Category Archives: Human Behavior

By Mark Leary, Ph.D., Duke University Not caring about what other people think is becoming more and more trendy, but there is nothing wrong with worrying about the impressions that we make in social interactions. (Image: Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock)

Everybody with an average level of mental health cares about what others think of them. Recently, it is becoming a trend to live without caring about ones social image and trying to impress other people. But why do we care so much about other peoples opinions, in the first place?

Most people keep an eye on the impressions that they make on other people as they try to present themselves as they are. Knowing that other people perceive one in undesired ways usually triggers efforts to make the perception right. Sometimes, they control the impressions and try to behave in a way that leads to their desired impression in a given situation.

Today, most people try not to care about these impressions and what people perceive. However, it is not possible or necessary to do that.

Learn more about where do peoples personalities come from?

Despite recent trends and how superficial or inauthentic it is to care about other peoples opinions, trying to maintain a positive social image is a natural, normal, and adaptive human motive. Humans need to be accepted in their society to survive.

Some people claim not to care what other people think, but the concern reflects in everyday life. People are happy when they are perceived as competent, moral, and desirable unless they have psychological problems. Sociopaths, for example, are relatively unconcerned with what other people think of them. What would happen if nobody cared?

If suddenly everyone stopped caring about what others think, the world would face some dramatic changes. The first thing would be that people stop grooming and staying clean because they no longer care about the image they would convey with these things.

Next, they would not be as nice and polite to others. Relationships with friends, romantic partners, and family members would all change. True, sometimes people worry too much about their image and even do things that they should not. Nevertheless, this does not mean it is by nature wrong to care about social image.

This is a transcript from the video series Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior. Watch it now, on The Great Courses Plus.

People interact with each others impressions. A persons behavior toward another person is shaped by what they perceive. An impression of being friendly, trustworthy, and interesting brings along different behaviors from being perceived as unfriendly, untrustworthy, and boring.

Thus, people try to convey impressions that they want, as most desirable outcomes in life depend on being perceived in particular ways. Starting a relationship, maintaining, and promoting it requires certain characteristics depending on the nature of the relationship. To be invited to social gatherings, to be chosen for teams and committees, to have much of a social life at all, people must be viewed in certain ways.

Even though impressions are the base of almost all relationships and social life, they do not form without an effort.

Learn more about why are so many people so stressed out?

Even when a goal has nothing to do with other people and their impressions, when people are not actively engaged in creating an image, the impressions can still matter. For example, when somebody is giving a lecture, their purpose is to convey some scientific messages that are delivered with or without good social impressions. However, people normally prefer to be viewed positively as a lecturer.

Over 50 years of research shows that people usually do not try to convey fake images. Normally, they try to select from all of the different true things that they could convey about themselves, those images that will make the impressions they want to make in a particular situation.

There is no room and no necessity to reveal everything about oneself in an interaction. Hence, people try to reveal those that make the desired impression in a situation. Exaggeration and self-presentational lies also occur from time to time, but not all the time.

It is neither negative nor inauthentic to worry about the impressions we make on other people unless it turns into an obsession that triggers numerous lies and exaggerations.

A persons social image is how they are perceived by others in a society. Normally, people try to build more acceptance for themselves by caring about what others think about them.

Some people care so much about their social image that they have constant anxiety, which is neither healthy nor logical. However, a certain level of caring about other peoples opinions is natural and necessary for achieving the desired social status.

Yes. It is common to lie for creating a better social image. It can range from the tiny, unimportant lies like Im fine, when that is not true, to big lies about skills, wealth, etc.

It is the social image that determines the level of acceptance in a society. If a person is viewed negatively and nobody accepts them as a member of the group, their chances of survival drop. Thus, people care about what others say or think about them.

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Social Image and Its Importance in Society - The Great Courses Daily News

Human Behavior

Social Anxiety: What Would People Think? – The Great Courses Daily News

November 6, 2020 medical

By Mark Leary, Ph.D., Duke University Social anxiety is good for people until it gets so severe that it leads them away from social situations and interactions. (Image: Motortion Films/Shutterstock)

Almost every normal person has experienced social anxiety on job interviews, on dates, when meeting new people, or when speaking in front of groups. It is a natural consequence of trying to make the right social impression and convey the right messages about oneself. Social interactions are built upon peoples impressions of each other, so everyone tries to create impressions that lead to the desired behavior from other people.

From a social psychological standpoint, keeping an eye on how one is perceived and evaluated by others can be very beneficial. A world with people who do not care about other peoples opinions is a world of unstable and destroyed relationships. However, like all other negative emotions, social anxiety can also turn into a problem.

