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Eating From a Shared Plate Encourages Cooperation
President Donald Trump's recent summit with North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jung-un ended in embarrassing failure, and Trump's occasional attempts to forge deals with Congressional Democrats have usually gone just as poorly. New research points to another technique the president might try, one that involves one of his favorite pastimes: eating. Researchers report that, in three experiments, people who consumed food together from a common plate or bowl were subsequently more cooperative and less competitive, making it easier for them to reach agreement on a contentious issue.
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Why Americans Don’t Cheat on Their Taxes
If such a thing as American exceptionalism remains, maybe it can be found in this: Despite deep IRS budget cuts, an average audit rate that has plunged in recent years to just 0.6 percent, and a president who has bragged that dodging federal taxes is “smart,” most Americans still pay their income taxes every year. Even more remarkable, most of us feel obliged to pay. To quote the findings of a 2017 IRS survey: “The majority of Americans (88%) say it is not at all acceptable to cheat on taxes; this ethical attitude is not changing over time. --- A more worrisome possibility is that tax morale has lagged behind declining trust, and will yet fall.
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Sharing a plate of food leads to more successful negotiations
Shrimp cocktail, grilled sirloin with pear kimchi and chocolate lava cake. Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un had the same food brought to them on individual plates during their summit on February 27th. Psychologists think a meal like this is a good first step towards improving relations. But new work suggests there might have been a more positive outcome with a different serving arrangement. As Kaitlin Woolley of Cornell University and Ayelet Fishbach of the University of Chicago report in Psychological Science, a meal taken “family-style” from a central platter can greatly improve the outcome of subsequent negotiations.
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Terrorist Attacks Knit Communities Together, According to New Research
The Australian man accused of last Friday's massacre at a New Zealand mosque stated bluntly in his white-supremacist manifesto that he hopes to start a race war. New research, though, suggests that his monstrous act is more likely to result in a more connected, compassionate citizenry. An analysis of Twitter messages by French citizens following a 2015 terrorist attack in Paris found that "a collective negative emotional response" was followed by a long-term increase in expressions of social solidarity.
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New Research From Psychological Science
A sample of research exploring similarity grouping of objects, how motion can induce change blindness, and large-scale computational models of dyslexia.
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Could a Certain Style of Business Lunch Boost Team Performance?
A series of experiments suggests that professional interactions might benefit from ‘doing lunch’ like a family meal.
