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What Is a Constant Cycle of Violent News Doing to Us?
The New York Times: It has been a rough year. By now, our violence is down to a pattern, and there is a choreography to our reactions. A killer seeks out a nightclub, a church, an airport, a courthouse, a protest. Someone is shot on video, sometimes by the police, and marchers fill the streets. An attack is carried out in France, America, Turkey, Bangladesh, Lebanon, Tunisia, Nigeria, and then claimed and celebrated by a radical terror group. Our phones vibrate with news alerts. The talking heads fill air over cable news captions that shout “breaking news” in red. Rumors and misinformation abound. The comments erupt on Twitter, Facebook and news sites.
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This Mindset Will Improve Even the Worst Commute to Work
BBC: Jessica Patch had more than one reason for accepting a high-paying advertising job in San Francisco. There was the challenge of the work, of course, but she also knew the extra money would help fund expensive fertility treatments. The trade-off: a 55-mile drive to the office that sometimes left her commuting by car up to four hours a day. Patch listened to podcasts to kill the time and took in a therapy show on Oprah Winfrey’s satellite radio station to ease the stress, but she said the strain of the lengthy commute, on top of a long workday “completely ruined my body.” ...
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Playing Action Video Games Might Make You a Better Driver
New York Magazine: Back in the day when jocks were jocks and geeks were geeks, you could tell who spent their evenings plugged into video games by who tucked their shirts into their underwear. But in 2016, video games are everywhere; hell, one of the most successful games in recent memory comes from Kim Kardashian. But as any True Nerd will tell you, mindless mobile apps are not True Games: you need to kill monsters (or humans, gasp!) or drive real fast in order to be True Gamer. In a new small study, it looks like people who are True Gamers — or who are training to become True Gamers — are better at driving, thanks to the visuomotor training offered by continuous, badass game play. ...
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Distinct Stages of Thinking Revealed by Brain Activity Patterns
Neuroimaging data can reveal the mental stages people go through as they are solving challenging math problems, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. By combining two analytical strategies, researchers were able to use functional MRI to identify patterns of brain activity that aligned with four distinct stages of problem solving.
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Police Language in Traffic Stops Shows Hidden Bias
An analysis of audio recordings from 380 traffic stops showed distinctive differences in the language that police used when speaking to White drivers compared to African American drivers.
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Diversifying Science to Represent Diverse Populations
Despite increasing attention to issues of diversity in scientific research, participant populations in behavioral science tend to be relatively homogeneous. Understanding how people differ across various dimensions, and how those differences are driven by underlying psychological, biological, and social processes, is critical to building a rigorous and comprehensive clinical science. A special series in Clinical Psychological Science highlights the importance of broadening the traditional scope of clinical science research, advancing the field so that it can adequately address the needs and concerns of diverse populations.
