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The Best Way to Handle Your Decline Is to Confront It Head On
As a kid, I was sure that all old people must be afraid of death. As I have gotten older, however, it turns out that this is mostly wrong. There are, certainly, people my age (56) who are morbidly afraid of dying—there’s even a diagnosable psychiatric condition for this fear, called thanatophobia, and a whole movement, called transhumanism, dedicated to attempting to postpone death or avoid it altogether. But most older adults I know aren’t really terrified of death per se, but rather of being destroyed as sentient beings. No surprise, then, that what they—we—fear much more is a gradual, de factodeath from decline.
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Claiming Journalism Is ‘Fake News’ May Satisfy a Personal Need for an Orderly World
People may use the term “fake news” to satisfy their need for structure in the world.
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New Content from Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science
A sample of articles on sources of variability in infancy research, invalidity of measures, methods for data-analysis, statistical power, and an analysis of registered reports in psychology.
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
A sample of research on neuroticism and anxiety, mourning, positive emotion training effects on youths aggression, maternal depression, inflammatory biomarkers and depression, suicide, and a network approach to mental problems.
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Safetyism Isn’t the Problem
APS Member/Author: Pamela Paresky As America debates when and how to reopen, those concerned about the side effects of the lockdown have begun to use the word “safetyism” to characterize what they consider extreme social-distancing measures. Safetyism, a term first used in the book “The Coddling of the American Mind,” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, denotes a moral culture in which people are unwilling to make trade-offs demanded by other practical and moral concerns. Rather than seeing safety as one concern among many, it becomes a sacred value. ...
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Why Do We Feel Uneasy About a ‘New Normal’?
Ever since we were first confined to our homes, we’ve daydreamed about the return to normal life, from the exhilarating to the mundane. We want to visit our favourite pubs, theatres or shops, and we suddenly feel an odd nostalgia for taking the train, trying on new clothes or even shaking hands. But as mandatory lockdowns around the world start to ease and businesses slowly open their doors, many of us who are not healthcare providers or essential workers are facing a puzzling dilemma: we feel anxious about resuming our normal routines, even though they’re precisely what we’ve been looking forward to.
