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I Need to Hold Your Hand: The Social Regulation of Emotion
Have you ever wondered why people surrounded by friends or family appear happier and healthier? Or why a mother’s hand so quickly soothes a scared child? University of Virginia researcher James Coan addressed these and
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They All Look the Same: Why we are Unable to Distinguish Faces of Other Races (and Sometimes Our Own)
There’s a troubling psychological phenomenon that just about everyone has experienced but few will admit to; having difficulty distinguishing between people of different racial groups. This isn’t merely a nod to the denigrating expression “they
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Not So Situational
To the editor: We are concerned by the message that has been conveyed to the general public regarding the power of the situation to “trump individual dispositions” (“The Banality of Evil,” Observer, April 2007). In
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Bad Apples and Bad Barrels: Bad Metaphors and Blind Spots Regarding Evil?
To the editor: The subtitle of Philip Zimbardo’s (2007) book, The Lucifer Effect, (reviewed by Wray Herbert, Observer, April 2007) is Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. The book follows Zimbardo’s talk of the same
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Energy Use Study Demonstrates Power of Social Norms
Most people want to be normal. So, when we are given information that underscores our deviancy, the natural impulse is to get ourselves as quickly as we can back toward the center. Marketers know about
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The Banality of Evil
APS Fellow and Charter Member Philip Zimbardo calls it his own “evil of inaction,” and he has been making amends for it for more than three decades. The Stanford University psychologist is referring to his