-
What Your Facebook Posts Say About Your Mental Health
Over time, all these Facebook posts, Instagram captions, and tweets have become a treasure trove of human thought and feeling. People might rarely look back on their dashed-off online thoughts, but if their posts are publicly accessible, they’re ripe for analysis. And some psychologists are using algorithms to figure out what exactly it is we mean by these supposedly off-the-cuff pronouncements. This might seem like a minor distinction, but according to Lyle Ungar, one of the study’s authors, finding the difference between the two can help people in jobs that involve caring for others, such as doctors, understand when their empathy might be counter-productive.
-
We need a major redesign of life
It’s time to get serious about a major redesign of life. Thirty years were added to average life expectancy in the 20th century, and rather than imagine the scores of ways we could use these years to improve quality of life, we tacked them all on at the end. Only old age got longer. As a result, most people are anxious about the prospect of living for a century. Asked about aspirations for living to 100, typical responses are “I hope I don’t outlive my money” or “I hope I don’t get dementia.” If we do not begin to envision what satisfying, engaged and meaningful century-long lives can look like, we will certainly fail to build worlds that can take us there.
-
Fake News Feels Less Immoral to Share When We've Seen It Before
People who repeatedly encounter a fake news item may feel less and less unethical about sharing it on social media, even when they don’t believe the information, research indicates.
-
When A Listener Calls…
It's our first-ever listener questions episode! On this Short Wave, Andy from Grand Rapids, Michigan, asks why some people seek out scary experiences. We reached out to Ken Carter, a psychology professor at Oxford College of Emory University, for answers. Turns out, some of us may be more wired to crave the thrill.
-
Scientists are using MRI scans to reveal the physical makeup of our thoughts and feelings
Who among us hasn't wished we could read someone else's mind, know exactly what they're thinking? Well that's impossible, of course, since our thoughts are, more than anything else, our own. Private, personal, unreachable. Or at least that's what we've always, well, thought. ... Advances in neuroscience have shown that, on a physical level, our thoughts are actually a vast network of neurons firing all across our brains. So if that brain activity could be identified and analyzed, could our thoughts be decoded? Could our minds be read? Well, a team of scientists at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh has spent more than a decade trying to do just that. ...
-
In this angry and stressed-out time, research says we can learn to be kinder
You can become a kinder person. Even in this angry, stressed-out era. Yes, really. ... Among the warriors for civility — a.k.a. kindness — is Jamil Zaki, 39, a Stanford University psychology professor whose lifework is focused on helping us become our better selves. For the past three years, he has been developing the tools to foster what he calls a “kindness revolution.” I know that’s an oxymoron — revolutions are most associated with overthrowing despots and are often very unkind. But this is a different kind of insurrection, and he begins with a startling premise: Empathy is not unalterable. It can be cultivated, or tamped down.
