den lille
havfrue
against civility, or why habermas recommends a wild public sphere
steven klein 2018
aeon.co/ideas/against-civility-or-why-habermas-recommends-a-wild-public-sphere
“democracy, according to habermas, requires a vibrant political sphere and political institutions that are able to respond to and incorporate the energy that arises from debate, protest, confrontation and politics. perhaps it’s not citizens who have become unreasonable. rather, their leaders have too long refused to listen, instead treating the public as nothing more than a periodic reservoir of votes, an obstacle to be managed on the path to smooth, technocratic governance.”
’it’s so cute i could crush it!’: understanding neural mechanisms of cute aggression
katherine k. m. stavropoulos, laura a. alba 2018
doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00300
Stavropoulos said she first heard the term "cute aggression" after a team of Yale University psychologists released research related to the phenomenon in 2015.
"The Yale researchers initially found that people reported feeling cute aggression more in response to baby animals versus adult animals," Stavropoulos said. "But even beyond that, people reported feeling cute aggression more in response to picture of human babies that had been digitally enhanced to appear more infantile, and therefore 'more cute,' by enlarging features like their eyes, cheeks, and foreheads."
After poring over the Yale research, Stavropoulos wondered whether there was a neural component to cute aggression. If people reported experiencing urges to squeeze, crush, or even bite creatures they found cute, would their brains also reflect patterns of activity that could be tied to those urges?
Stavropoulos hypothesized that the brains of people who reported experiencing cute aggression would, in fact, provide evidence of detectable activity. She suggested the activity might be related to the brain's reward system, which deals with motivation, feelings of "wanting," and pleasure, or to its emotion system, which handles emotional processing -- or, more likely, to both.
Stavropoulos and UCR doctoral student Laura Alba recruited 54 study participants between the ages of 18 and 40, all of whom agreed to wear caps outfitted with electrodes. While wearing the caps, participants looked at four blocks of 32 photographs divided into categories:
Cute (enhanced) babies
Less cute (non-enhanced) babies
Cute (baby) animals
Less cute (adult) animals
After viewing each block on a computer screen, participants were then shown a set of statements and asked to rate how much they agreed with them on a scale of 1 to 10.
The survey was designed to assess how cute participants found each block of photographs -- known as "appraisal" -- and how much cute aggression they were experiencing in response. Participants also rated how overwhelmed they felt after viewing the photos ("I can't handle it!" and "I can't stand it!") and whether they felt compelled to take care of what they had just viewed ("I want to hold it!" and "I want to protect it!").
Stavropoulos said the statements were the same ones used in Yale researcher Oriana Aragón's groundbreaking 2015 study of cute aggression.
Overall, participants self-reported more significant feelings of cute aggression, being overwhelmed, appraisal, and caretaking toward cute (baby) animals than toward less cute (adult) animals. Among the two categories of babies -- cute (enhanced) and less cute (non-enhanced) -- the researchers did not observe the same pattern.
Using electrophysiology, Stavropoulos also measured study participants' brain activity before, during, and after viewing the sets of images. To her knowledge, the study's results, published this week in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, are the first to confirm a neural basis for cute aggression.
Based on the neural activity she observed in participants who experienced cute aggression, Stavropoulos's findings offer direct evidence of both the brain's reward system and emotion system being involved in the phenomenon.
"There was an especially strong correlation between ratings of cute aggression experienced toward cute animals and the reward response in the brain toward cute animals," Stavropoulos said. "This is an exciting finding, as it confirms our original hypothesis that the reward system is involved in people's experiences of cute aggression."
Another result that Stavropoulos said lends weight to prior theories: The relationship between how cute something is and how much cute aggression someone experiences toward it appears to be tied to how overwhelmed that person is feeling.
"Essentially, for people who tend to experience the feeling of 'not being able to take how cute something is,' cute aggression happens," Stavropoulos said. "Our study seems to underscore the idea that cute aggression is the brain's way of 'bringing us back down' by mediating our feelings of being overwhelmed."
