“Cancel culture” has a bad reputation. There is growing anxiety over this practice of publicly shaming people online for violating social norms ranging from inappropriate jokes to controversial business practices. Online shaming can be a wildly disproportionate response that violates the privacy of the shamed while offering them no good way to defend themselves. These...
A review of Anu Bradford, “Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology” (Oxford University Press, 2023) A European digital privacy activist lodges an appeal with the High Court of Ireland, arguing that the Irish Data Protection Commissioner’s refusal to prohibit transfer of his personal data to the U.S. by global technology giant Facebook (now...
Captive chimpanzees are one of the most popular species kept in zoos because of their charismatic appeal and similarity to humans. They are the closest living relatives of humans because of the shared genes and behavioural and psychological similarities. Zoos are ethically bound to care for the animals they house. Many provide environments that care...
Does previous experience bias a person in future estimations? Yes, Osaka Metropolitan University researchers in Japan report, but only if the person engages higher processing powers by responding, as opposed to simply observing. They made their findings through experiments involving participants estimating the number of dots flashed on a screen. Participants either had to input...
Suppose two speakers of the same language are playing a guessing game where each has the same color swatches, and Player 1 tries to get Player 2 to guess a hue by naming the color. If the second player consistently guesses correctly as often as possible, that indicates their language has an efficient color naming...
Why do men and women seem so different? According to a study, a wide range of gender differences that have been attributed to biological sex may actually be due to differences in power. Psychological differences between men and women have multiple possible explanations, including natural selection for sex-specific adaptations on the one hand and socialization...
Back in 1981, Tom Petty sang that the waiting is the hardest part. New research from The University of Texas helps to explain why. In two recent papers, Annabelle Roberts, Texas McCombs assistant marketing professor, explores the internal negotiations that happen when people feel impatient: whether they’re standing in a long queue or awaiting an important...
Do you really know why your partner gets jealous? We understand a surprising amount about other people’s jealousy, but we understand our own sex best. We may not always fully understand why our partners get jealous, and women and men often get jealous for completely different reasons. Two researchers from the Norwegian University of Science...
Both liberals and conservatives are more likely to believe that merit-based hiring is unfair after learning about the impacts of socioeconomic disparities, according to a study published by the American Psychological Association. People from across the political spectrum also are more likely to support programs that encourage socioeconomic diversity after learning about the effects of...
The recently released film The Snow Society , by Spanish director JA Bayona, about the legendary plane crash of a Uruguayan rugby team in the Andes in 1972 has been a smash hit in cinemas and streaming platforms around the world. And a very striking aspect of this story is the issue of cannibalism practiced by the survivors in...
