Melinda mays

After a year of lockdown, social distancing, and the constant drumbeat of bad news about COVID-19 , it’s quite likely that you have developed a certain amount of fear about ever leaving your home. There is, of course, value in protecting yourself and the people you care about by following public health advice. You may attribute the fact that you’re still around to having adhered strictly to these measures. However, with the vaccine now available, government officials are beginning to ease those restrictions. Mask mandates are going away in several states in the U.S. You may not agree with these decisions, but they do signal (one might hope) that normal life is getting closer and closer to becoming a reality. Now imagine, when it is truly safe, that you have the ability to get out of the house and go shopping, eat at restaurants, and perhaps even travel to a vacation destination. However, before you feel ready to take the plunge, perhaps your employer decides it’s time for … [Read more...] about 3 Ways to Calm Anxiety When You’re Afraid to Leave Home

One of the most striking findings in the Women at Work report, published on International Women's Day by the educational charity The Female Lead, is around something we called the unentitled mindset. [1] The term “entitled” has pejorative assumptions about believing other people owe you something, without reflecting on whether you have earned it. But feeling “unentitled” suggests that you don’t demand, ask, or even accept benefits that you actually earned. Among the women participating in our research, this mindset was most likely to take hold during salary negotiations. Instead of putting their case forward, they were beset by questions, such as, “Is now the right time?” and, “Is my case watertight?” A fog seemed to descend on normally decisive and confident women. However strong they knew their case to be, they felt unsure. In other words, in a classic example of internalized bias , they saw themselves through the eyes of someone who demands derisively, “Who do you think you … [Read more...] about Why Do Women Struggle to Ask for Better Pay?

While some people are happy being single, others are anxious about their status and how they come across to other people. Research suggests that people do not perceive those who fear being single as any less attractive than they are. People who fear being single, however, may view themselves as less attractive than they really are. Source: Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay Many people are perfectly happy enjoying life as a single person. Comfortable flying solo, they are not looking for a partner, and accordingly, are often perceived as both content and comfortable. Their confidence is attractive, and accordingly, so are they. Examining the science of seduction, there is nothing quite like the allure of the unattainable, which is what many happily single people appear to be. In addition, we are drawn to others who are positive. We enjoy the company of single people who are relaxed and in a good mood, and we can all relate to the attraction of … [Read more...] about Why Single People Are Attractive

During the past few days, I've received a number of emails about an essay by Live Science writer Yasemin Saplakoglu called " Cats are too socially inept to be loyal ." For headline readers who don't go on to read much more—and sadly there are far too many for whatever reasons—one could easily draw the conclusion that cats are socially inept and disloyal and that research has actually shown this to be true. This would be a huge mistake and here's why, as Ms. Saplakoglu notes in her piece about a research paper published in Animal Behavior and Cognition titled " Cats ( Felis catus ) Show no Avoidance of People who Behave Negatively to their Owner ." In this study, 36 domestic cats (18 females and 18 males, 13 of whom were house cats and 23 who lived around five cat cafés) and their humans were studied. The clever experimental setup (Figure 1) involved creating a situation in which the cats watched their human try to open a container and remove an object. The humans … [Read more...] about Are Cats More Socially Inept Than Dogs?

Emotions are gifts from our ancestors and serve as "social glue" in different cultures. In The Emotional Lives of Animals and elsewhere, I've written about why different emotions have evolved (not if they have evolved) in many different nonhuman animals (animals). I suggested that among the reasons why emotions have evolved, one function is that they serve as "social glue." In an essay called " Animal Emotions and Beastly Passions: We're Not the Only Emotional Beings ," I wrote: "Emotions have evolved as adaptations in numerous species and they serve as a social glue to bond animals with one another. Emotions also catalyze and regulate a wide variety of social encounters among friends and competitors and permit animals to protect themselves adaptively and flexibly using various behavior patterns in a wide variety of venues." One function of glue is to cause items to bond, and there is no reason why shared emotions can't also cause living beings to bond. This is why a … [Read more...] about Dogs, Cats, and Humans: Shared Emotions Act As “Social Glue”