Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

Tobii Pro Glasses 3, a wearable eye-tracker is now lighter and more compact – Inceptive Mind

The Swedish company Tobii has launched a new version of the eye-tracking glasses that were originally released about ten years ago. It is about a pair of glasses that are primarily designed for different kinds of studies where you follow users eye movements.

The next-generation of the wearable eye tracker, called Tobii Pro Glasses 3, allows you to use the eye-tracking function to capture and analyze a persons natural visual behavior in real conditions. It is equipped with eye-tracking technology with four extremely small, eye cameras and 16 illuminators into the lenses, which provides a unique combination of improved eye tracking performance.

In addition, the new version should have a better wide-angle camera than its predecessors, which ensures that the glasses film a much larger part of the users field of view. It makes a major difference when conducting wayfinding research, especially in an outdoor environment where, with a narrower field of view, we would lose track of the gaze data.

The design of Pro Glasses 3 is very comfortable, making them unobtrusive to wear, which is an important factor in collecting unbiased insights. Its robust design allows you to wear it with personal protective equipment (PPE), such as helmets and hats. Smart glasses come with a set of accessories, including add-on IR blocking safety lenses support research in outdoor/bright environments, as well as situations requiring eye protection.

Eye-tracking data is collected at 50 or 100 hertz, and slippage compensation technology enables consistent eye-tracking data throughout recordings, even if the glasses move on the users head, or are taken off and on.

Unlike the companys consumer equipment, which was sold as an accessory and integrated into a mixed reality headset, Tobii Pro Glasses 3 glasses are designed specifically for corporate use.

Scientific researchers can use them to get a unique vantage point into human behavior and a deeper understanding of a persons cognitive process. Consumer insight professionals and UX researchers can visualize and measure the true customer experience in any scenario. Operational managers, team leads, and operators can see each others reality from a first-person perspective.

For businesses, this means more informed decisions on design and marketing investments and a deeper understanding of the workplace for improved productivity and safety.

Tobii has not released any price information on Tobii Pro Glasses 3, but if they are priced as their predecessors, then they can probably be quite expensive.

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Tobii Pro Glasses 3, a wearable eye-tracker is now lighter and more compact - Inceptive Mind

Human Behavior

Carl Watner: The Tragedy of Political Government | Op-Ed Bitcoin News – Bitcoin News

What is tragic about political government? you might ask. Let us return to that question once we have examined the nature of political government and the State. In order to distinguish between government and other institutions in society we must look at the ways human behavior can be organized and human needs and desires satisfied.

There are only two ways: peacefully or coercively. There are no other alternatives. If people rely on peaceful cooperation, they must necessarily offer products or services for which other people are willing to trade. If people use coercion or fraud, we call it obtaining goods or services under false pretenses, robbery, or larceny. However we label it, the basic contrast remains the same: one relies on voluntaryism or one relies on force.

A stranger knocks at your door and, upon opening it, he requests money He represents the March of Dimes, and is asking for donations to support its activities. Unless you feel generous, you dismiss him. You have no particular obligation to support his cause, and the fact is you have already contributed to other charities, such as the United Way. Unless the stranger is a blatant thief, he leaves. He doesnt deal with you by using force, or its threat, to collect the money he is soliciting.

Compare this to what happens every April 15th in the United States. Granted, most good citizens send in their tax payments to the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS does not need to send out a representative to collect the tax; and if there is any need to do so, he generally neednt carry a gun or make any direct display of force.

Why dont people dismiss the IRS in the same manner as they would the solicitor who is collecting for a private cause? Many would, except they know that there is a big difference between the March of Dimes and the IRS. The March of Dimes organization is a group of private individuals assembled together for the common purpose of overcoming polio, muscular dystrophy, and birth defects. They do not use force, or the threat of force, to accomplish their goals. Should they, we would have no hesitation in calling the March of Dimes, and its solicitation agents, criminal.

