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Parrots Are a Lot More Than ‘Pretty Bird’
The New York Times: Juan F. Masello never intended to study wild parrots. Twenty years ago, as a graduate student visiting the northernmost province of Patagonia in Argentina, he planned to write his dissertation on colony formation among seabirds. But when he asked around for flocks of, say, cormorants or storm petrels, a park warden told him he was out of luck. “He said, ‘This is the only part of Patagonia with no seabird colonies,’” recalled Dr. Masello, a principal investigator in animal ecology and systematics at Justus Liebig University in Germany. Might the young scientist be interested in seeing a large colony of parrots instead? The sight that greeted Dr.
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Researchers have a new theory about how tragedies affect us
The Washington Post: After losing a spouse or a job, the conventional wisdom is that most people will find a way to cope. And for the last 15 to 20 years, research has echoed this idea. Psychologists have looked at events as diverse as heart attacks,cancer diagnoses, terrorist attacks, the death of a spouse, military deployment and mass shootings, and concluded that most people remain psychologically stable and high-functioning through such traumatic events. ... Now, a study published in Perspectives on Psychological Science is offering new findings to challenge the idea that people are generally resilient following traumatic events.
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The psychology and neuroscience of terrorism
CNN: Your brain on constant fear is not a pretty sight. What is supposed to be a lifesaving instinct becomes anchored in your body, flooding your system with corrosive hormones that can damage your health, affect the way you think and change the decisions you make. ... "Fear is the primary psychological weapon underlying acts of terrorism," said Daniel Antonius, director of forensic psychiatry at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Buffalo, New York. "It is this fear, or the anticipation of future acts of terror, that can have serious effects on our behavior and minds." Read the whole story: CNN
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Watching funny cat videos at work can boost your productivity according to study
TODAY: Feeling guilty about watching cat videos at work? Don't be. Science is here to tell you it's OK. A recent study has found that being exposed to something funny while on the job can actually make you more productive. So feel free to boost your work output by watching this cat chase a duck while riding a Roomba in a shark costume. ... The study was conducted by psychological scientists David Cheng and Lu Wang of the University of New South Wales, who found that taking a humor break can help productivity. They gave students a boring task of crossing out the letter "e" in two pages of text, with one group assigned to watch a video from British comedy "Mr.
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Probing The Complexities Of Transgender Mental Health
NPR: Experiencing the world as a different gender than the one assigned to you at birth can take a toll. Nearly all research into transgender individuals' mental health shows poorer outcomes. A study looking specifically at transgender women, predominantly women of color, only further confirms that reality. What's less clear, however, is whether trans individuals experience more mental distress due to external factors, such as discrimination and lack of support, or internal factors, such as gender dysphoria, the tension resulting from having a gender identity that differs from the one assigned at birth. ...
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The Link Between Income Inequality and Physical Pain
Harvard Business Review: The United States is in a pain crisis. The use of pain killers increased by 50% from 2006 to 2012 and one recent estimate put the cost of physical pain on the U.S. economy at $635 billion — a 1,000% increase from 20 years earlier. At the same time, a widening income gap, growing sense of financial desperation, and erosion of the middle class have elevated economic insecurity to the top of the political agenda in the United States. A growing body of evidence suggests that this fiscal pain and physical pain are linked and reinforce each other.