Learn more about why do we have emotions?

When a person worries too much about the impressions they create, they might avoid social situations. People who are afraid of making bad impressions fall into a loop of social anxiety and bad impressions: they feel anxious that they might not leave a good impression, so they withdraw from interactions. Then, they fear that running away from interactions also leaves a negative impression, so their anxiety increases.

The anxiety can grow so big that people begin to commit harmful and dangerous actions to create the desired impression.

Some accidents that lead to serious injuries or even death are not preventable. Nevertheless, a large number of accidents and injuries are caused by peoples deliberate actions, sometimes in self-presentational attempts. For example, teenagers try to impress their group of friends by reckless driving, which is why there are thousands of car accidents involving a carload of teenagers every year. In a study on dangerous things that teenagers would do to impress their peers, 30% of the teenagers reported that they had driven recklessly in order to impress their friends.

There are numerous other cases where people hurt themselves or get themselves killed by risky or stupid things that they do to impress others. Examples include riding on the tops of cars, jumping from very high places into the water, and racing downhill in runaway shopping carts. It might not be a surprise that men engage in such actions more than women.

This is a transcript from the video series Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior. Watch it now, on The Great Courses Plus.

Studies show that men are more likely to engage in stupid actions with the aim of impressing others. This does not mean that men are more reckless or stupid by nature. It is a result of different image values among men: fearless, cool, or fun-loving is valued more among men than women.

Also, for evolution-based reasons, men may be biologically predisposed to take risks to obtain social attention and status. Males with higher social status have a higher chance of attracting a female and reproducing.

Learn more about how much do men and women really differ?

The harms do not stop at accidents. There are at least a million new cases of skin cancer in the United States each year, and a large proportion of those cases are people purposefully trying to get a tan. People get cancer over impressing others! Why has this increased recently? Because values have changed due to changes in society.

In the 1800s, the lower-class workers, such as farmers, worked outside and had a deep tan. Thus, pale skin was valued for white people, as it meant they were not laborers, but professionals. However, in the 1900s, the industrial revolution moved much of the working class inside into factories, so blue-collar workers had pale skin. On the other hand, upper-class people had time for vacations and getting a tan. Hence, today it makes a positive impression to be tanned.

Another example is being old. In a society where older people are not viewed or treated as well as younger adults, senior citizens try not to look old. They resist getting help from others and use anti-aging products. However, in a society where old people are taken care of and treated with more respect, nobody would resist help or dye their gray hair.

Social anxiety is a psychological factor that follows us through life and never disappears in a mentally-healthy person. However, high doses of it can cause serious problems or disorders and even lead to death.

The most common cause of social anxiety is to be highly motivated to make a desired impression but to be fairly certain that one will not be able to make it.

Yes, social anxiety is often useful because it alerts people to situations in which they need to pay special attention to how they are perceived by other people.

Yes. Social anxiety is a very common experience in the face of social situations, like job interviews or dates, meeting new people, or speaking in front of groups.

Not necessarily. Social anxiety helps people behave more attentively in situations that require more attention and are more important. A certain level of it is necessary for success, but higher levels affect life negatively.

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Social Anxiety: What Would People Think? - The Great Courses Daily News

Human Behavior

Birds Sang a New Song During the Pandemic – Eos

November 6, 2020 medical

Human behavior changed drastically with the COVID-19 pandemic. So too did animal behavior, researchers have now shown: Birds altered their songs as anthropogenic noise plummeted thanks to stay-at-home orders and elective quarantining. These findings highlight the malleability of behavioral traits and birds resilience to noise pollution, researchers have suggested.

The Golden Gate Bridge, built in 1937, is a major transportation artery in the San Francisco Bay Area: In recent decades, more than 100,000 vehicles have traversed its span each day. But in April of this year, during Californias COVID-19-induced shutdown, vehicle crossings fell to fewer than 35,000 per day, a level not seen since the 1950s. That pronounced decrease in traffic contributed to significantly lower noise levels in urban areas, Elizabeth P. Derryberry, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and her colleagues found.

By comparing sound recordings made in April and May 2020 with prepandemic data collected in 2015 and 2016, Derryberry and her collaborators found that background noise in urban San Francisco and Richmond decreased by roughly 7 decibels, or about 55%, during Californias shutdown. Intermittent noise, such as planes flying overhead and dogs barking, also decreased by about the same amount, the researchers showed.

Birds took advantage of that new soundscape, Derryberry and her colleagues demonstrated: Male white-crowned sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys) sang differentlyand more effectivelyduring the shutdown than they did prior to the pandemic.