The IRS, on the other hand, represents the government, which when all else fails uses force to accomplish its goals. If you do not voluntarily pay your taxes, your property is confiscated, or you are jailed. The amazing thing about our government in the United States is that it rarely has to resort to force. There are tax resisters, but they form a small percentage of the population. Except for these few people, no one calls IRS agents criminals even when they brandish guns, confiscate property, or put people in jail. Despite the fact that they engage in the same type of behavior as the private thief or kidnapper, its seldom that their behavior is called criminal. Why is this so?

Government is the only institution in our civilized society that is able to cover its coercion (and its use of threats) in a shroud of mystique and legitimacy There are other individuals and groups in society that use force: individual criminals (the lone burglar, rapist, etc.), and groups of criminals (the Mafia or gangs of thieves, etc.). But none of these claim their activities are proper and useful. Government is the only one of these coercive groups that claims its use of force is legitimate and necessary to everybodys wellbeing.

Government is the institutionalization of conquest over the people and property in a certain territory The stated purpose of government is protection. In reality it is exploitation: to extract resources which otherwise would not be voluntarily handed over to the governors. Governments excel in the use of force and threat the political means of survival by combining military conquest and ideology. Though throughout history, governments have been of many different types, their reason for being and modus operandi have never changed. Governing requires that those who govern authorize or commit criminal acts, actions which, if used by any but the agents of the government, would be deemed criminal.

Governments seek the voluntary obedience of their populace. The continual use of physical force is not only expensive, but often of uncertain results. If the governors can get the governed to accept their conquest as being consistent with widely accepted norms and standards, there is little need to use raw force to continually compel submission. The primary tools which governments use to establish their legitimacy are:

The truth of the matter is that governments use every means at their command to insure their control over society. Other methods include support of special interest groups with legislation and subsidies, celebration of national holidays, frequent elections, use of the secret ballot, sustaining foreign enemies to help maintain internal control, and the full panoply of patriotism.

The main tragedy of political government is that few people realize it is an immoral and impractical institution. Nor do they realize that the power of any government is dependent on the cooperation of the people it governs, and that government power varies inversely with the noncooperation of the people. They have been conditioned to accept government as a natural part of their environment. After being raised in a culture in which politics is the norm, and after attending years of public school and being taught that political government is a necessary component of society, most people place government in the same category as the weather something they complain about, but cant change. As people accept the structural trap called politics, they fail to realize that their actions support and undergird the State. Their demand for government services from Social Security benefits to police protection is what fuels the State.

Most people are capable of high values and responsible behavior, but once they enter the seductive garden of politics, they no longer notice that its wonders cannot be reconciled with individual responsibility and their own personal moral values of honesty and hard work. It is not usually apparent that what they are doing or supporting is vicious and would not pass the test of ordinary decency. So long as the criminality is veiled by the political process, most people accept it because they do not see that it conflicts with their basic values.

The main tragedy of political government is not only that the voters are the ones pointing the gun, but, most importantly, that the indecency of this act is concealed from them by the political process. It is the concealment that is the tragedy. The concealment is not the result of some conspiracy by some distant elite: it is inherent in the political process.

Perhaps the tragedy can be made more plain. Look at the daily news. At least half of every days news consists of accounts of one pressure group or another noisily appealing to the government for greater support of its special agenda. The tragedy is that the people making the demands do not perceive that its their own neighbors from whom they are stealing and sacrificing in order to support their special programs.

The political process -purposefully- is an impersonal one. The secret ballot and the use of majority vote obscure the fact that it is the struggling family next door or the bachelor down the street who are being threatened at gunpoint if they do not fill the governments coffers or follow its mandates. The resources for every government program come from hundreds of millions of people across the United States most of them personally unknown to those who campaign for these programs. Few people would directly confront their neighbors with such demands (Your money or your life!), but the structure of politics permits this to be done anonymously, and allows the supporters and perpetrators to conceal even from themselves the evil nature of what they are doing. Such is the tragedy of political government.

