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Why honor causes all of society’s problems
Pacific Standard: Glance at a list of critically acclaimed television shows and you'll see stories driven by characters who overreact to perceived signs of disrespect. Walter White doesn't care that people are fond of him; he wants to feel what it's like to be feared. In Fargo, Lester Nygaard's undoing begins when he takes his newfound refusal to not let others push him around too far. And in Game of Thrones, seemingly every character oscillates between calmness and boredom when encountering a "here's why I hate you" soliloquy, then concludes that murder is the only acceptable option when that hatred morphs into a public attack on their honor or status.
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Feel Dumb Asking for Advice? You’ll Actually Appear More Competent.
Entrepreneur: The fear of looking dumb is a nearly universal human emotion, one that often translates into a staunch refusal to seek advice. Because doing so is just an admission of incompetence, right? Dead wrong, at least according to a series of studies by researchers from Harvard Business School and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, which finds that while most people hesitate to ask for advice out of a fear they'll be judged poorly for it, the opposite is true: Ask someone for advice, and he or she is likely to view you as more competent. ... Alison Wood Brooks, who led the research team, answered a few questions for Entrepreneur.com about the study and its implications.
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Great Apes Share Our Ability to Predict Goal-Oriented Actions
Within a year after birth, human infants develop the ability to direct their attention to the anticipated goal of another person’s movement, before it has occurred. So, for example, our eyes move to where we think an object will be based on how we perceive others’ objectives and intentions. The ability to anticipate actions helps us both to cooperate and compete with others.
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MRN fMRI Image Acquisition and Analyses Course 2014
The mind research network will hold a course on "fMRI Image Acquisition and Analysis" October 16–18, 2014, from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The class will be held at The Mind Research Network in Albuquerque, New Mexico. For more information visit the following URL: www.mindsetconsultinggroup.com/what-we-do/education/mrn-fmri-image-acquisition-and-analyses-course-2014
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Do We Have an Internal Calorie Counter?
Many explanations have been offered for the country’s obesity epidemic, and one is nutritional ignorance. People simply don’t know what a calorie is, so how can they be expected to know a calorie-rich food when they see one? Most of us don’t even know what a gram of apple or an ounce of milk looks like, so how can we possibly calculate a sensible portion? Well, perhaps arithmetic is not required, and it may even be misleading. Psychological scientists in Canada have been studying how people make food choices, and it appears that our deliberate estimates and calculations may not be much use to us. Instead, we may implicitly know how fattening foods are, even when our estimates are way off.
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Better Self-Control May Pay Off for Older Workers
A recent study finds that older workers may have an advantage over their more youthful colleagues when it comes to one key skill—self-control. Psychological scientists Markus M. Thielgen and Guido Hertel of University of Münster and Stefan Krumm of the Free University Berlin found that older workers were better than younger workers at exercising self-control in the workplace, which gave them an edge in coping with challenging work environments. Some of us are motivated by a passion for our careers, while others show up to work in the hopes of a bigger paycheck or a corner office.