Stavropoulos likened this process of mediation to an evolutionary adaptation. Such an adaptation may have developed as a means of ensuring people are able to continue taking care of creatures they consider particularly cute.
"For example, if you find yourself incapacitated by how cute a baby is -- so much so that you simply can't take care of it -- that baby is going to starve," Stavropoulos said. "Cute aggression may serve as a tempering mechanism that allows us to function and actually take care of something we might first perceive as overwhelmingly cute."
In the future, Stavropoulos hopes to use electrophysiology to study the neural bases of cute aggression in a variety of populations and groups, such as mothers with postpartum depression, people with autism spectrum disorder, and participants with and without babies or pets.
"I think if you have a child and you're looking at pictures of cute babies, you might exhibit more cute aggression and stronger neural reactions," she said. "The same could be true for people who have pets and are looking pictures of cute puppies or other small animals."
abstract The urge people get to squeeze or bite cute things, albeit without desire to cause harm, is known as “cute aggression.” Using electrophysiology (ERP), we measured components related to emotional salience and reward processing. Participants aged 18–40 years (n = 54) saw four sets of images: cute babies, less cute babies, cute (baby) animals, and less cute (adult) animals. On measures of cute aggression, feeling overwhelmed by positive emotions, approachability, appraisal of cuteness, and feelings of caretaking, participants rated more cute animals significantly higher than less cute animals. There were significant correlations between participants’ self-report of behaviors related to cute aggression and ratings of cute aggression in the current study.
N200: A significant effect of “cuteness” was observed for animals such that a larger N200 was elicited after more versus less cute animals. A significant correlation between N200 amplitude and the tendency to express positive emotions in a dimorphous manner (e.g., crying when happy) was observed.
RewP: For animals and babies separately, we subtracted the less cute condition from the more cute condition. A significant correlation was observed between RewP amplitude to cute animals and ratings of cute aggression toward cute animals. RewP amplitude was used in mediation models.
Mediation Models: Using PROCESS (Hayes, 2018), mediation models were run. For both animals and babies, the relationship between appraisal and cute aggression was significantly mediated by feeling overwhelmed. For cute animals, the relationship between N200 amplitude and cute aggression was significantly mediated by feeling overwhelmed. For cute animals, there was significant serial mediation for RewP amplitude through caretaking, to feeling overwhelmed, to cute aggression, and RewP amplitude through appraisal, to feeling overwhelmed, to cute aggression. Our results indicate that feelings of cute aggression relate to feeling overwhelmed and feelings of caretaking. In terms of neural mechanisms, cute aggression is related to both reward processing and emotional salience.
the social advantage of miscalibrated individuals: the relationship between social class and overconfidence and its implications for class-based inequality
peter belmi et al. 2019
doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000187
"Advantages beget advantages. Those who are born in upper-class echelons are likely to remain in the upper class, and high-earning entrepreneurs disproportionately originate from highly educated, well-to-do families," said Peter Belmi, PhD, of the University of Virginia and lead author of the study. "Our research suggests that social class shapes the attitudes that people hold about their abilities and that, in turn, has important implications for how class hierarchies perpetuate from one generation to the next."
The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Belmi and his colleagues conducted a series of four investigations looking at the connection between social class and overconfidence and how that might affect others' perceptions of a person's competence. The largest involved more than 150,000 small business owners in Mexico who were applying for loans. To measure social class, the researchers obtained information about these applicants' income, education level and perceived standing in society as part of the application process.
Applicants were also required to complete a psychological assessment that would be used to assess their credit worthiness. Part of that included a flashcard game, a cognitive test where participants are shown an image that goes away after they press a key and is replaced by a second image. They then have to determine whether the second image matches the first. After completing 20 trials, applicants were asked to indicate how they performed in comparison with others on a scale of 1 to 100.