What do you think about Carl Watners essay? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments below.

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Carl Watner: The Tragedy of Political Government | Op-Ed Bitcoin News - Bitcoin News

Human Behavior

Technology Can Help Organizations Reduce Racism, But Will It? – Forbes

Ironically, the same innovations we tend to regard as creepy (e.g., AI, algorithms, and Big Data) may help leaders make their workplace more inclusive. But there are reasons to be skeptical.

Racism in technology concept.

I dont consider myself a techno-enthusiast, and Im definitely not optimistic by nature. So, NO, this isnt another overhyped post on how AI will save the world, or how Big Data (does anyone still use the term?) will make our world better by eliminating racism from society. Sadly, the only way to achieve that would be to eliminate humans, too. Indeed, if we were fully replaced by algorithms, racism would go extinct, much like if we replaced all human drivers with self-driving cars, traffic accidents would be rare - they would still happen, primarily due the unpredictability of human pedestrians.

Leaving aside these unlikely scenarios, and you can decide for yourself if they are more utopian or dystopian, it may be useful to understand a few of the more realistic ways in which technology could, if we truly wanted, help us keep racism in check, at work and beyond. After all, we have entered an age in which leaders willingness to reduce racism appears to have surpassed their ability to do so. So, if we want to move from condemnation to intervention, from criticism to solutions, we have to leverage every resource we have, and be open to new solutions, not least since traditional interventions have enjoyed limited success. Just look at the conclusion of a comprehensive academic reviews on the subject: Of the hundreds of studies we examine, a small fraction speak convincingly to the questions of whether, why, and under what conditions a given type of intervention works. We conclude that the causal effects of many widespread prejudice-reduction interventions, such as workplace diversity training and media campaigns, remain unknown.

There are at least four obvious ways in which technology, especially data-driven approaches to managing employees, could help us reduce workplace racism:

(1) Analyzing e-mail and messaging metadata (the context and social networks of communications): Without intruding in peoples privacy or reading what people say in their work-related communications, which in itself would not be illegal, algorithms can be trained to map the social networks in a team or organization, identifying individuals who are excluded from social interactions. Overlaying that data to demographic information on diversity (race or otherwise), could help organizations model inclusion digitally, using passive and non-invasive measures. Imagine a leader or HR professional, like a Chief Diversity Officer, who can access group-level data to assess whether race (or being part of any minority group or protected class) is statistically related to being left out, ignored, or ostracized from the team or organizational network. This granular level of evidence is likely to reveal exclusion where self-reports do not. People are not always aware of their unfair treatment of others, rationalizing their own actions to construct a benevolent self-concept, which is why the vast majority of people see themselves as nice, even when others dont. And when they are, they are pretty good at disguising it, which is why the number of people who answer yes to the question are you a racist?, is far lower than the number of actual racists.

(2) Analyzing the actual content of communications (Natural Language Processing and red flags): Without getting bosses, or any human, to spend any time snooping on employees communications, AI could certainly be trained to reliably monitor the words people use when they interact in any digital medium. Of course, we did not need AI to deter people from misbehaving in traceable or recorded communications, and cautious employees have always found ways to keep offensive comments (including prejudiced and racist jokes) offline. But with an unprecedented level of work exchanges now happening online or in virtual environments, only AI could keep an eye on all the possible toxic, antisocial, or counterproductive comments. With rapid advances in Natural Language Processing, software that translates patterns of word usage into a psychological profile of the individual, including their potential level of prejudice, anger, and aggression, it is easier than ever for organizations to detect and sanction racist behavior. What happens offline tends to stay offline, but what happens online is recorded for posterity. Note the application of this technology to reducing racism could be twofold: you can check for actual offenses, which is what humans would do in the case of reported behaviors, or if they are actually spending their time reading everything people say; or you could check for potential, which means identifying signals that predispose or increase someones probability to misbehave in the future. The latter is ethically more questionable, but also enables prevention; whereas the former is mostly helpful for sanctioning behaviors after they happened.