The teams results were published in Science in September.

To begin with, the team found that the birds sang more softly. That makes sense, Derryberry and her collaborators proposed, because of the Lombard effect. This phenomenon, observed across species, refers to an animal making louder vocalizations in the presence of higher levels of noise.

Theyre not shouting anymore.Theyre not shouting anymore, said Derryberry.

But the researchers were surprised to discover that the sparrows were overcompensating: They were singing about 35% more softly, whereas the Lombard effect predicted a decrease of only about 3%. Theyre singing even more softly than we thought they would only due to the Lombard effect, said Derryberry.

The scientists also discovered that the birds sang at different frequencies. In prepandemic times, the lowest frequencies of the sparrows songs tended to be masked by traffic noise. But as that background noise faded in spring 2020, the birds adjusted their vocalizations, said Derryberry. As the traffic noise dropped out of those lower frequencies, they widened the bandwidth of their song.

That change boosted the males appeal to potential mates, the researchers proposed. Females are particularly interested in song that has a wide bandwidth, said Derryberry.

Below are two audio recordings, the first taken before the pandemic and the second, during the pandemic.

White-crowned sparrows were able to communicate over longer distances in 2020, Derryberry and her colleagues showed. Thats because the drop in background noise outpaced the drop in the birds volume. The sparrows roughly doubled the distance at which they could be heard by another bird, the researchers calculated.

That change, combined with the males more enticing songs, might have led to more mating, a hypothesis Derryberry and her collaborators plan to investigate next spring by doing more fieldwork. We can go in and see if theres a bumper crop of young birds, said Derryberry.

Itd be interesting to know if many species are as plastic as the white-crowned sparrow.Its remarkable that these birds changed their songs so quickly, said Sue Anne Zollinger, a behavioral physiologist at Manchester Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom not involved in the research. Itd be interesting to know if many species are as plastic as the white-crowned sparrow.

These nearly immediate changes are heartening because they underscore the birds resilience to noise pollution, said Derryberry. It takes a while to see the positive outcomes to things like recycling or reducing your emissions.

Katherine Kornei (@KatherineKornei), Science Writer

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Birds Sang a New Song During the Pandemic - Eos

Human Behavior

Self-Presentation at Different Ages: What Is the Price? – The Great Courses Daily News

November 6, 2020 medical

By Mark Leary, Ph.D., Duke University Self-presentation is not specific to an age or a situation, but its techniques and purposes differ according to environmental factors. (Image: wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock)

People care about what others think of them and are concerned about the social impressions that they make. It is normal and even necessary, as most interactions are founded upon impressions. However, some people create a big web of lies so as to create a particular impression on others. What may seem as perfectly fine may turn into a kind of disorder.

People who score high on Machiavellianism are those who mispresent themselves so often to get what they want. Machiavellianism is a personality characteristic where people would do whatever it takes to get other people to do what they want, even if it means being deceptive and dishonest, and presenting inaccurate images of oneself. The name is derived from the Italian political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli. In his book The Prince, he advised political rulers to do whatever it takes to control their people, even if it is deceitful and immoral in nature.

Psychologists designed a questionnaire that shows peoples scores on Machiavellianism. Those who score higher are very good at managing social impressions, even if it requires significant lies. Machiavellians do not necessarily present a positive false image. They present whatever image helps them get what they want in a situation and make people do what they want. Unfortunately, they are very persuasive.

Learn more about can subliminal messages affect behavior?

Normally, people try to create positive social impressions but not Machiavellians. For example, people sometimes play dumb when they think that appearing less knowledgeable or less competent is more beneficial. Studies show that despite common belief, men play dumb more than women do, especially in interactions with their bosses.

Teenagers might mess up household chores intentionally to make sure that the next time, their parents will not ask them to do the same thing. Some people tend to present themselves as intolerant, impatient, and hostile if that makes others do what they want. Many bosses try to use self-presentation techniques that create a critical and demanding image so that employees try their best to deliver tasks accurately.

One study showed that hospitalized mental patients showed significantly fewer symptoms of schizophrenia when it was beneficial to appear mentally healthy. On the other hand, when being seen as mentally ill had benefits, they appeared much more psychologically troubled.

This is a transcript from the video series Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior. Watch it now, on The Great Courses Plus.

A person might hide their stress and negative feelings in front of others. Many people do that. At the same time, the same people might not only express their stress but exaggerate it in a different situation. The decision of whether to exaggerate or downplay emotions is determined by the situation and how one would get the desired behavior from other people.

