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How Consumers’ Moods Drive Decisions
The Atlantic: In April this year, scientists from Georgia Tech and Yahoo Labs reported that something strange was manipulating online restaurant reviews. It wasn't hackers. It wasn't software bugs. It was rain, snow, and sunshine. After looking at more than 1 million online reviews on sites like TripAdvisor, they found that restaurants received significantly better ratings on days with nice weather and worse reviews on any day with rain. “The best reviews are written on sunny days between 70 and 100 degrees,” researcher Saeideh Bakhshi concluded. “A nice day can lead to a nice review. A rainy day can mean a miserable one.” ...
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We Want Privacy, but Can’t Stop Sharing
The New York Times: IMAGINE a world suddenly devoid of doors. None in your home, on dressing rooms, on the entrance to the local pub or even on restroom stalls at concert halls. The controlling authorities say if you aren’t doing anything wrong, then you shouldn’t mind. Well, that’s essentially the state of affairs on the Internet. There is no privacy. If those creepy targeted ads on Google hadn’t tipped you off, then surely Edward J. Snowden’s revelations, or, more recently,Jennifer Lawrence’s nude selfies, made your vulnerability to cybersnooping abundantly clear. ...
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How Moms Change Brains
Pacific Standard: For little kids, seeing mom or dad nearby is a calming influence, maybe the difference between between perfect calm and a full-bore freakout. It’s as if having a trusted caregiver nearby transforms children from scared toddlers into confident adolescents. And in a way, a new report suggests, that’s what having mom around does to a kid’s brain. When they’re first born and for years after, infants and young children can’t do a whole lot by themselves. They can’t eat on their own, they aren’t very good at managing their emotions, and it takes a while for them to learn how to dress themselves.
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Separating legitimate Ebola concerns from unnecessary fear
PBS: Late today, the Centers for Disease Control reported that it is expanding its Ebola investigation to include passengers on a second flight flown by one of the nurses since diagnosed with the disease. And the airline is notifying passengers who may have flown elsewhere on the same jet. As new details emerge, and as today’s congressional hearing showed, domestic concerns over Ebola are skyrocketing. A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds 41 percent are very concerned about the outbreak, 36 percent are somewhat concerned. And 45 percent say they are avoiding international travel.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Social-Network Complexity in Humans Is Associated With the Neural Response to Social Information Sarah L. Dziura and James C. Thompson Research has suggested that with an increase in the complexity of humans' social groups comes a corresponding enhancement of the brain areas involved in social processing. Participants viewed point-light arrays displaying biological or scrambled motion while they were being scanned in an fMRI machine. Participants also completed a social network index that assessed the complexity of their social network.
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Depressed Employees May Benefit From Coming in to Work
Depression can have a dramatic impact on a person’s ability to work. According to statistics from the CDC, approximately 27% of people with depression reported serious difficulties in work and home life and 80% of people reported some level of functional impairment because of their depression. Workers suffering from depression will miss an estimated 200 million workdays each year at a cost to employers of $17 to $44 billion.