(3) Mining the digital footprint of external job candidates, particularly for leadership roles (reducing selection bias): One of the best ways to reduce racism is to avoid hiring racist employees, particularly to be in charge. An inclusive culture is best harnessed top-down, with teams and organizations that are led by ethical, open-minded, altruistic, and compassionate individuals who show uncompromising commitment to equality and fairness, practice what they preach, and put their money where their mouth is. Throughout most of our human history, we lived in small groups where everybody knew each other well, and our models for understanding and predicting others were bullet-proof: if you systematically misbehaved, you just ended up with a terrible reputation. Fast forward thousands of years, to the typical demands of modern work, where we are forced to make high-stakes decisions about hiring, promoting, trusting, and following others who we barely know. Such are the complexities and ambiguities of work today that we have no way to know whether the person we have in front of us is truly the person we think we see. We do know that you cannot judge a book by its cover, so the only way to make seemingly logical evaluations of others with the rather limited information we have on them - for example, during a one-off job interview, is to rely heavily on our intuition, which is how we end up making prejudiced and racist decisions in the first place, even when we try to avoid it or persuade ourselves that that isnt the case.

Imagine, instead, if we could access a candidates entire online footprint, consisting of everything they have done online in the past. The process would not be manual, of course, but algorithms could be trained to translate peoples digital history into a quantitative estimate of their open-mindedness, tolerance, authoritarianism, and empathy, etc. In some instances, you wouldnt even need algorithms to detect whether someone could have a prejudiced profile, because their behaviors would just signal racism; as when human recruiters run a google search on a potential CEO candidate to gauge their reputation and assess fit. They may not be explicitly looking at indicators of prejudice, but may still want to exclude candidates, or at least one would hope, who dont seem to have a strong reputation for integrity or ethics. As one would expect, there is a booming business for online reputation management, but these digital spin doctors are focused on helping you fool human assessors rather than machine-learning algorithms. And while prejudiced individuals may always find a way to fool both humans and computers, academic research suggests that if a well-trained AI were to access our complete digital footprint - everything from our Uber ratings to our Netflix and Hulu choices, our Facebook Likes, and of course our Twitter and Whatsapp exchanges - it would be able to predict with great accuracy whether we are likely to display any kind of prejudice or discrimination at work and beyond, and with what frequency. This could and should be deployed in an ethical way, asking candidates to opt in and put their data to the test. In fact, it may even be useful developmental feedback for them to find out whether they resemble more or less prejudiced individuals, which the algorithm could report.

(4) Exposing bias in performance ratings (eliminating the politics and nepotism in promotions and performance management systems): The most pervasive form of bias and discrimination people suffer at work, and one of the hardest to detect, is being unfairly evaluated and rated for their performance, whether consciously or not. This bias occurs even in well-meaning organizations, including ethical companies with mature diversity and inclusion policies, and meritocratic talent management intentions. Interestingly, this is an area where AI has attracted a great deal of popular criticism. For instance, when companies attempt to train AI to predict whether an employee is likely to be promoted, or algorithms are used to rank order internal candidates for potential, the likely result is that certain profiles, such as middle-aged White male engineers, over-index, while others, such as Black, Latino, or female, are underrepresented. However, in these examples, the problem is neither the algorithms nor the data scientists who develop them. If you train algorithms to predict an outcome that is itself influenced by systemic bias or prejudice, it will not just reproduce human bias, but also augment it. In other words, middle-aged White male engineers got promoted before AI was trained to reveal this, and they will continue to get promoted even if AI is not used.

