Suffering Souls, from the New Yorker, a ways back (via MindHacks): Psychopaths are as old as Cain, and they are believed to exist in all cultures, although they are more prevalent in individualistic societies in the West. The Yupik Eskimos use the term kunlangeta to describe a man who repeatedly lies, cheats, steals, and takes sexual […]
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Slate asks, Is Facebook Making Us Sad? Facebook is, after all, characterized by the very public curation of one’s assets in the form of friends, photos, biographical data, accomplishments, pithy observations, even the books we say we like. Look, we have baked beautiful cookies. We are playing with a new puppy. We are smiling in
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Helpful tips from Beth S. Patterson (GoodTherapy.org): I often suggest journal writing to my clients who are grieving the death of a loved one or dealing with a difficult life change as a useful way to deal with and befriend the intense emotions that often accompany these experiences. Some say, “oh, I’m not a good
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The question by the Edge Foundation: “What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit?” 163 answers are here. Here’s a sampling: – “Cognitive load” from Nicholas Carr: a limitation in how much information entering our consciousness we can process at any instant; – “The Pareto principle” from Clay Shirky: a reminder that the richest or busiest or
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David Brooks pays tribute to brain science in a big New Yorker piece. Help comes from the strangest places. We are living in the middle of a revolution in consciousness. Over the past few decades, geneticists, neuroscientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists, and others have made great strides in understanding the inner working of the human mind. Far
On Road to Recovery, Past Adversity Provides a Map (NYT) New research suggests that resilience may have at least as much to do with how often people have faced adversity in past as it does with who they are — their personality, their genes, for example — or what they’re facing now. That is, the
Theories about why people–and animals–yawn. One tidbit: Children under 5 are not subject to contagious yawning, but adult humans, chimpanzees, monkeys and dogs — animals with advanced social skills — are. Apparently an understanding of the mental states of others is required before yawning becomes catching
NYT: A Fate That Narcissists Will Hate: Being Ignored. Narcissists, much to the surprise of many experts, are in the process of becoming an endangered species. Not that they face imminent extinction — it’s a fate much worse than that. They will still be around, but they will be ignored. The fifth edition of the
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The APA’s “Stress in America” survey has some things to say about living in Los Angeles. –Almost three in 10 (29 percent) residents report having a great deal of stress (defined as an 8, 9 or 10 on a scale of 1 to 10), compared to 24 percent of Americans overall. –LA residents are
Brains, animals, literal-metaphorical confusions–Robert Sapolsky considers, recalling this famous study along the way: Volunteers would meet one of the experimenters, believing that they would be starting the experiment shortly. In reality, the experiment began when the experimenter, seemingly struggling with an armful of folders, asks the volunteer to briefly hold their coffee. As the key