When the researchers compared the actual scores with applicants' predictions, they found that people with more education, more income and a higher perceived social class had an exaggerated belief that they would perform better than others, compared with their lower-class counterparts.
Another two investigations involving more than 1,400 online participants found a similar association between social class and overconfidence. In one, the researchers gave participants a trivia test. Those from a higher social class thought that they did better than others; however, when the researchers examined actual performance, it was not the case.
For the final investigation, the researchers recruited 236 undergraduate students, had each answer a 15-item trivia quiz and asked them to predict how they fared compared with others. They also asked them to rate their social class and for their families' income and their mothers' and fathers' education levels. A week later, the students were brought back to the lab for a videotaped mock hiring interview. More than 900 judges, recruited online, each watched one of the videos and rated their impression of the applicant's competence.
Once again, the researchers found students from a higher social class tended to be more overconfident, but they also discovered that this overconfidence was misinterpreted by the judges who watched their videos as greater competence.
"Individuals with relatively high social class were more overconfident, which in turn was associated with being perceived as more competent and ultimately more hirable, even though, on average, they were no better at the trivia test than their lower-class counterparts," said Belmi.
The overconfidence effect may be partially due to differences in values between the middle and working classes, according to Belmi.
"In the middle class, people are socialized to differentiate themselves from others, to express what they think and feel and to confidently express their ideas and opinions, even when they lack accurate knowledge. By contrast, working-class people are socialized to embrace the values of humility, authenticity and knowing your place in the hierarchy," he said. "These findings challenge the widely held belief that everybody thinks they are better than the average. Our results suggest that this type of thinking might be more prevalent among the middle and upper classes."
The findings join a growing body of research on why class-based hierarchies continue to persist generation after generation, according to Belmi.
"Our results suggest that finding solutions to mitigate class inequalities may require a focus on subtle and seemingly harmless human tendencies," he said. "Although people may be well meaning, these inequalities will continue to perpetuate if people do not correct for their natural human tendency to conflate impressions of confidence with evidence of ability."
abstract Understanding how socioeconomic inequalities perpetuate is a central concern among social and organizational psychologists. Drawing on a collection of findings suggesting that different social class contexts have powerful effects on people’s sense of self, we propose that social class shapes the beliefs that people hold about their abilities, and that this, in turn, has important implications for how status hierarchies perpetuate. We first hypothesize that compared with individuals with relatively low social class, individuals with relatively high social class are more overconfident. Then, drawing on research suggesting that overconfidence can confer social advantages, we further hypothesize that the overconfidence of higher class individuals can help perpetuate the existing class hierarchy: It can provide them a path to social advantage by making them appear more competent in the eyes of others. We test these ideas in four large studies with a combined sample of 152,661 individuals. Study 1, a large field study featuring small-business owners from Mexico, found evidence that individuals with relatively high social class are more overconfident compared with their lower-class counterparts. Study 2, a multiwave study in the United States, replicated this result and further shed light on the underlying mechanism: Individuals with relatively high (vs. low) social class tend to be more overconfident because they have a stronger desire to achieve high social rank. Study 3 replicated these findings in a high-powered, preregistered study and found that individuals with relatively high social class were more overconfident, even in a task in which they had no performance advantages. Study 4, a multiphase study that featured a mock job interview in the laboratory, found that compared with their lower-class counterparts, higher-class individuals were more overconfident; overconfidence, in turn, made them appear more competent and more likely to attain social rank.
somewhere out there
linda ronstadt
makiaea
somewhere out there
beneath the pale moonlight
someone’s thinking of me
and loving me tonight
somewhere out there
someone’s saying a prayer
that we’ll find one another
in that big somewhere out there
and even though i know how very far apart we are
it helps to think we might be wishing on the same bright star
and when the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullaby
it helps to think we’re sleeping underneath the same big sky
somewhere out there
if love can see us through
then we’ll be together
somewhere out there
out where dreams come true
radon Rn (radium)
den lille havfrue
(the little mermaid)
HF
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