Unlike humans, computers dont really care about your race, gender, or religion: they dont have a fragile self-esteem they need to boost by bringing other people down, and they dont need to bond with other computers by stigmatizing certain classes or groups of humans (or computers). One thing they can do, however, and usually rather well, is to imitate the prejudiced preferences of humans. And yet, they can also be trained to not imitate them. Artificial intelligence may never match the breadth and scope of human intelligence, but it can certainly avoid replicating the vast collection of biases encapsulated in human stupidity.

If organizations are able to measure employees job performance objectively, then AI will not only predict it better than humans, it will also identify any distortion or interference introduced by bias. For instance, an Uber driver can be judged on the basis of (a) how many trips she makes, (b) how much money she brings in, (c) how many car accidents she has, and (d) what customer ratings she gets, all relative to other drivers working in the same location, and all done through AI. If two drivers with identical performance scores on (a), (b), and (c) differed significantly on (d), then a simple analysis would suffice to reveal whether the drivers demographic background - e.g., white vs. black - inflated or depressed their scores on (d). So, if businesses, and particularly managers, were able to quantify output (what an employee actually contributes to the team and organization), and there was a formula to predict what someone is likely to produce, then algorithms wont just be better than humans at applying this formula, they will also be better than humans at ignoring the wide range of extraneous variables (including race) that distract human managers from focusing on that formula. In judgments of talent, humans are not great at paying attention to the stuff that matters, or ignoring the stuff that doesnt.

OK, so if all this sounds that simple, then whats stopping organizations from adopting these measures? After all, technology keeps getting cheaper and cheaper, they are sitting on a growing volume of data (just think about the last 3-months of videoconferencing data), and theres no shortage of data scientists who can help with this.

Three things, which do warrant a reasonable degree of skepticism, or at least a non-trivial amount of realistic pessimism.

The first is the double standards that make most people adopt the highest moral principles when they judge AI (or any new tech), while being much more lenient, and morally relaxed, when they judge humans. No technology will ever be perfect in predicting or detecting any form of human behavior, whether good or evil. Thats not the point. The point is that technology could be more accurate - and less biased - than humans, or at least that it could help humans be less biased. So, if we are comfortable understanding that even the latest, most advanced, tech will get things wrong, then lets focus on what really matters, which is whether that tech can at least minimize human bias and discrimination, even by 1%. Given humanitys historical record here, it is safe to say that the bar is pretty low, and that even rudimentary technologies may represent a hopeful improvement over the status-quo: pervasive prejudice and ubiquitous bias, courtesy of the human mind.

The second is that diagnosing or detecting the problem is necessary, but not sufficient, to fix it. So, suppose that some of the emerging technologies mentioned here reveal racism, or any other form of discrimination in a team or organization; what next then? Will leaders genuinely act on these data to sanction it, especially if it creates conflict or leads to negative short-term outcomes, particularly for themselves? Will they change the rules, the system, and those who oversee it, in order to improve progress and create a fairer, more meritocratic system? In general, people have little incentive to change the status quo when they are part of it. How comfortable will they be acknowledging that the status quo was rigged? Clearly, many leaders may prefer to avoid any new technology if it has the potential to expose the hitherto invisible toxic forces that govern the power dynamics in their teams and organizations. And AI, not just in HR but in any other area of application, is like a powerful X-ray machine that can reveal unwanted forces and socially undesirable phenomena: like opening a can of worms. It is always painful to make the implicit explicit, and the foundational grammar of any culture - both in companies and societies - is largely made of silent and subliminal rules, which makes them resistant to change. One of the disadvantages of living in a liberal world is that domination is rarely explicitly asserted, but hidden under the pretext of equality.

