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Neighbors Not Practicing Social Distancing? Here’s What to Do
The C.D.C. has issued guidelines for the public to wear masks when outside one’s home and to practice social distancing — remaining at least six feet away from those outside your household. All of this is with the goal of preventing community spread of coronavirus. But these guidelines are not laws. The level to which people follow them — or even flout them — has varied. That’s creating tension between those who think they’re already doing the right thing on social distancing and those who think they are not. (Not to mention those who just don’t care about the recommendations.) ...
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How to Preserve — And Even Strengthen — Your Relationship During Quarantine, According to a Marriage Expert
APS Member/Author: Eli Finkel If absence makes the heart grow fonder, what does forced proximity do to it? In the era of COVID-19, as more and more states mandate that people stay at home to flatten the contagion curve, many couples are feeling the impact of being together constantly. For some, this may be a make-or-break moment, particularly as social distancing and isolation leave them feeling cooped up. ... Major stressors influence relationships in various ways. One study shows that life-threatening events such as hurricanes increase divorce rates — but also marriage and birth rates.
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The Fine Line Between Helpful and Harmful Authenticity
APS Member/Author: Adam Grant Waiting backstage for my name to be called, I started feeling the familiar flutter of butterflies. It caught me off guard, because I thought I’d conquered my public speaking nerves. In the span of a decade, I’d gone from shaking in front of a classroom to calmly delivering keynote speeches for audiences of 20,000. It was supposed to be anxiety then, serenity now. But something was different today: I was addressing the TED staff at their annual retreat. It was a whole room full of people who judge the world’s most electrifying speakers for a living. I had a dilemma: Should I acknowledge my jitters out loud?
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When the Pandemic Leaves Us Alone, Anxious and Depressed
For nearly 30 years — most of my adult life — I have struggled with depression and anxiety. While I’ve never felt alone in such commonplace afflictions — the family secret everyone shares — I now find I have more fellow sufferers than I could have ever imagined. Within weeks, the familiar symptoms of mental illness have become universal reality. A new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found nearly half of respondents said their mental health was being harmed by the coronavirus pandemic. Nearly everyone I know has been thrust in varying degrees into grief, panic, hopelessness and paralyzing fear.
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Why Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories Flourish. And Why It Matters.
The coronavirus has given rise to a flood of conspiracy theories, disinformation and propaganda, eroding public trust and undermining health officials in ways that could elongate and even outlast the pandemic. Claims that the virus is a foreign bioweapon, a partisan invention or part of a plot to re-engineer the population have replaced a mindless virus with more familiar, comprehensible villains. Each claim seems to give a senseless tragedy some degree of meaning, however dark. ... “It has all the ingredients for leading people to conspiracy theories,” said Karen M. Douglas, a social psychologist who studies belief in conspiracies at the University of Kent in Britain. ...
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The Coronavirus Outbreak Keeps Humans from Touching. Here’s Why That’s So Stressful
With people around the world practicing social distancing and self-isolation to curb the further spread of coronavirus, some are starting to feel the effects of a lack of human touch. Whether it’s shaking a coworker’s hand or hugging a friend, most people are accustomed to some level of platonic physical touch on a daily basis. But for those who are quarantining alone or with people with whom they don’t have physical contact, loneliness and social isolation are growing health concerns. ... According to Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, a lack of physical touch can affect people in more ways than they might realize.
