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Second Best in the World, but Still Saying Sorry
Kenichiro Fumita was crying so hard that he could barely get the words out. “I wanted to return my gratitude to the concerned people and volunteers who are running the Olympics during this difficult time,” Mr. Fumita, a Greco-Roman wrestler, said between sobs after finishing his final bout at the Games this week. “I ended up with this shameful result,” he said, bobbing his head abjectly. “I’m truly sorry.” Mr. Fumita, 25, had just won a silver medal. In what has become a familiar — and, at times, wrenching — sight during the Tokyo Olympics, many Japanese athletes have wept through post-competition interviews, apologizing for any result short of gold. Even some who had won a medal, like Mr.
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The Burden of the COVID-19 Pandemic May Motivate Outbreaks of Violent Protest and Antigovernment Sentiment
Civil unrest and political violence may be related to the psychological burden of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Albert Bandura, Eminent Psychologist Known for Bobo Doll Experiment, Dies at 95
Albert Bandura, a psychologist who reshaped modern understanding of human behavior with his insights into such questions as how people interact and learn, how they develop and in some cases violate moral codes, and how the belief in one’s ability helps determine success, died July 26 at his home in Stanford, Calif. He was 95. The cause was congestive heart failure, said his daughter Mary Bandura. Dr. Bandura, who spent his entire academic career at Stanford University, was known to generations of psychology students as the author of the seminal Bobo doll studies. The substance of those studies, if not Dr.
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The Making of an Olympian
The world’s top athletes, including Olympians, rarely start competing at a young age or specialize early in the sport that will make them champions, according to a provocative new study of the athletic backgrounds of thousands of successful athletes. Instead, the study finds, most world champions sample one sport after another as children and gain mastery in their chosen activities considerably later than other, more focused young athletes whom they eventually go on to defeat.
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Do Olympic-Level Achievements Make People Happy?
The appeal of the Olympics is that they decide who can claim the title of best in the world. They also, less gloriously, decide who can claim the title of second best in the world. Despite beating out every competitor on Earth but one, silver medalists can feel a special type of disappointment. In a study that analyzed footage from the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, they were consistently judged to look less happy than bronze medalists, both right after competition and atop the medal podium.
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Make a Call on Quitting Your Job Without Any Regrets
It feels like everyone’s doing it. More than 7.5 million workers quit their jobs in April and May, up from 4.3 million during the same period the year before. Everyone’s talking about fresh starts. Burnout, the return-to-office mandate, boredom after a year of career stagnation: They can all seem like good enough reasons to send that farewell email. But is leaving your job right now the right call? How do you make a decision you won’t regret? More than a third of workers are looking for a new job, according to a May survey of 1,021 Americans from PricewaterhouseCoopers.