Almost everybody controls impressions to some extent. Despite what many might believe, achieving a certain age or certain stability does not stop self-presentation efforts. For example, a person keeps trying to get the best behavior from their spouse after marriage, even though they are not trying to impress them as they did before marriage.

Old people do not stop caring about what others think, either. They do tend to care less about many things, but the amount of anti-aging creams and treatments shows that old people care about not being seen as old and inefficient. Thus, self-presentation efforts are normal until they cause high social anxiety.

Learn more about why do hurt feelings hurt?

Social anxiety is a common experience. People feel nervous on job interviews or on dates, when meeting new people, or while just being at a social gathering where they do not know anybody. The most common experience and cause of social anxiety is speaking in front of groups. It is normal to feel anxious in such situations, and the highest level emerges when one is highly motivated to make the desired impression but is fairly certain that they will not be able to make it.

The positive side is that social anxiety creates the level of alertness that one needs to have in more critical situations. The negative side, on the other hand, is how it makes some people totally avoid social situations or have trouble interacting successfully.

Self-presentation might get significantly disturbed by anxiety when it passes a normal level. However, self-presentational techniques can be used to somehow control the anxiety when it is in a normal range.

Self-presentation is a persons effort to present himself or herself in the right way and make the desired impressions on other people. It is natural to try to make a positive impression unless lies and exaggeration are hugely involved.

Lying and exaggeration are two of the most common self-presentation strategies in many situations.

It is not genuinely negative to make self-presentation efforts since people need to convey certain messages to make the right social impressions. However, some peoples efforts get deceptive, which is no longer normal or natural.

No. self-presentation is present in all social situations and at all ages. Getting married or getting old does not stop the efforts, but decreases and changes them.

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Self-Presentation at Different Ages: What Is the Price? - The Great Courses Daily News

Human Behavior

4-OCEANS Project: Assessing the Importance of Marine Life to Human Societies – SciTechDaily

November 6, 2020 medical

Two researchers from Trinity College Dublin are among a four-strong team of principal investigators spearheading a new 10.4 million project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) to assess the importance of marine life to human societies during the last two millennia, with a focus on understanding the consequences of marine resource exploitation for societal development.

The project, 4-OCEANS, has been funded via an ERC Synergy Grant. These highly prestigious grants support transformative work that addresses major research challenges that would fall beyond the scope of any single ERC award and can only be tackled by collaborative approaches spanning multiple disciplines.

This project will bring together leaders with expertise in marine environmental history, climate history, natural history, geography, historical ecology, and zooarchaeology, nurturing a unique collaboration and integration of researchers from the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences.

Professor Poul Holm, Trinity College Dublin, talks about the 4-OCEANS project. Credit: Trinity College Dublin

The 4-OCEANS team is comprised of principal investigators, Poul Holm, Professor of Environmental History, and Francis Ludlow, Assistant Professor of Medieval Environmental History, from Trinity; James H Barrett, Reader in Medieval Archaeology and Deputy Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge; and Cristina Brito, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Social and Human Sciences and the Deputy Director of CHAM Centre for the Humanities, at NOVA University Lisbon.

Professor Holm said:

We are excited to have secured this grant to embark on a fascinating and important project that will provide us with an unparalleled understanding of humanitys recent interactions with the oceans, which will likely inform future symbioses with the many, varied aspects of marine ecosystems that enrich and support us.

Specifically, combining history and archaeology with marine science and socioeconomics, the 4-OCEANS team will examine when and where marine exploitation was of significance to human society; how selected major socio-economic, cultural, and environmental forces variously constrained and enabled marine exploitation; and what were the consequences of marine resource exploitation for societal development.

Professor Ludlow added:

There are many avenues of research that we look forward to pursuing, but the most important goal of the project is to conduct the first-ever globalized evaluation of the role of marine resources for societal development across two millennia, and thereby advance our understanding of the role of ocean life in human history.

Long-term data and an understanding of changes in ecosystems and human behavior over many centuries is critical to informing the continued development of the UNs Sustainable Development Goals and the Decade for the Oceans, from which the historical dimension is still missing. The 4-OCEANS project will ultimately introduce much-needed chronological depth to how we view urgent societal and environmental issues across the globe, through the understanding of our past.

Dr. Barrett said:

By combining archaeology, history and environmental science we aim to map, date, and measure past harvests of marine life. Untangling human and natural drivers, 4-OCEANS will explain how diverse historical trajectories created global networks, fuelling major centers with the products of distant ecosystems with lasting consequences for both societies and the sea.

