I feel your pain. These words are famously associated with Bill Clinton, who as a politician seemed to ooze empathy. A skeptic might wonder, though, whether he truly was personally distressed by the suffering of average Americans. Can people in high positions of power — presidents, bosses, celebrities, even dominant […] Read more »
How Much Do Our Genes Influence Our Political Beliefs?
It’s been a key question of American politics since at least 1968: Why do so many poor, working-class and lower-middle-class whites — many of them dependent for survival on government programs — vote for Republicans? The debate over the motives of conservative low-income white voters remains unresolved, but two recent […] Read more »
The Biology of Risk
… Risk is more than an intellectual puzzle — it is a profoundly physical experience, and it involves your body. Risk by its very nature threatens to hurt you, so when confronted by it your body and brain, under the influence of the stress response, unite as a single functioning […] Read more »
I don’t want to be right
… Not all false information goes on to become a false belief—that is, a more lasting state of incorrect knowledge—and not all false beliefs are difficult to correct. … When there’s no immediate threat to our understanding of the world, we change our beliefs. It’s when that change contradicts something […] Read more »
The intimacy of crowds
… In recent years, social psychologists have found that, rather than surrendering rationality and self-awareness, people in crowds define themselves according to who they are with at the time; their social identity determines how they behave. Stephen Reicher, a social psychologist at the University of St Andrews, says this model […] Read more »
Americans believe two things about Obamacare enrollment that can’t both be true
The most recent Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll had some good news and some bad news for Obamacare. The good news was that a plurality of Americans know the law signed up 8 million people. The bad news is that a majority of Americans nevertheless think the law fell way […] Read more »