What does a good life look like to you? “For some, the phrase may conjure up images of a close-knit family, a steady job, and a Victorian house at the end of a street arched with oak trees. Others may focus on the goal of making a difference in the wo…
Readers reply: why do humans cry when they are sad?
The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsI understand that tears flush away foreign objects from the eye. But what advant…
A friend leans in for a hug. Do I dive for cover, muttering ‘Covid’, or hug back? | Hephzibah Anderson
As we engage again in social situations, the new etiquette rules are bewilderingThe other day, flogging tickets to the school summer fair – now the autumn fair due to last term’s endless self-isolation – another parent leaned across the trestle table a…
Seven simple steps to sounder sleep
How I overcome my chronic insomnia with scienceEverything about our day impacts our sleep. How many minutes we spend outside, what and when we eat, what’s happening with our hormones, our habits, emotions, stress and thoughts – all this feeds into the …
集団の一部として思考するときに人間はいかに思考するのか？ 3つの基本メカニズム
テクノロジーの発達やパンデミックの影響もあって、個人用にカスタマイズされたオンラインプログラムなど、非同期で個別化された体験が多くなっている。だが一方で、行き過ぎた「認知的個人主義」の限界もある。情報が氾濫し、専門性が高まり、問題が非常に複雑化した世界においては、集団的知性の重要性が高まっているのだ。人が他者との相互作用のなかで考える「社会的分散認知」の可能性とそのメカニズムに迫る。
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How 13 Reasons Why sparked years of suicide-contagion research
A Netflix series fueled heated debates about the risk of copycat suicides in fiction.
A decade after she died, I can finally grieve the Amy Winehouse I knew and loved
Coming to terms with the loss of my friend Amy Winehouse, amid the media frenzy that surrounded her death, has taken me 10 yearsGod knows what I must have looked like: a bedraggled 25-year-old dressed as a psychedelic game hunter with glitter smeared a…
ヴィデオ会議で映る自分の見た目が気になる「Zoom異形症」が増加している
コロナ禍における在宅勤務の浸透でヴィデオ会議が増えるなか、画面に映る自分の外見を気にして皮膚科や美容外科を訪れる人が急増している。「Zoom異形症」とも呼ばれるこうした症状に、わたしたちはどう対処すればいいのか。
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Study links too much free time to lower sense of wellbeing
Research shows there is a ‘sweet spot’ and subjective wellbeing drops off after about five hoursThe lesson of Goldilocks, that one can have too much of a good thing, even when it comes to the size of a chair, has applied in fields from astrobiology to …
Life being put on hold was just the spur this writer needed to fulfil her youthful ambition
Charlotte Northedge wrote a new novel in lockdown. She considers others who have realised the dreams of their youthI wrote a novel in the last lockdown. To be clear, it wasn’t one of those creative outpourings some people had in between yoga with Adrie…