Professor Brito added: The project 4-OCEANS will deepen our understanding of the oceans past and the relationships that different human societies established with this environment and their resources, helping to bridge the gap in knowledge about and the emotional connection of people with the oceans. By addressing the human history of marine life, our interdisciplinary research will emphasize the importance and value of the humanities for the study of the ocean and address current environmental and societal issues.

Professors Holm and Ludlow will oversee 5.4 million of the 10.4 million research funding total allocated to 4-OCEANS. Over the course of H2020, Trinity researchers have secured 37 ERC Investigator grants to date (valued at approximately 68 million), which equates to around 50% of all H2020 ERC awards in Ireland.

Dr. Patrick Prendergast, Provost of Trinity, said:

Synergy Grants are regarded as the most competitive of the ERCs awards, all of which are awarded on the basis of research excellence. We are very proud of Poul and Francis success in this regard and are particularly pleased that they will form a unique collaboration that brings together world-leaders in multiple disciplines spanning the humanities, natural, and social sciences. We look forward to tracking the progress of the 4-OCEANS project, and the many important and varied contributions it promises to make.

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4-OCEANS is Professor Holms second ERC award after his ERC Advanced Grant NorFish: North Atlantic Fisheries: An Environmental History, 1400-1700, while Professors Ludlow, Barrett, and Brito were also all previously funded under the Excellence Pillar of H2020 through Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA).

Professor Ludlow received an MSCA Individual Fellowship before going on to win an Irish Research Council Starting Laureate Award for his project CLICAB: Climates of Conflict in Ancient Babylonia.

Dr. Barrett, who led pioneering work on the incorporation of scientific methodologies into humanistic research, is a co-leader of the MSCA International Doctoral Training Network SeaChanges: Thresholds in human exploitation of marine vertebrates.

Professor Brito, coordinator of the UNESCO Chair on Oceans Cultural Heritage, is also the coordinator of the MSCA Research and Innovation Staff Exchange project CONCHA: The construction of early modern global Cities and oceanic networks in the Atlantic: An approach via OceaNs Cultural HeritAge (2018-2021).

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Human Behavior

The behavioral science behind post-election violence | TheHill – The Hill

November 4, 2020 medical

As tension builds while election officials continue to count votes, law enforcement officials around the country prepare forpost-election civil unrest. Earlier this year, I predicted that the coronavirus wouldnt cause widespread chaos in the U.S. But the election might; focus on how we resolve counting ballots and the rhetoric of political and civic leaders.

Ive spent my career studying violence, terrorism and coercion. What Ive found is that violence typically occurs when violence is feasible, when people are motivated and when a leader benefits from violence occurring.

Heres a simple way to think about violence:Like a fire, violence requires three components fuel, oxygen and heat. Dry grass alone, for example, does not create a wildfire, but requires a spark. In the U.S. right now, we have all three.

Fuel: Feelings of anger and hopelessness have been brewing for months. The fuel of political violence grows when the innate human need for self-preservation for self and kin struggles. We live in a world of scarcity. Violence is, at its core, an economic problem. By economic, I dont mean that players are seeking monetary gains; I mean that organized violence results from a market in which individuals predictably pursue their self-interests in conditions of scarcity. Disenfranchised people who see the election outcome as literally threatening their survival or the survival of their families whether because of the effects on unemployment, stock markets or changing social norms provide the fuel of violence.

The oxygen of political violence is the feasibility or possibility of violence. People must have the ability to engage in violent acts. If the state is all-controlling, like North Korea or Cuba during Fidel Castros reign, violence cannot break out, although coercion squeezes the lungs of the masses. In a democracy like the U.S., however, violent acts can and do occur. The oxygen of possibility abounds.

Thirdly, violence requires a spark often in the form of a charismatic leader, an entrepreneur of violence, in economic terms, who can speak to the aggrieved people in all of their forms of desire for greed, power and grievance. This leader could be a political leader, the leader of a civil rights group, a foreign political leader, a nationalist or even a cultural icon. In 1968, immediately after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., Nina Simone sang Mississippi Goddam, an indictment of the slow pace of the civil rights movement, at the Westbury Music Fair on Long Island. During the performance, she ad-libbed a line in the middle of the song: I aint about to be nonviolent, honey, and the crowd erupted in applause.

It is important to emphasize that angry people, alone, dont cause violence, and that violence is not always bad. Perhaps Nina Simone was right, at that time and that place. As a scholar of violence, I was recently asked if I would ever resort to violence, and my first thought was enfranchisement. If people believe they are a part of a system and have a voice to bring about change from the inside, then they might protest but ultimately fight peacefully for change. If disenfranchised hopeless then expect rocks thrown through windows.