The third is that employers must be realistic about what can probably be achieved. Discussions on race and inclusion often focus on bias and prejudice, but it may be unrealistic to change the way people think, especially if they are part of a non-conformist minority, and how ethical would this be anyway? Crucially, peoples attitudes or beliefs are surprisingly weak as predictors of actual behavior. This means that discrimination - the behavioral side of prejudice - often happens in the absence of strong corresponding beliefs (conscious or not). Likewise, most of the people who are prejudiced - and hold derogatory attitudes towards individuals because of their race, gender, etc. - will rarely engage in overt discriminatory behavior. In short, we should focus less on changing peoples views, and more on ensuring that they behave in respectful and civil ways. Containing the expressed and public manifestations of racism at scale may be the best leaders can hope for, for they will not be able to change the way people think and feel.

Finally, we should not forget that not all leaders will be interested in reducing racism in their organizations, particularly if the process is slow and painful, and the ROI isnt clear. Such leaders may not just neglect the potential value of new technologies for reducing workplace discrimination, but use it to perpetuate existing practices, amplifying bias and prejudice. In the long run, every decision leaders make will shape the culture of their organizations, and employees and customers will gravitate towards those cultures and brands that best represent their own values and principles.

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Technology Can Help Organizations Reduce Racism, But Will It? - Forbes

Human Behavior

COVID-19, smell and taste how is COVID-19 different from other respiratory diseases? – Kiowa County Press

A health worker carries out an olfactory test to monitor smell loss to a resident 65 km from Buenos Aires city, on May 24, 2020, amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. ALEJANDRO PAGNI/AFP via Getty Images

John E Hayes, Pennsylvania State University and Valentina Parma, Temple University

In March 2020, Google searches for phrases like "can't taste food" or "why can't I smell" spiked around the world, particularly in areas where COVID-19 hit hardest. Still, many of us have experienced a temporary change in the flavor of our food with a common cold or the flu (influenza). So, is COVID-19 - the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus - somehow special in the way it affects smell and taste?

We are researchers who study the relationships between human behavior and the sensations people experience from chemicals in daily life. Upon learning that COVID-19 might differentially affect taste and smell, we thought our expertise might be relevant, so we got to work.

When people "taste" food, they are experiencing input from three different sensory systems that are knitted together to form a singular unified sensation. Strictly speaking, taste describes the five qualities we sense on the tongue, including sweet, salty, bitter, sour and savory/umami. Savory, also known as umami, refers to the meatiness of broth, cheese, fish sauce, or a sundried tomato.

Taste involves more sensory systems than just your mouth. Tom Merton / Getty Images

Other sensations from food occur via our sense of smell, even though we experience them in the mouth. Volatile chemicals are released when we chew. These chemicals travel through the back of the throat to reach smell receptors found at the top of the nasal cavity, right behind the point where your eyeglasses rest on your nose.

The third sensory system involved in food flavor involves touch and temperature nerves that can also be activated by chemicals. This is known as chemesthesis. In the mouth, these sensations include the burn of chili peppers, the cooling of mouthwash or mints, the tingle of carbonation, or the vibrating buzz of Sichuan peppers. Together, these three chemosensory systems - taste, smell and chemesthesis - work to define our perceptual experiences from food.

Loss of smell is common with many viruses, including rhinoviruses, influenza, parainfluenza and coronaviruses, and it is normally attributed to nasal inflammation that restricts airflow.

If your nose is blocked, it is not surprising you are not able to smell much. Typically, the other two systems - taste and oral chemesthesis - are not affected, as a blocked nose does not alter our ability to taste sugar as sweet or feel the burn from a chili pepper. With time, most patients recover their senses of smell, but occasionally some do not. Causes vary, but in some individuals, inflammation from a viral illness appears to permanently damage key structures located around the smell receptors.

Since early spring 2020, firsthand reports have indicated that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, might affect the mouth and nose more severely than the common cold or the flu. Not only were the reports of loss more frequent, but they also differed from what is normally seen.

One British surgeon with COVID-19 posted a video to Twitter showing that he had lost the ability to feel the burn of chilies. Others, like Penn State undergraduate Caela Camazine, reported losing their sense of smell and taste completely without any nasal congestion.

