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Psst. I Hear That Gossip Is Not All Bad.
The Huffington Post: When I was growing up, there was a woman in the neighborhood known as The Mayor. She was not a mayor in any official sense, and in fact held no political office. She was a busybody and a gossip, and she made it her mission to spread the word on other neighbors' lives -- who got a DUI last night, whose teenage daughter was pregnant, who got fired at the factory and whose car dealership was struggling. Her specialty was scandal-mongering, but truth be told, she usually had her facts right. Gossips have a reputation for being trivial and petty and often meanspirited. But is it possible that such babbling serves some valuable social purpose?
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Do You Really Have Free Will?
Slate: It has become fashionable to say that people have no free will. Many scientists cannot imagine how the idea of free will could be reconciled with the laws of physics and chemistry. Brain researchers say that the brain is just a bunch of nerve cells that fire as a direct result of chemical and electrical events, with no room for free will. Others note that people are unaware of some causes of their behavior, such as unconscious cues or genetic predispositions, and extrapolate to suggest that all behavior may be caused that way, so that conscious choosing is an illusion.
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Eye Contact May Make People More Resistant to Persuasion
Making eye contact has long been considered an effective way of drawing a listener in and bringing him or her around to your point of view. But new research shows that eye contact may actually make people more resistant to persuasion, especially when they already disagree. The new findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “There is a lot of cultural lore about the power of eye contact as an influence tool,” says lead researcher Frances Chen, who conducted the studies at the University of Freiburg, Germany, and is now an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia.
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The Mental Strain of Making Do With Less
The New York Times: Diets don’t just reduce weight, they can reduce mental capacity. In other words, dieting can make you dumber. Understanding why this is the case can illuminate a range of experiences, including something as far removed from voluntary calorie restriction as the ordeal of outright poverty. Imagine that you are attending a late-afternoon meeting. Someone brings in a plate of cookies and places them on the other side of the conference table. Ten minutes later you realize you’ve processed only half of what has been said. Why? Only half of your mind was in the meeting. The other half was with the cookies: “Should I have one? I worked out yesterday. I deserve it.
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The Two Faces of Shame
Twenty-four year old Shawn Gementera was caught red-handed pilfering letters from private mailboxes along San Francisco’s Fulton Street. Mail theft is a serious crime, and it was not Gementera’s first run-in with the law. Even so, the judge opted for a lenient sentence—just two months in jail and three years of supervised release. But the supervised release came with an unusual condition. Gementera’s sentence required him to stand in front of a San Francisco post office, wearing a sandwich board with these words in large letters: “I stole mail.
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Think Fast to Stay ‘Up’
You wake up. Your phone blinks. You touch the screen, slide your finger, and chills shiver down your spine. “See me tomorrow,” says the email your boss sent at midnight. Your thoughts accelerate. “What does she want? Why did she write so late? Am I in trouble? The company is in trouble. This down economy! I’m getting fired. Why me? Where will I work? I have skills. There are other companies. I have no skills. Where will I apply? Can we move? How will the kids react to changing schools? I can do this. We can do this. No matter what.” We think. It helps us. Errands, plans, and goals require thought. Synapses fire. Action potentials race down axons.
