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Trigger Warnings May Not Do Much, Early Studies Suggest
For years, trigger warnings have been the subject of impassioned academic debate: Do they protect people from distress or encourage fragility? The warnings, which alert individuals to disturbing material, have been talked about, used and promoted on college campuses and elsewhere for more than a decade, but little was known about how well they work. Now, a pair of recent studies suggest that they may have little effect at all.
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Counting Other People’s Blessings
Envy: it's an unflattering, miserable emotion. And it's universal. All of us, at some time or another, will experience that feeling of wanting what someone else has, and resenting them for having it. Of course, like all human emotions, envy has a purpose. It's a tool for social comparison, one that can alert us to imbalances in the social hierarchy. Sometimes, these feelings of envy can prompt us to improve our lives, says Harvard social psychologist Mina Cikara. "If you have more than what I have, I may be inspired by what you have," she says. But envy can also turn malicious, causing us to feel resentment, rage, and a desire for revenge.
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How to Make Your Teaching More Engaging
Consider a student in an introductory math class — let’s call him Alex. Alex had some unpleasant experiences with math in high school. When he got to college, he tested into a math course below the level that would count toward his general-education requirements. He is thus feeling wary about the semester, and resents having to “waste” expensive college credit on a course that he is unlikely to enjoy and that won’t get him any closer to his degree. To have any hope of learning the material, Alex needs to actually involve himself in the course. He needs to direct his attention to the lecture and the problem sets.
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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.