Dr. Whitehead has lost his ability to taste the burn of chili peppers. Screen grab

Based on the spike in Google searches, and these atypical accounts of chemosensory loss, more than 600 researchers, clinicians and patient advocates from 60 countries formed the Global Consortium for Chemosensory Research.

The Global Consortium for Chemosensory Research launched a global survey in 32 different languages to better understand what COVID-19 patients are experiencing. Initial results from our survey support the idea that COVID-19 related losses are not limited to smell, as many patients also report disruption of taste and chemesthesis.

Our understanding of how the SARS-CoV-2 virus can affect multiple sensory systems is still quite limited, but is advancing daily. Initial work suggests that smell disturbances in COVID-19 patients are caused by the disruption of cells that support olfactory neurons. In our noses, we have nerve cells called olfactory sensory neurons, which are covered with odor receptors tuned for certain volatile chemicals. When a chemical binds an odor receptor, the olfactory sensory neuron fires a signal to the brain which we perceive as a smell. Notably, it does not appear that the virus targets olfactory sensory neurons directly.

Instead, the virus seems to target specialized supporting cells that cradle the olfactory sensory neurons. These support cells are covered with a different receptor, the ACE2 receptor, which acts as an entry point for the virus. In contrast, the way SARS-CoV-2 might directly affect taste and chemesthesis remains unknown.

We just don't know yet whether COVID-19 patients will recover their sense of smell, taste and chemesthesis. Many patients have reported recovering completely within two or three weeks, while others report their sensory loss lasts for many weeks. To connect with other individuals who are experiencing smell and taste loss related to COVID-19, consider reaching out to organizations advocating on behalf of those who suffer from smell and taste loss, such as AbScent and FifthSense.

Because more data are needed, we are asking for your help in our research. If you know anyone who is (or recently has been) coughing and sniffling, invite them to complete the Global Consortium for Chemosensory Research survey, which takes about 10 minutes.

We want anyone who has had any upper respiratory illness (COVID-19 or not) recently so we can compare individuals with COVID-19 to individuals with the flu or the common cold. By volunteering for our study, or by spreading the word on this research study, you can contribute to better understand how COVID-19 is special in its ability to affect smell, taste and chemesthesis.

[Get facts about coronavirus and the latest research. Sign up for The Conversation's newsletter.]

John E Hayes, Associate Professor of Food Science, Pennsylvania State University and Valentina Parma, Research Assistant Professor, Temple University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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COVID-19, smell and taste how is COVID-19 different from other respiratory diseases? - Kiowa County Press

Human Behavior

Why meat is no longer essential in the vegan-friendly Bay Area – San Francisco Chronicle

Heres something that seems to sum up the complicated relationship many of us have with animals: The San Francisco SPCA, a no-kill shelter, is an essential service, as are all animal shelters in the state. Also considered an essential service is the states meatpacking industry, whose sole purpose is to slaughter and butcher animals.

One animal is your friend and the other animal is your food. We can keep this equation very simple by keeping our pets (mostly cats and dogs) in the friend category and putting everything else in the food category. But few things are that simple during this pandemic as the Bay Area negotiates what is essential and what isnt, whats safe and what isnt. And the larger question of who bears the brunt of the coronavirus and who doesnt.

My husband and I have been vegetarians for decades. During E. coli outbreaks (the bacteria is less prevalent in produce although there is still a risk), the scares of mad cow disease (2005), swine flu (2009), bird flu (2015) and various other diseases, Ive always thought, Im so glad Im a vegetarian. Not in some holier than thou way, but in a one less thing to worry about way.

I have written previously about how I became a vegetarian. I could cite statistics showing the benefits of a vegetarian or vegan diet on everything from health to climate change. And certainly those things are important. But even if I take all that away, Im left with this: Alice conversing with a white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. Mr. Toads glorious adventure in The Wind in the Willows. Or Peter Rabbit escaping Mr. McGregors garden in The Tale of Peter Rabbit. To put it another way: I cant seem to keep just cats and dogs in the friend category. Other animals hop in there, too rabbits, frogs, ducks. Animals simply are not food to me.

