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Fast and furious: Belief, catharsis and video violence
The Supreme Court’s decision today to overturn California’s ban on selling violent video games to children will no doubt rekindle debate about catharsis. Catharsis is the notion that we can dampen our negative emotions by acting them out or witnessing them in our arts and entertainment—and that this is a healthy thing to do. The scientific evidence is fairly heavily stacked against this idea. Indeed there is evidence that indulging our anger and aggression can increase—not decrease—those destructive emotions. Even so, a lot of people still believe in catharsis. They believe that pummeling punching bags and watching Fight Club and cursing at the universe is cleansing.
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Why Does a Baby Strike Out in Anger? A Study Looks At The Family Risks
A baby is set on the floor to play with other babies and she yanks a toy away from a playmate or shoves him in frustration or anger. What makes some infants aggressive? Does something adverse happen in the womb? Is it life with Mom and Dad that ramps up their anti-social behavior? Or both? These are the questions that a group of Cardiff University psychologists—Dale Hay, Lisa Mundy, Siwan Roberts, Raffaella Carta, Cerith Waters, Oliver Perra, Roland Jones, Ian Jones, Ian Goodyer, Gordon Harold, Anita Thapar, and Stephanie van Goozen—are exploring in a large-scale, nationally representative longitudinal study of 271 British infants and their parents.
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Shyness: Evolutionary Tactic?
The New York Times: A BEAUTIFUL woman lowers her eyes demurely beneath a hat. In an earlier era, her gaze might have signaled a mysterious allure. But this is a 2003 advertisement for Zoloft, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (S.S.R.I.) approved by the F.D.A. to treat social anxiety disorder. “Is she just shy? Or is it Social Anxiety Disorder?” reads the caption, suggesting that the young woman is not alluring at all. She is sick. But is she? It is possible that the lovely young woman has a life-wrecking form of social anxiety. There are people too afraid of disapproval to venture out for a job interview, a date or even a meal in public.
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Those Graphic New Cigarette Labels Won’t Help, Psychology Says
Discover Magazine: What’s the News: Starting in September 2012, the FDA will require every pack of cigarettes sold in the US to be emblazoned with a large, text-and-image health warning, similar to the labels already seen in Canada, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and several other countries. The FDA unveiled the nine label designs earlier this week; several are quite graphic, including photos of cancerous lungs and lips and a man exhaling smoke through his tracheotomy hole. Read more: Discover Magazine
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Power, alcohol make you drop guard
Times of India: Power can either lead to great acts of altruism, or corruptive, unethical behaviour. Being intoxicated can lead to a first date, or a bar brawl. And the mask of anonymity can encourage one individual to let a stranger know they have toilet paper stuck to their shoe, whereas another may post salacious photos online. What is the common thread that binds three disparate behaviours? Read more: Times of India
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It’s Science, but Not Necessarily Right
The New York Times: ONE of the great strengths of science is that it can fix its own mistakes. “There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong,” the astrophysicist Carl Sagan once said. “That’s perfectly all right: it’s the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process.” If only it were that simple. Scientists can certainly point with pride to many self-corrections, but science is not like an iPhone; it does not instantly auto-correct. As a series of controversies over the past few months have demonstrated, science fixes its mistakes more slowly, more fitfully and with more difficulty than Sagan’s words would suggest.