Violence lies along a spectrum of human actions and human choices a continuum of possible decisions made by individuals within competitive markets, by individuals confronting scarcity of time, wealth, information and freedom. People compete against each other and against the state this is the nature of the human condition. We will not end violence, but we can work hard to better understand why some protests remain peaceful and others erupt violently.

Ultimately, viewing violence within the framework of economics and the science of human behavior also offers some reassurance: market power will not remain up for grabs for long. As the election results are resolved and elected leaders assume their positions, any post-election violence will likely resolve as well.

Gary M. Shiffman, Ph.D. is the author of The Economics of Violence: How Behavioral Science Can Transform our View of Crime, Insurgency, and Terrorism. He teaches economic science and national security at Georgetown University and is the creator of Dozer and GOST.

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The behavioral science behind post-election violence | TheHill - The Hill

Human Behavior

Expert on election unrest: ‘I don’t believe that there will be widescale violence’ – WWLTV.com

November 4, 2020 medical

After a summer of protests, riots, and widespread damage, some businesses around D.C. arent taking any chances.

WASHINGTON The results of the election appear to have a lot of people on edge even before all votes are cast. Several protests are already planned for here in D.C., before people even know the outcome.

After a summer of protests, riots, and widespread damage, some businesses around D.C. arent taking any chances; many are boarding up their store fronts.

This election day has become one we wont soon forget. Some experts think with whatever way the election goes, D.C. could see protests erupt. A recent YouGov poll even says more than half of people expect to see an increase in violence in the wake of the election.

WUSA9 spoke with one Georgetown professor who thinks while we may see protests, he doesnt expect them to be violent.

I don't believe that there will be widescale violence in the in the city. Gary Shiffman said. Shiffman is an author and a Georgetown professor whos studied human behavior and violence for the last two decades.

This has been a fascinating year for the study of violence, Shiffman added.

D.C. is no stranger to unrest. This summer alone, we saw weeks of protests, and at times, violence erupting. But what causes people to get to that point?

The spark comes from leaders, it comes from individual entrepreneurs. Those can be local group leaders, it can be state government leaders, it can be white supremacist leaders, it can be national leaders. It can also be foreign government leaders, trying to sow discontent in the United States. Shiffman said.

But businesses are preparing for the worst, many shopfronts across D.C. have been boarded up. Across the nation, insurance companies are seeing more people increase their policies ahead of Tuesdays elections.

Claims Journal reports some insurance companies reported more than $120 million in civil unrest losses from summer protests.

If the state doesn't treat the people with the respect that the people think that they are entitled to, then there is the right to speak out and to rise up and sometimes, sometimes violence occurs. Shiffman said.

Despite what weve seen across the nation with voters from both sides of the aisle clashing violently, Shiffman believes the focus will remain on voices being heard.

It fundamentally comes down to this idea of franchise. Meaning, do you feel empowered? Like the state is representing you that the election was fair at the end of the day today do we think the election was fair? Or do we think it was unfair, and that we have been cheated? Shiffman said.

Meanwhile, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser's office says it's ready for any protests. The emergency operations center will be opened. According to the Washington Post, the National Guard has established a new unit which could be deployed to stop any unrest that pops up in the days following the election.

Human Behavior

Big Data and Voting Blocks Date Back to the Kennedy Campaign – GovTech

November 4, 2020 medical

Campaign advisers urged their client, a presidential candidate, to take progressive stands on race, religious equality and ending a long war. Thanks to advances in behavioral and computer sciences, the advisers claimed to have data to map a path to the White House, issue by issue, region by region, and voter group by voter group. You would be excused for thinking it is a contemporary story from this election cycle. You would be off by about 68 years.

Author and historian Jill Lepores story begins with the lead up to the 1952 presidential campaign and the efforts of Mad Men-style ad man and schemer dreamer Ed Greenfield to use a novel combination of information extraction and voter prediction to get his preferred candidate, Adlai Stevenson, elected president. It didnt work the first time or in 1956, as Dwight D. Eisenhower handily won re-election. But four years later, Greenfield and his fledgling company, the Simulmatics Corporation, would claim credit for the election of John F. Kennedy who had reshaped his campaign around data in the so-called people machine, which was able to put numbers to the evolving public perceptions on the civil rights movement, the role of Catholics in public life and the Vietnam War.

Greenfield took Simulmatics role in the 1960 election victory to Wall Street the next year and pitched the companys stock offering this way: The Company proposes to engage principally in estimating probable human behavior by the use of computer technology. Foreshadowing what would become known as big data, Simulmatics created models that layered voting records over demographic, economic and most any other data it could find. It used up a lot of punch cards.

