NewsTrust - Psychology - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

Andy Carvin on Twitter as a newsroom and being human

Sat, 26 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

GigaOM - By Mathew Ingram - May. 26 (Interview) - In a discussion about his use of Twitter as a reporting tool, NPR strategist Andy Carvin made some interesting points about the value of crowdsourced journalism -- including the importance of being transparent about the process, and the virtues of being human.

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After Facebook fails

Thu, 24 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Harvard Blogs - By Doc Searls - May. 24 (Opinion) - At the heart of the Internet business is one of the great business fallacies of our time: that the Web, with all its targeting abilities, can be a more efficient, and hence more profitable, advertising medium than traditional media. Facebook, with its 90

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How Crazy Is Wall Street, New York Times?

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Edward Jay Epstein - May. 20 (Opinion) - The New York Times published an opinion piece on May 12, 2012, concerning the question of whether the rich, from a moral standpoint, are good or bad. The story reported, “A recent study found that 10 percent of people who work on Wall Street are ‘clinical psychopaths’ and that they exhibit an ‘unparalleled capacity for lying, fabrication, and manipulation.’ ” The vivid term “clinical psychopath” brings to mind the berserk buzz-saw-wielding investment banker played by Christian Bale in the film American Psycho. Since some 3.9 million people work in the financial-services industry, a clinically diagnosed horde of lunatics numbering almost 400,000 people would certainly be a matter of public concern, though it might only confirm some journalists’ view of American capitalism.

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Mitt Romney, the Unlikable Presidential Candidate

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Michael Tomasky - May. 13 (Opinion) - It’s been a long time since the country elected a man as personally unappealing as Mitt Romney. Will Americans overlook their deeply held conviction that he’s a jerk? Very few votes are going to be cast on the basis of what Mitt Romney did or didn’t do to John Lauber in 1965. So that, per se, isn’t Romney’s problem. But this is: The story lands as another brick on pile of evidence amassing that he’s just a disagreeable human being. A few days ago I wrote about Barack Obama’s biggest problem, which is that despite all the many areas in which Americans rate him higher than Romney, the one on which they give Romney the edge happens to be pretty important: handling the economy. Now we get to Romney’s biggest problem. The likability factor. He ain’t got it. And he ain’t got much of a way to get it.

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"Mind Zone": New Film Tracks Therapists Guiding Soldiers Through Traumas of Afghan War

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Juan Gonzalez - Mar. 16 (Review) - Haaken’s forthcoming documentary, "Mind Zone: Therapists Behind the Front Lines," shows the ethical dilemmas faced by therapists in Afghanistan who guide soldiers through the trauma of war. "The military has relied quite extensively on therapists to kind of help hold people together psychologically in war zones,"

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Psychology Books: 5 Ways to Spot The Psychopath In Your Life

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Daniel Lefferts - Mar. 02 (Review) - One out of every 10 Wall Street employees is a clinical psychopath, the CFA Institute (an investment and financial analysis organization) reports in the latest issue of CFA Magazine. That makes psychopathy 10 times more prevalent among New York’s financial elite than among us plebeians, for which the accepted statistic is a more palatable one in 100. Psychopaths “generally lack empathy and interest in what other people feel or think,” according to the study. “At the same time, they display an abundance of charm, charisma, intelligence, credentials, an unparalleled capacity for…manipulation, and a drive for thrill seeking.”

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Jon Stewart Rips GOP's Obama Fear-Mongering

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Jon Stewart - Feb. 23 (Comedy News) - "It appears Barack Obama has failed to keep many of the campaign promises that his opponents made for him," Stewart joked. While the four remaining GOP presidential candidates debated once again in Arizona Wednesday night, Jon Stewart took a look at how

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"MyFacts"

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Doonesbury - By Gary Trudeau - Feb. 12 (Cartoon) - This week, the Doonesbury comic strip takes on "MyFacts", a fictional online service that packages "faux facts" to support anyone's ideology, from creationism to 9/11 conspiracy theories.

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Fact-checking in the Echo Chamber Nation

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

PolitiFact - By Bill Adair - Dec. 23 (Opinion) - At a Republican campaign rally a few years ago, I asked one of the attendees how he got his news. "I listen to Rush and read NewsMax," he said. "And to make sure I'm getting a balanced view, I watch Fox." My liberal friends get their information from distinctly different sources — Huffington Post, Daily Kos and Rachel Maddow. To make sure they get a balanced view, they click Facebook links — from their liberal friends. This is life in our echo chamber nation. We protect ourselves from opinions we don't like and seek reinforcement from like-minded allies. The paradox ...

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How to stop the political insanity

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - Oct. 07 (Opinion) -

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Why Do They Do It?

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson - Sep. 16 (Opinion) - Why do politicians persist in peddling exaggerations, twisted facts and outright falsehoods? Here's a theory from a veteran political reporter. Jon Keller of WBZ in Boston offered up his explanation in his "Keller @ Large" commentary for Sept. 15. It was prompted by our coverage of the recent Republican presidential candidates' debate and our criticism of President Obama's jobs speech. We were flattered by the nice mention, of course. But what really caught our attention was Keller's conclusion: Jon Keller, Sept. 15: The president and all his allies and enemies have one thing in common — they frequently cite and repeat falsehoods that reflect, at best, sloppiness and carelessness, and, at worst, outright dishonesty. Why do they think they can get away with this reprehensible behavior? Because we do it all the time ourselves. We repeat gossip and rumor, forward garbage e-mails, and convince ourselves that falsehoods which fit our world view are actually the truth. So I’m wondering – why would we expect the people who represent us to not reflect us in this way as well? We see evidence of that every day at FactCheck.org. Readers forward to us an endless stream of chain emails they have received containing false claims. The emails come from family, friends or acquaintances who either don't know that they are repeating falsehoods, or don't care. Some of these messages have been circulating for years, despite being debunked by us and often by other myth-busting sites as well. So do we, the public, get the politicians we deserve? That's a question worth pondering before sending on that viral email that so perfectly confirms your opinions, but which you haven't really checked out for factual accuracy.

