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How the News Changes the Way We Think and Behave
Alison Holman was working on a fairly ordinary study of mental health across the United States. Then tragedy struck. On 15 April 2013, as hundreds of runners streaked past the finish line at the annual Boston Marathon, two bombs exploded, ten seconds apart. Three people were killed that day, including an eight-year-old boy. Hundreds were injured. Sixteen people lost limbs. As the world mourned the tragedy, news organisations embarked upon months – years, if you count the trial – of graphic coverage. Footage of the moment of detonation, and the ensuing confusion and smoke, were broadcast repeatedly.
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New Research in Psychological Science
A sample of research on anxiety and learning under uncertainty, visual experience and access to word meanings, ego-depletion, visual perception, and the effects of economy type on the valuation of labor.
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How to Keep Children’s Stress From Turning Into Trauma
Children may be processing the disruptions in their lives right now in ways the adults around them do not expect: acting out, regressing, retreating or even seeming surprisingly content. Parents need to know that all of this is normal, experts say, and there are some things we can do to help. “Our natural response to scary things is biologically to release stress hormones,” said Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, a pediatrician and surgeon general of the state of California, and the author of “The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity.” The release of stress hormones activates our fight or flight response.
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Coronavirus is Reminding People How Racism Takes a Psychological Toll, but There Are Ways to Be Resilient
A recent string of coronavirus-related attacks against Asian-Australians has prompted many people to share their experiences with racism and the psychological impacts it has had on their lives. Recent incidents include a Melbourne home being spray-painted with racist graffiti, tenants being evicted from a Perth rental accommodation, and one man in Sydney who ended his relationship with a woman who returned from China because he did not want to catch the virus. But, in addition to the high-profile racist attacks, there are also what are believed to be the more insidious forms of racism that go unspoken and underreported in communities across Australia.
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Coronavirus: Will We Ever Shake Hands Again?
Around the world, humans are struggling to ignore thousands of years of bio-social convention and avoid touching another. Shaking hands might be one of the hardest customs to lose in the post-pandemic world but there are alternatives, writes James Jeffrey. The humble handshake spans the mundane to the potent, ranging from a simple greeting between strangers who will never meet again, to the sealing of billion-dollar deals between business titans. There are various ideas about the origin of the handshake. It may have originated in ancient Greece as a symbol of peace between two people by showing that neither person was carrying a weapon.
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Where Psychologists Should Fear to Tread on Covid-19, They Don’t
ONSIDER THE FOLLOWING brain teaser: A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? A researcher devised the question 15 years ago as a measure of our ability to move past intuitive responses to deeper, reflective thinking — a concept Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist and Nobel Prize winner in economics, would go on to explore in his 2011 book “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” It’s been popularized to the point you may already know the answer. (Hint: It’s not 10 cents, the response that springs to mind for most people.
