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Physically Aggressive People Spot Anger in Ambiguity
Aggression appears to relate to superior anger-identification abilities.
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How to Preserve — And Even Strengthen — Your Relationship During Quarantine, According to a Marriage Expert
APS Member/Author: Eli Finkel If absence makes the heart grow fonder, what does forced proximity do to it? In the era of COVID-19, as more and more states mandate that people stay at home to flatten the contagion curve, many couples are feeling the impact of being together constantly. For some, this may be a make-or-break moment, particularly as social distancing and isolation leave them feeling cooped up. ... Major stressors influence relationships in various ways. One study shows that life-threatening events such as hurricanes increase divorce rates — but also marriage and birth rates.
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The Fine Line Between Helpful and Harmful Authenticity
APS Member/Author: Adam Grant Waiting backstage for my name to be called, I started feeling the familiar flutter of butterflies. It caught me off guard, because I thought I’d conquered my public speaking nerves. In the span of a decade, I’d gone from shaking in front of a classroom to calmly delivering keynote speeches for audiences of 20,000. It was supposed to be anxiety then, serenity now. But something was different today: I was addressing the TED staff at their annual retreat. It was a whole room full of people who judge the world’s most electrifying speakers for a living. I had a dilemma: Should I acknowledge my jitters out loud?
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When the Pandemic Leaves Us Alone, Anxious and Depressed
For nearly 30 years — most of my adult life — I have struggled with depression and anxiety. While I’ve never felt alone in such commonplace afflictions — the family secret everyone shares — I now find I have more fellow sufferers than I could have ever imagined. Within weeks, the familiar symptoms of mental illness have become universal reality. A new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found nearly half of respondents said their mental health was being harmed by the coronavirus pandemic. Nearly everyone I know has been thrust in varying degrees into grief, panic, hopelessness and paralyzing fear.
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On Educational Attainment, It’s Nature and Nurture, Study Suggests
The reason people achieve a certain level of education may depend partly on genetic influences mediated by the home environment.
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Why Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories Flourish. And Why It Matters.
The coronavirus has given rise to a flood of conspiracy theories, disinformation and propaganda, eroding public trust and undermining health officials in ways that could elongate and even outlast the pandemic. Claims that the virus is a foreign bioweapon, a partisan invention or part of a plot to re-engineer the population have replaced a mindless virus with more familiar, comprehensible villains. Each claim seems to give a senseless tragedy some degree of meaning, however dark. ... “It has all the ingredients for leading people to conspiracy theories,” said Karen M. Douglas, a social psychologist who studies belief in conspiracies at the University of Kent in Britain. ...
