Are narcissists born or made? Colloquially, narcissism often refers to the pursuit of personal gratification through the admiration of others, often for pretty superficial or vain reasons. Narcissism becomes a pathology when it disrupts relationships, work, financial affairs, or other parts of your life. Narcissistic Personality Disorder, then, is defined as “mental condition in whichContinue reading “How Does Someone Become a Narcissist?”
Category Archives: Social Science
Will Trump’s COVID Diagnosis Change the Outcome of the Election?
In case you somehow haven’t heard, on Friday morning, President Trump tweeted that he and First Lady Melania Trump had tested positive for COVID. Like everything else at this point, Trump’s COVID diagnosis has been politicized, leaving one big question on everyone’s mind: how might this impact the election? Here are all the angles: Campaigning and Fundraising:Continue reading “Will Trump’s COVID Diagnosis Change the Outcome of the Election?”
What Happens if a Presidential Nominee Drops Out? No One Knows!
So who thought it was a good idea to have the two oldest nominees running for President while a super infectious virus that disproportionately incapacitates and kills older people rips through society? I think we tend to use the word “unprecendented” too often, and often when it’s unwarranted or hyperbolic, but this is truly unprecedented.Continue reading “What Happens if a Presidential Nominee Drops Out? No One Knows!”
Why Do Humans Experience Time Elastically?
Why does time fly when we’re having fun? Our sense of time may be the most basic foundation for all of our experience, but it’s an unsteady and subjective one, expanding and contracting, speeding up and slowing down. Emotions, music, everything in our surroundings, and shifts in our attention, all have the power to changeContinue reading “Why Do Humans Experience Time Elastically?”
Size Does Matter: The Case for American Population Explosion
In his new book One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger, Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias identifies one of the few areas left where there is broad bipartisan agreement: China is challenging the U.S.’s place in the world and “America should aspire to be the greatest nation on Earth.” His solution, however, is not soContinue reading “Size Does Matter: The Case for American Population Explosion”
Is Being Bored Making Us More Violent?
It will be a long time before we understand what exactly the pandemic lock down has changed us. Will we be more socially awkward? Will we start to store some canned food and toilet paper in case of emergency? Will it always feel super weird from now on to get on an airplane? In theContinue reading “Is Being Bored Making Us More Violent?”
COVID “Super-Spreader” Events are Ridiculously Expensive
How the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally generated over $12 billion in public health costs: “There are some really good estimates out there that suggest that between 10% and 20% of cases are responsible for about 80% of transmission events,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead for the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Program, at a press conference.Continue reading “COVID “Super-Spreader” Events are Ridiculously Expensive”
The Brain’s On and Off Switch for Good Parenting
From an evolutionary perspective, the goal of any organism is to pass genetic material into future generations. We’re “wired” for procreation, but until now, what that exactly that wiring looks like has been opaque. Last week, Harvard biologist Catherine Dulac won the Breakthrough Prize for discovering the neural circuits that drive parenting behavior. For theContinue reading “The Brain’s On and Off Switch for Good Parenting”
Major life decision ahead? Flipping a coin might help. Literally.
Staring down a major life decision, the uncertainty can be paralyzing. There’s a lot of advice out there about how to go about the decision-making. You can make a pros and cons list, consult friends and spiritual advisors, make insanely complex predictive models, or you could flip a coin. Social psychologists and economists will tellContinue reading “Major life decision ahead? Flipping a coin might help. Literally.”
Race and voting polarization
Earlier this week, Pew Research Center published a report examining the following question: How have Americans’ perceptions of how hard it is to be a black person in this country changed depending on voting choice? After this summer of protests, widely shared imagery of police violence against black Americans, and exhausting debates about the merit’sContinue reading “Race and voting polarization”
MilleniAlmanac 