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What We Do and Don’t Know About Kindness
Since the pandemic began, people tell me they've been thinking a lot more about kindness. Maybe they've noticed the mutual aid groups that have sprung up around the world to help during lockdowns, or perhaps it's because the cessation of normal everyday life has forced them to reconsider their values and what really matters in life. Kindness might once have been considered something of a soft topic, but it has begun to be taken seriously within academic research. When developmental psychologist Robin Banerjee – who is leading a new study on kindness in partnership with the BBC – surveyed past research, he found just 35 papers on kindness in psychology journals in the whole of the 1980s.
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Apple is Studying Mood Detection Using iPhone Data. Critics Say the Tech is Flawed
New information about a current study between UCLA and Apple shows that the iPhone maker is using facial recognition, patterns of speech, and an array of other passive behavior tracking to detect depression. The report, from Rolfe Winkler of The Wall Street Journal, raises concerns about the company’s foray into a field of computing called emotion AI, which some scientists say rests on faulty assumptions. Apple’s depression study was first announced in August 2020. Previous information about the study suggested the company was using only certain health data points, like heart rate, sleep, and how a person interacts with their phone to understand their mental health.
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You Can’t Say That!
Many years ago, as a social psychologist specializing in gender equity, I was invited to attend a weekend workshop at the Air Force Academy. I was there to suggest ways to reduce prejudice against women, who were inching up to 10-percent of enlistees. At one of our first sessions, the topic of sexist humor arose. A senior officer grumbled that he always asked his junior officers if it was OK if he told them a joke, and they invariably said yes. Here was his joke: Q: Why do doctors always spank a newborn baby? A: So the penises will fall off the dumb ones.
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A Real Talking Point: Bilingual Children Are Not Smarter Than Others
Remember how we all thought bilingual kids were smarter because they knew two languages? It turns out that’s not true, say researchers at Western University. J. Bruce Morton and Cassandra Lowe, who work at the school’s Brain and Mind Institute, have poked holes in that long-held theory in a recent spate of papers, including in the journal Psychological Science. ...
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Social Media Is Attention Alcohol
Last year, researchers at Instagram published disturbing findings from an internal study on the app’s effect on young women. “Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,” the authors wrote in a presentation obtained by The Wall Street Journal. “They often feel ‘addicted’ and know that what they’re seeing is bad for their mental health but feel unable to stop themselves.” This was not a new revelation. For years, Facebook, which owns Instagram, has investigated the app’s effects on its users, and it kept getting the same result.
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Need a Quick Stress-Reliever? Try One of These Surprising Science-Based Strategies.
There is a saying in the Balkans, where I was born and raised, that loosely translates to: “There is nothing worse than finally seeing the light, only to be plunged again into darkness.” As a psychologist, I have observed my patients’ extraordinary levels of stress and anxiety start to ease, only to be replaced by anger, disappointment and despair as coronavirus cases have resurged and the promise of the pandemic’s end has become more elusive. The widespread return to in-person school and the uneven return to offices this fall are further contributing to the sense of being pushed to the limit.
