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The Science Of Scary: Why It’s So Fun To Be Freaked Out
Haunted houses. Skydiving. Scary movies. Why do these horrifying things make some people delighted, and others, well, horrified? For answers, NPR's Maddie Sofia, host of the daily science podcast Short Wave, spoke with the guy who wrote the book on what makes those folks tick. Ken Carter teaches psychology at Oxford College of Emory University and is the author of Buzz! Inside the Minds of Thrill-Seekers, Daredevils and Adrenaline Junkies. In the book, Carter — a self-proclaimed lover of calm — gets into the minds of a "subset of people who crave stimulation and thrive in environments that would seem overstimulating, even chaotic, to the rest of us."
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What Your Facebook Posts Say About Your Mental Health
Over time, all these Facebook posts, Instagram captions, and tweets have become a treasure trove of human thought and feeling. People might rarely look back on their dashed-off online thoughts, but if their posts are publicly accessible, they’re ripe for analysis. And some psychologists are using algorithms to figure out what exactly it is we mean by these supposedly off-the-cuff pronouncements. This might seem like a minor distinction, but according to Lyle Ungar, one of the study’s authors, finding the difference between the two can help people in jobs that involve caring for others, such as doctors, understand when their empathy might be counter-productive.
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We need a major redesign of life
It’s time to get serious about a major redesign of life. Thirty years were added to average life expectancy in the 20th century, and rather than imagine the scores of ways we could use these years to improve quality of life, we tacked them all on at the end. Only old age got longer. As a result, most people are anxious about the prospect of living for a century. Asked about aspirations for living to 100, typical responses are “I hope I don’t outlive my money” or “I hope I don’t get dementia.” If we do not begin to envision what satisfying, engaged and meaningful century-long lives can look like, we will certainly fail to build worlds that can take us there.
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Robert Plomin Receives Grawemeyer Award for Behavioral Genetics Research
Robert Plomin APS Past Board Member and William James Fellow Robert Plomin of King’s College London has received the 2020 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Psychology for his research on how DNA shapes personality. Plomin’s theory on the “nature of nurture” brings together genetic and environmental perspectives on the psychological science of individual behavioral differences, even between siblings raised in the same household. “Genes make us who we are by influencing how we interact with the world around us, driving the way we select, modify, and even create our environment,” Plomin said in a statement for the award announcement.
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Fake News Feels Less Immoral to Share When We've Seen It Before
People who repeatedly encounter a fake news item may feel less and less unethical about sharing it on social media, even when they don’t believe the information, research indicates.
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Caring for Loved Ones the Top Priority for People Worldwide
Evolutionary psychologists have focused much their research on the human pursuit of love and sex, but a global study shows that people’s strongest motivations lie elsewhere.