Those cards were a boon to the rise of post-World War II propaganda studies (often called mass communications) while, for the first time, breaking the mass up into segments. In a political context, the segments became voting blocks, which could be understood by their preferences and biases, and targeted and manipulated accordingly.

Eventually, the need for punch cards was eliminated by the invention of magnetic-core memory at MIT. Lepore details the development and impact of the first core memory computer called SAGE, the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment that came of age at the same time as the interstate highway system and coincided with the early development of high-speed networks. As the first real-time digital computer with the first human-computer interface, SAGE provided a preview of the future of computing with a combination of hardware, software and connectivity that define the building blocks of integrated systems to this day.

The investment in SAGE from inception to full deployment over 12 years, both in funding and the number of military and civilian staff, coupled with contractor personnel, exceeded what the federal government spent on the Manhattan Project. Lepores detour to tell the SAGE story brings focus to the overlooked history of government as innovator, which compelled its own people and those in the private sector to invent new technologies to meet the uniquely demanding requirements of doing the publics business.

It is against that background of technological breakthroughs that Lepore sets the social and political aims of Simulmatics. She provides a peek into the world of New England elites as they reacted to, reviled against and even invested in the company because of its potential to create (or destroy) the future of democracy. Simulmatics promised to radically change the way public opinion could be shaped. Politically and financially well-connected New Englanders demurred, warning about the threats posed by the startup, but stipulated they didnt want to stand in the way of progress.

Jilll Lepore (Photo: Dari Pillsbury)

Lepore also gives us a good look at the personalities behind Simulmatics, especially its founder.

Ed Greenfield collected people the way other men collect comic books or old stamps or vintage cars. He was like a ten-million-volt Looney Tunes electric magnet, a giant red-handled iron U that pulled everyone toward him. Plink, plink, plink. Elsewhere and often in the book, Lepore describes Greenfield as an all-around huckster but one with vision and heart. Ed Greenfield had big ideas and big ideals, big liberal ideas ... especially civil liberties and civil rights.

In spite of Greenfields promises and efforts, Simulmatics was a commercial flop, filing for bankruptcy in 1970.

Without Simulmatics, there would be less need to profile the gregarious Greenfield, who may be the very model of a modern technology startup founder, warts and all. That said, you could argue that it is SAGE, not Simulmatics, that delivered more fully on LePores thesis of inventing the future. Likewise, Ithiel de Sola Pool, who cofounded Simulmatics with Greenfield and taught at MIT, left a larger legacy, which The New York Times described as a controversial pioneer in communications research and was one of the first social scientists to use computer models in analyzing political behavior.

If Then appears at the apex of a presidential election cycle marked by unfinished business related to race, religion and foreign wars. Some 58 years later, startup founders are still like Greenfield driven, tech optimists who believe they can change the world with hucksterism in their DNA. Similarly, startups still make up words to brand themselves in the near term and in the hopes of defining a phenomenon in the long term. And like Simulmatics, stuff still doesnt work or deliver on its promises.

More importantly, Lepore implores us to remember that here in 2020, with much ballyhooed advances in AI and big data, we have the technology to do what Simulmatics could not. She warns us not to simply demur without a careful ethical examination of the perils of a machine in which humanity would in the early 21st century find itself trapped, a machine that applies the science of psychological warfare to the affairs of ordinary life, a machine that manipulates opinion, exploits attention, commodifies information, divides voters, fractures communities, alienates individuals and undermines democracy.

At what point do we dare stand in the way of progress?

If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future

Jill Lepore

Liveright. 432 pages. $28.95.

This articlewas originally published by Governing, Government Technology's sister publication.

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Big Data and Voting Blocks Date Back to the Kennedy Campaign - GovTech

Human Behavior

Don Paul: Weather has less effect on Covid-19 than first thought – Buffalo News

November 4, 2020 medical

While there were some reductions in rates of infection during the warm weather months, it is now known these reductions were tied to better ventilation in outdoor exposure, with lower viral loads in the air outside than in indoor spaces. The scientists combined temperature and humidity into what is called an equivalent air temperature between March and July. They used cellphone data to track human movement across U.S. states, counties, regions, international regions and the globe in combination with examination of equivalent air temperature measurements.

