Last year, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy released an advisory that described loneliness and isolation as a national epidemic, with health consequences that rival those associated with cigarette smoking and obesity. To help address this pervasive isolation, Murthy’s office challenged Americans to find and act on ways to strengthen their social connections. New research by Amit Kumar, assistant professor...
Humans have the capacity to imagine civilizations and creatures that have never existed, and our language reflects that ability. It would therefore be understandable if the stories we tell ourselves stretched beyond the bounds of local ecology. However, research has shown that many cultural artifacts and ideas are strongly affected by environmental factors. Researchers in...
Most people have heard the famous phrase “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Now, Northwestern University researchers have used statistical physics to confirm the theory that underlies this famous axiom. The study published on May 3 in the journal Science Advances. In the 1940s, Austrian psychologist Fritz Heider introduced social balance theory, which explains...
“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...