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8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Bruce E. Levine - Aug. 01 (Opinion) - The ruling elite has created social institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance.

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I Counseled All My Clients To Plead Insanity

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Common Dreams - By Christopher Cooper - Jul. 29 (Opinion) - if Breivik is crazy, a great many Americans and most of the big boys in D.C. Are crazy. But if the Norwegian shooter-bomber is sane, and culpable and should be tried and sentenced (and most would suggest executed, I imagine), then we had better get started drafting juries and hiring judges because our list of mass-murderers is a long and bipartisan one.

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The Power Of Pull

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Alex Rampell - Jul. 03 (Opinion) - What makes email, Facebook, and Google so valuable? Answer: Visiting them is largely unprompted, notwithstanding the synapses that fire in your brain that make you check your email, your Facebook feed, or decide to research something on Google. In other words, people pull content themselves, rather than having that content be pushed — or foisted — upon them. The best way of looking at consumer web applications is as a complex stack of “pulls” and “pushes.” Lest these terms be confused with an earlier generation of push: a “pull” is an unsolicited action by a consumer, whereas a “push” is a solicitation by a seller/producer. The consumer ultimately “pulls” from a mobile phone or computer. Everything else is “pushed” to the consumer, through ads, e-mails or other marketing efforts from companies eager to get business and traffic.

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Don't Look on the Bright Side: Pessimism, Not Magical Thinking, Is What Will Save Us

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Marty Kaplan - Jun. 29 (Opinion) - Whatever global threats scare you -- climate change, the Middle East, loose nukes, pandemics -- and whatever domestic issues haunt you -- failing schools, crumbling infrastructure, rising poverty, obesity -- the odds are that the honesty, discipline, resources and burden-sharing required for a happy ending will not, like Elijah, show up at our door.

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Are We Ruled by Second-String Psychopaths?

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By David Schwartz - Jun. 08 (Opinion) - How had our country disappeared? Vonnegut proposed that among the contributing factors was that it had been invaded – as if by the Martians – by people with a particularly frightening mental illness. People with this illness were termed psychopaths. (The term nowadays is anti-social personality disorder.) These are terms for people who are smart, personable, and engaging, but who have no consciences. They are not guided by a sense of right or wrong. They seem to be unaffected by the feelings of others, including feelings of distress caused by their actions. Straying from a decent way of treating people, or violating ethical codes causes no anxiety, the anxiety which is what causes the rest of us to moderate our more greedy impulses.

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Beware online "filter bubbles"

Tue, 31 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TED - By Eli Pariser - May. 31 (Opinion) - As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy.

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Rankism

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TED - By Robert Fuller - Apr. 29 (Speech) - The dignity movement is against humiliation, it is against talking down to people, it is against games of one-upmanship. It is against what I call rankism. Rankism is what somebodies feel they can get away with and do to nobodies. Robert Fuller, former president of Oberlin College and author of Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank, coined the term "rankism" and is a leader in the worldwide quest for human dignity.

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The Non-Science That Explains What’s Wrong with Science Explaining Non-Belief in Science

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Easily Distracted - By Easily Distracted - Apr. 26 (Opinion) - It is not irrational or unreasonable to regard scientific claims which recommend or insist upon particular public policy initiatives with sharply pronounced skepticism across the board. Not because science itself requires a particular form of skepticism (though it does) but because such skepticism is evidence-based, derived from the history of the relationship between policy, the modern state, and science, a history which even non-experts have often viscerally experienced or witnessed.

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Overcoming political polarization… but not through facts

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

my heart's in accra - By Ethan Zuckerman - Apr. 25 (Opinion) - A recent New York Times poll suggests that Americans are in a dark mood. 70% of people think the country is moving in the wrong direction, a number not seen since the peak of the Great Recession two years ago. Their frustration may stem from higher gas p

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Teddy Bears Soften Pain of Social Exclusion | Miller-McCune

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 12:33:29 -0700

Miller-McCune - By Tom Jacobs - Apr. 14 - New research from Singapore suggests touching a stuffed animal can counteract the tendency of ostracized people to engage in antisocial behavior.Teddy Bears Soften Pain of Social Exclusion On Smart Journalism. Real Solutions. Miller-McCune. - Miller-McCune

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What's Inside Glenn Beck's Brain?

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - Apr. 06 (Cartoon) - A map of all the obsessions and conspiracies that fueled his soon-to-be-gone Fox News show.

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When Facts Are Not Enough: Treating Mass Psychosis « SpeakEasy

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Ian I. Mitroff - Mar. 31 (Opinion) - One of the biggest, long-lasting delusions of progressives is that people are moved mainly by rational arguments. Consequently, to get people to accept a particular policy such as universal health care, all one needs to do is to present strong and persuasive arguments in favor of it. Nothing could be further from the truth.

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Obama: Dems are in trouble because Americans aren't thinking clearly

Sun, 17 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Examiner - By Byron York - Oct. 17 (Opinion) - At a Saturday-evening fundraiser held in the home of a wealthy Massachusetts hospital executive, President Obama suggested Democrats are having difficulties in midterm campaigning because Americans simply aren't thinking clearly.

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What Do Marijuana and Catnip Have in Common?

Sat, 16 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Michael Pollan - Oct. 16 (Opinion) - So THC could potentially protect the plant from pests by discombobulating them so they forget where they found it?

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