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The Stories That Bind Us
The New York Times: I hit the breaking point as a parent a few years ago. It was the week of my extended family’s annual gathering in August, and we were struggling with assorted crises. My parents were aging; my wife and I were straining under the chaos of young children; my sister was bracing to prepare her preteens for bullying, sex and cyberstalking. After a while, a surprising theme emerged. The single most important thing you can do for your family may be the simplest of all: develop a strong family narrative. I first heard this idea from Marshall Duke, a colorful psychologist at Emory University. In the mid-1990s, Dr.
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It’s working ‘parents,’ not just mothers
CNN: When Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo, banned employees from working from home, the media largely framed this as detrimental to women, not men. Mayer's decision was portrayed as limiting work-life flexibility for mothers, who may need to be at home -- or prefer to be at home -- with their children. Her decision was not sexist, but the coverage was. More than 40 years ago, psychologists Sandra and Daryl Bem invented a simple test to determine whether a statement was sexist: Could you exchange the word "women" for "men" and still have the sentence work?
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Judge in Aurora Case Calls for Use of ‘Truth Serum’— But Does It Work?
TIME: If accused Aurora mass shooter James Holmes wants to enter a plea of insanity in the “Batman” movie theater massacre, he will have to agree to narcoanalysis. ... “I was floored by it,” says Scott Lilienfeld, professor of psychology at Emory University upon learning of the ruling, “The claim that truth serum is truth serum is no longer taken seriously by anyone in the scientific community to my knowledge.” Moreover, Colorado is one of the states that apply the “Daubert” standard, in which scientific evidence can be disputed by the defense or prosecution. It requires that evidence meet certain standards to be admissible.
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What Is The Effect Of Asking Americans To Think About The Greater Good?
NPR: Okay. So is it a problem that the president is saying those two things at once? It might be, Steve, because we actually have many examples of what happens when politicians make appeals to individual rights versus when they make appeals to the greater good. This isn't a left or right thing, by the way. Obviously, on the case of guns, conservatives are much more likely than liberals to espouse the cause of individual rights. But when you think about gay marriage or abortion, it's liberals who are arguing in those situations that individual choice ought to matter more than the views of communities.
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A New Look at Perception (Thank You, El Greco)
The Huffington Post: El Greco was one of the greatest artists of the Spanish Renaissance, and also one of its most idiosyncratic. His contemporaries were puzzled by his fantastic use of color, and even more so by his oddly distorted vision. Many of his figures -- Saint John the Baptist and The Repentant Magdalen and even his own self-portrait -- are unnaturally elongated, as if they are being stretched from toe to head. They found the same perceptual distortion as in the original (and replicated) experiment, as described in a forthcoming paper in the journal Psychological Science. This means that the effect cannot be perceptual.
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Bullies’ accomplices suffer similar levels of distress as victims, finds study
The Vancouver Sun: It’s been more than 10 years since the bullying began, but there are days when Ishani Nath’s memories still feel fresh: the shame, the disconnection, the loss of control. But unlike so many similar tales, the Toronto woman wasn’t a victim in Junior High but rather a perpetrator. Starting at a new school, Nath learned quickly that falling in line with the alpha girls – “selectively ignoring certain people, giggling when others went by, and spreading more gossip than a tabloid” – put her on the fast track to social dominance. What she didn’t bet on was the potential for her behaviour to cut both ways.