The researchers concluded weathers effects on viral contagion came out last on a list of factors studied. While weather surely affects human behavior, the primary driving force in contagion, these are the rankings of influence in transmission as told to Science News: In contrast, the data showed the clear influence of human behavior and the outsized influence of individual behaviors. Taking trips and spending time away from home were the top two contributing factors to Covid-19 growth, with a relative importance of about 34% and 26% respectively. The next two important factors were population and urban density, with a relative importance of about 23% and 13% respectively.

Earlier speculation on warmer temperatures, higher humidity and greater exposure to the suns ultraviolet radiation possibly bringing down viral loads has not survived scientific scrutiny in terms of the virus itself.

Human Behavior

Human Evolution: Welcome to the Friend Zone Now. Powered by – Now. Powered by Northrop Grumman.

November 4, 2020 medical

When did humans learn to be friendly? Its an important question. While big brains helped humans outlast evolutionary competitors, such as the Neanderthals, smarts werent enough to secure our primacy at scale. By trading aggression for cooperation, early hominid groups were able to develop tactics that allowed them to both survive and thrive. But what prompted the formation of friendly frameworks in human evolution, and how did this friend zone help us zero in on beneficial human behavior?

According to Popular Science, friendliness and cooperation are the cornerstones of successful human evolution. Put simply, the friendliest were most fit for survival.

Heres why: While the popular interpretation of Darwins concept is to imagine fitness as describing the biggest, strongest and most aggressive individuals, survival of the fittest only refers to survival itself, both in the moment and by creating viable offspring. While aggression might offer greater access to food and mates, its also inherently stressful and dangerous. Aggressive humans could be injured or killed and, without the help of others, faced weakened immune systems from the stress of continually protecting their primary status. By working together, humans were able to accomplish more with less risk and theres now evidence to suggest that we self-domesticated our facial features over time by selecting mates that were more amicable than aggressive.

And while some of our earliest expressions, such as disgust or fear, were driven by optical needs disgust caused a narrowing of the eyes to improve focus while fear did the opposite to improve field of vision more intricate displays of cooperation or comfort were developed to help nurture the good side of our nature and encourage human beings to work in concert rather than in conflict.

The fundamental functions of friendliness start with facial expressions. Consider one of our most common cooperative markers: the smile. As Scientific American notes, many primate species consider bared teeth an aggressive gesture, especially if lips are curled and teeth are apart. Meanwhile, when lips are relaxed and teeth are together, submission is the likely supposition.

For humans, smiles likely started as a way to showcase mutual submission a willingness to work together and evolved into the ubiquitous expression we use today. Worth noting? Not all smiles are genuine. While babies naturally smile in response to pleasurable stimuli, adults can deliberately obfuscate true intentions by smiling to gain initial trust rather than taking any direct cooperative action.

So, when did humans learn to be friendly? In a BBC interview, anthropologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London noted, As the last surviving species of humans on the planet, it is tempting to assume our modern faces sit at the tip of our evolutionary branch. This theory was originally supported by a supposedly common ancestor Homo heidelbergensis that lived 500,000 years ago and had a face midway between that of modern humans and those of Neanderthals. But a more recent discovery in Spain found a new species of hominin, called Homo antecessor, that lived more than 850,000 years ago and displayed facial construction much closer to that of modern humans. While theres no absolute certainty here, it seems that common human facial features may have existed far earlier than originally thought.

How does the world end? Not with a bang, but with a friend request.

Humans arent just interested in person-to-person friendliness. We also want to mimic the same function in robots. According to Brian Scassellati, professor of computer science, cognitive science and mechanical engineering and director of Yale Universitys Social Robotics Lab, Robots that engage with people are absolutely the future. Theres no question thats where robotics is moving. From caring contraptions that help children learn to winning workers that positively interact with other staff, mankind is committed to moving friendship forward even if it means hard-coding it into human analogues.

This speaks to the evolutionary impact of friendliness: the drive to cooperate rather than compete to advance the species as a whole. While individualism remains a sought-after quality for personal advancement, humans cant deny the power of positive interactions in large groups, even if those groups are partially artificial. In fact, theres a case to be made here that the robot revolution is our next evolutionary step. Sure, having super-strength or telekinetic powers would be fantastic, but these arent realistic outcomes. Humankinds greatest strength the development and deployment of new technologies offers the opportunity to make minds in our ideal image, friendship and all.

Small groups of early humans did well with aggressive leaders and insular behavior. But as big brains became the evolutionary exemplar, cooperation replaced conflict as the fittest function for ongoing survival. Faces formed the front lines of friendliness, fueling our drive for self-domestication that made working together even when we dont see eye-to-eye better than staying apart.

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Human Evolution: Welcome to the Friend Zone Now. Powered by - Now. Powered by Northrop Grumman.