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The Meat Paradox: How Carnivores Think About Dinner
Temple Grandin is widely known as an advocate for animal welfare. She is also a slaughterhouse designer and meat eater. She has spent much of her professional life promoting humane practices for livestock farms and slaughtering plants, and has been recognized by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for her tireless efforts. She has also written in defense of meat as a food, and is embraced as an ally by the meat industry. A couple years ago, she even defended the beef industry’s controversial marketing of pink slime. Grandin has no trouble reconciling these views and activities. But she does have to reconcile them, as we all do.
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Mindfulness Meditation May Improve Decision Making
A focused 15-minute focused-breathing meditation may help to counteract the deep-rooted sunk cost bias.
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Warum Jamaika nicht beim Bobfahren gewinnt (Why not win at Jamaica Bobsledding)
Suddeutsche Zeitung: Vermutlich werden Winston Watt und Marvin Dixon, das Zweier-Bob-Team aus Jamaika, auch bei den diesjährigen Olympischen Winterspielen in Sotschi keine Medaille gewinnen. Über die Gründe lässt sich viel spekulieren, doch eine Ursache ist aus Sicht der modernen Sportwissenschaft offenkundig: Mangels eigener Schneeberge in der Karibik werden Skifahrer, Rodler und Eiskunstläufer aus tropischen Gefilden niemals in den Genuss eines Heimvorteils kommen.
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How Inequality Hollows Out the Soul
The New York Times: One of the well-known costs of inequality is that people withdraw from community life and are less likely to feel that they can trust others. This is partly a reflection of the way status anxiety makes us all more worried about how we are valued by others. Now that we can compare robust data for different countries, we can see not only what we knew intuitively — that inequality is divisive and socially corrosive — but that it also damages the individual psyche. Our tendency to equate outward wealth with inner worth invokes deep psychological responses, feelings of dominance and subordination, superiority and inferiority. This affects the way we see and treat one another.
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Study: Gossip can be good for society
WTOP: Mean girls, look out! Gossip can be used for good. A study conducted recently at Stanford University looked at the dynamics of people working within a group, and how problems occur when the classic egotistical and selfish bully takes over, derailing and damaging progress and equanimity fostered by the rest. The test was to see if a dose of their own medicine would change their bullying behavior and how this might benefit social situations across society. Published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, the study explores the nature of gossip and ostracism.
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Charitable Giving Could Harm A Company’s Image, Study Says
The Huffington Post: Giving to charity may actually hurt a company’s reputation, a new study from the Yale School of Management has suggested. Interested in how people view donors who make a profit while doing good, Yale professors George Newman and Daylian Cain presented a number of charitable scenarios to their research participants. Their findings, which have been published in Psychological Science, suggest that people are quick to dismiss those who benefit in any way while engaging in philanthropy. "This work suggests that people may react very negatively to charitable initiatives that are perceived to be in some way 'inauthentic,'" Newman explained in a press release.