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Irony in Our Diets: Stigmatizing Obesity Increases Overeating
Pacific Standard: Numerous causes contribute to the nation’s obesity epidemic, including our increasingly sedentary lifestyles and the easy availability of high-calorie foods. Newly published research points to another, less-obvious factor that appears to be exacerbating the problem: The negative labels we attach to people who are overweight. Ironically, this stigmatization often can be found in anti-obesity campaigns themselves. According to a research team from the University of California-Santa Barbara, this may actually make these well-meaning efforts counterproductive.
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The Experience of Awe in Nature Leads to Religious Beliefs
Big Think: It has been said that there are no atheists in foxholes. The fear of death will make even the most hardened skeptic a believer. According to a new study published in the journal Psychological Science, the experience of awe — in the form of mountains, canyons and outer space — makes one more apt to believe that the universe was constructed "according to God’s or some other nonhuman entity’s plan." Read the whole story: Big Think
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When Superstition Works
The Wall Street Journal: It starts when people try something different—Pepsi instead of Coca-Cola, a blue tie instead of the old red one—and find that something good happens. Soon, without realizing it, someone who wouldn't think twice about, say, walking under a ladder or traveling on Friday the 13th begins to associate their new behavior with good luck—and starts reaching for the Pepsi again and again. Such "conditioned superstitions" can develop when people believe there is something they can do to control a situation, despite there being no rational reason to think so, says Gita Johar, a professor of business at Columbia University who recently co-wrote a paper on the phenomenon.
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The Ways of Lust
The New York Times: HOW does lust affect the way we think about people? In 1780, Immanuel Kant wrote that “sexual love makes of the loved person an Object of appetite.” And after that appetite is sated? The loved one, Kant explained, “is cast aside as one casts away a lemon which has been sucked dry.” Many contemporary feminists agree that sexual desire, particularly when elicited by pornographic images, can lead to “objectification.” The objectifier (typically a man) thinks of the target of his desire (typically a woman) as a mere thing, lacking autonomy, individuality and subjective experience. ...
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Psychologists strike a blow for reproducibility
Nature: A large international group set up to test the reliability of psychology experiments has successfully reproduced the results of 10 out of 13 past experiments. The consortium also found that two effects could not be reproduced. Psychology has been buffeted in recent years by mounting concern over the reliability of its results, after repeated failures to replicate classic studies. A failure to replicate could mean that the original study was flawed, the new experiment was poorly done or the effect under scrutiny varies between settings or groups of people. ... Ten of the effects were consistently replicated across different samples.
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Stress, Poverty, and Ethnicity Linked Among Young Parents
An avalanche of chronic stress — driven by concerns ranging from parenting to discrimination — disproportionately affects poor mothers and fathers, according to the first results from a comprehensive multi-state study. "Those who are poor have much higher stress than those who are not. In fact, being poor was associated with more of almost every kind of stress," said lead researcher Chris Dunkel Schetter, a professor of psychology in UCLA's College of Letters and Science. The report found that although people with higher incomes have lower levels of stress overall, stress levels aren't reduced as much for higher-income African-Americans as they are for higher-income whites.
