar, a psychologist at the University of Chicago and lead author of the study.
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Facebook users let secrets out
New Zealand Herald: What you post, comment on and say on Facebook reveals more about your self-esteem than you perhaps realise, psychologists say. In theory, the social networking website seems beneficial for people with low self-esteem, giving them the opportunity to share experiences, thoughts and likes with other users. But a North American study found that, in practice, those with low self-esteem tended to behave counterproductively, bombarding their online friends with "negative tidbits" about their lives and making themselves less likeable.
