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The Fake Laugh
The New York Times: Eavesdrop on any conversation or pay close attention to your own and you’ll hear laughter. From explosive bursts to muffled snorts, some form of laughter punctuates almost all verbal communication. Electronic communication, too, LOL. You’ll probably also notice that, more often than not, the laughter is in response to something that wasn’t very funny — or wasn’t funny at all. Observational studies suggest this is the case 80 percent to 90 percent of the time. Take Hillary Clinton’s strategic laughter during heated exchanges with Donald J. Trump during the presidential debates.
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When Saying Something Nice Is the Only Way to Change Someone’s Mind
Harvard Business Review: Dan Kahan, who runs the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale, also studies this phenomenon and suggests that the only way forward is a kind of “disentanglement.” Cultural Cognition is a way of mapping humans on a big grid of beliefs and worldviews. When some outsider point of view challenges your worldview, you reject it immediately. It is only when you can disentangle the evidence from the identity you may make headway. Read the whole story: Harvard Business Review
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Men with Happier Childhoods Have Stronger Relationships in Old Age
Scientific American: Between 1938 and 1942, while the U.S. was preoccupied with the end of the Great Depression and its entry into World War II, researchers in Boston were busy embarking on a study of adolescent boys and their family relationships. Some 60 years later, different researchers followed up with the participants and found that those raised in warmer family environments were more securely attached to their partners in the later years of life—a testament to the enduring influence of early childhood experiences.
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Do We Need Scientific Idioms For Everyday Experience?
NPR: With the advent of Fall, my 2-year-old has been eager to comment on the fading light as we drive home on weeknights. "It getting dark?" she asks. And I answer: "Yes, the sun is going down." Only it isn't. Not really. The earth is rotating on its axis, our perch on its surface moving away from the sun. Talk of the sun going down may be harmless: an intuitive way to describe an experience in a pretty complex world. Yet research suggests that it will be years before my toddler approaches an accurate understanding of the day/night cycle. And research also suggests that the way we talk about our experiences matters. Read the whole story: NPR
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A Neuroscientist And A Psychologist On How Our Ancient Brains Work In A High-Tech World
The Diane Rehm Show: We all do it. Walking down the street–a quick check of the phone to see who emailed. Watching television–why not send out a tweet, too. Sitting at dinner with family–it will take only a second to read that text. Even when we know we should resist the temptation, it’s so hard to ignore technology. We pay for it in half-completed tasks, near accidents, and disjointed conversations. Why is this? It turns out our brains are not very good at driving away distraction, and technology has only aggravated it. Guest host Derek McGinty talks to neuroscientist Dr. Adam Gazzaley and psychologist Dr. Larry Rosen about our ancient brains in a high-tech world.
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Why You Should Bet Against Your Candidate
The New York Times: When your favorite sports team is defeated, you’re disappointed, even dismayed. The same is true when your preferred political candidate doesn’t win. It hurts when your side loses. Fortunately, you can insure yourself against such unhappiness: just place a bet for your side to lose. This strategy, which has become easy to do with the rise of online prediction markets, creates a consolation prize — say, $1,000 (or whatever it takes) — to reduce your pain in the event of a defeat. ... But in practice, as my colleagues Richard P.
