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What We Do and Don’t Know About Kindness
Since the pandemic began, people tell me they’ve been thinking a lot more about kindness. Maybe they’ve noticed the mutual aid groups that have sprung up around the world to help during lockdowns, or perhaps
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Making Eye Contact Signals a New Turn in a Conversation
What is found in a good conversation? It is certainly correct to say words—the more engagingly put, the better. But conversation also includes “eyes, smiles, the silences between the words,” as the Swedish author Annika
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The Point of the Cruelty
When a reporter asked Richard Daley, then the mayor of Chicago, whether his gun-control policies were effective, Daley pointed to a rifle and shouted, “If I put this up your butt, you’ll find out how effective this
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America needs a Chief Friendship Officer
America is suffering from a lack of friendship. The average American hasn’t made a new friend in the last five years. According to the American Enterprise Institute’s American Perspectives Survey from May 2021, Americans report
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The Surprising Benefits of Talking to Strangers
Nic spent most of her childhood avoiding people. She was raised by a volatile father and a mother who transferred much of the trauma she’d experienced onto her daughter. The combination left Nic fearful and
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New Content From Current Directions in Psychological Science
A sample of articles on social contact and well-being and health, motives and cultural variations in behavior, placebos and movies, lifespan learning and workplace implications, prenatal hormones and gendered behavior, children’s reputation management, and social emotions.
