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College Students Don’t Need Protection from the Truth
The collapsing justification for one university fad brings hope that others may follow. Even within the academic establishment, it seems that no one can mount a fact-based defense for the trendy notion that students need to be protected from potentially disturbing ideas. This week’s encouraging news also presents an interesting test case of whether academic institutions can still perform the basic functions for which they were created. ...
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Psychologists Are Learning What Religion Has Known for Years
EVEN THOUGH I was raised Catholic, for most of my adult life, I didn’t pay religion much heed. Like many scientists, I assumed it was built on opinion, conjecture, or even hope, and therefore irrelevant to my work. That work is running a psychology lab focused on finding ways to improve the human condition, using the tools of science to develop techniques that can help people meet the challenges life throws at them.
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Teens Who Spend Moderate Time Online Cope Better With Psychological Stress Than Others, Study Reveals
Teens could spend their whole day doing activities that drain their energy, which sometimes gives them psychological stress. But they also develop different coping strategies to destress, such as spending time online. A new study, titled "Adolescents' Online Coping: When Less Is More but None Is Worse" published in Clinical Psychological Science, revealed that teens ages 13-17 in low socioeconomic settings who spend moderate time online cope better with stress compared to those who spend several hours online and those who completely neglect it.
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Skeptical ‘Deep Dive’ on the Myers-Briggs Test
Perhaps the best known personality test is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. This episode takes a deep dive into the skeptical side of this topic with Dan McAdams, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University.
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How Music Can Literally Heal the Heart
In a maverick method, nephrologist Michael Field taught medical students to decipher different heart murmurs through their stethoscopes, trills, grace notes, and decrescendos to describe the distinctive sounds of heart valves snapping closed, and blood ebbing through leaky valves in plumbing disorders of the heart.
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Facebook Under Fire Over Secret Teen Research
Facebook-owned Instagram has been criticised for keeping secret its internal research into the effect social media had on teenager users. According to the Wall Street Journal, its studies showed teenagers blamed Instagram for increased levels of anxiety and depression. Campaign groups and MPs have said it is proof the company puts profit first. Instagram said the research showed its "commitment to understanding complex and difficult issues".