“… Dishonesty in politics is a long-standing tradition. Many politicians have clearly benefitted from telling voters what they want to hear or what they want to believe, and history is filled with examples of politicians lying to cover up crime and corruption.” “Dishonesty in politics is important because it poses a threat to electoral accountability. Citizens who can detect political lies are more safeguarded against…
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Frank J. Infurna, Arizona State University from The Conversation. Middle-aged Americans are lonelier than their European counterparts. That’s the key finding of my team’s recent study, published in American Psychologist. Our study identified a trend that has been evolving for multiple generations, and affects both baby boomers and Gen Xers. Middle-aged adults in England and Mediterranean Europe are not that far behind the U.S. In…
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“Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental disorder in which people have unwanted and repeated thoughts, feelings, ideas, sensations (obsessions), and behaviors that drive them to do something over and over (compulsions). Often the person carries out the behaviors to get rid of the obsessive thoughts. But this only provides short-term relief. Not doing the obsessive rituals can cause great anxiety and distress. Health care providers…
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Jen Cole Wright, College of Charleston (from The Conversation) The default psychological setting for human beings is an unavoidable self-centeredness. We each stand at the center of our own thoughts, feelings and needs, and thus experience them in a way that we cannot experience the thoughts, feelings and needs of others. As writer David Foster Wallace put it in a 2005 commencement address: “ ……
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Should information be shared freely? That is, should content (text, images, videos, etc.) be shared without external control? Shared at no additional cost? Or, should information be controlled, manipulated, and limited–in the name of profit and/or ideology? There is no purity in this debate. All information has a cost, and often it is quite expensive. Producers of information may choose to give it away, others…
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Jeremy P. Shapiro, Case Western Reserve University (The Conversation). Cold spells often bring climate change deniers out in force on social media, with hashtags like #ClimateHoax and #ClimateScam. Former President Donald Trump often chimes in, repeatedly claiming that each cold snap disproves the existence of global warming. From a scientific standpoint, these claims of disproof are absurd. Fluctuations in the weather don’t refute clear long-term…
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