I know the animals in those books are an authors invention and perhaps more a commentary on human behavior than animal. But I also know there are people who refuse to acknowledge that animals can express emotions no joy or jealousy. Just try holding onto that belief the next time your dog sees you reach for the leash or the food bowl. Or the next time you spend time petting a friends dog while ignoring your own.

Everyone charts their own course to the dinner table, and for many that course seems to have gotten easier (lots of food and lots of ways to get it) and thornier (the footprint and economics of factory farming, which Merriam Webster defines as: a farm on which large numbers of livestock are raised indoors in conditions intended to maximize production at minimal cost).

A 2018 Gallup poll found 5% of U.S. adults call themselves vegetarian. Not a huge number, but showing signs of growing. Even before the novel coronavirus, plant-based foods were having a banner year with the popularity of Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat and the partnerships of Big Meat with plant-based or cultured meat companies. Retail sales of plant-based foods in 2019 reached $5 billion, according to the Good Food Institute, which supports companies focused on plant-based products. In 2019, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals named San Francisco the No. 1 vegan-friendly city in the U.S. Thats no surprise to anyone who lives here; what did come as a surprise was Nashville at No. 8 and Tulsa, Okla., at No. 10.

In mid-March, when pandemic panic-buying made flour and yeast disappear, retail plant-based food sales surged, according to the Plant Based Foods Association. And its no wonder. The coronavirus has put a spotlight on essential slaughterhouses and their essential workers across the nation, and its a grim picture: workers shoulder to shoulder on production lines, and hot spots of COVID-19 contagion at plants throughout the country. In Vernon (Los Angeles County), workers at the Farmer John plant called for its shutdown last week after more than 150 employees had tested positive for the virus. Whos essential, and who bears the brunt? In a recent opinion piece, The End of Meat Is Here in the New York Times, author Jonathan Safran Foer takes on these issues of the meat industry.

Live-animal markets face similar scrutiny and present an equally hellish picture. Such markets in Wuhan, China, of course, have been cited in one theory of how the virus spread from bats to another animal to humans. But again, the equation is not quite that simple. An April story by Chronicle reporter Kurtis Alexander reported on a study by UC Davis researchers further connecting human intrusion into animal habitats and mutating viruses. Alexander quoted Chris K. Johnson, professor of epidemiology at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and lead author of the study: Viruses dont cross over the species boundary very easily. The spillover from animals to humans is the direct result of our actions. Its happening all over the world, and has for decades, as we modify the landscape in major ways.

Just last week, a bill that would ban live-animal markets in California passed its first committee hearing. The bill, SB1175, by state Sen. Henry Stern (D-Malibu), would ban imports and sales of live wild animals, such as turtles, bullfrogs and nonpoultry birds, at live markets.

Does being a vegetarian or vegan make any of this go away? Does it help meat-packers trying to pay their bills avoid a deadly virus? Or help Mr. Toad, who apparently is not joyriding around the English countryside in a waistcoat, and is not even sitting in his natural and shrinking habitat, but is crammed into a cage to become our dinner? I dont know.

But being a vegetarian helps me sleep a little better at night, curled up with my husband and my dog.

Bernadette Fay is a San Francisco Chronicle editor. Email: Bfay@sfchronicle.com

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Why meat is no longer essential in the vegan-friendly Bay Area - San Francisco Chronicle

Human Behavior

Local Resident is Recognized by Washington State as a Leader – Patch.com

Paris Bruner recognized the role community plays in our lives from a young age, as well as the importance of giving back to the community. She began performing a variety of volunteer activities throughout Seattle working alongside her family during her childhood and found them fulfilling. As she grew older, she has continued to take strides to assist with various causes, guide others, and offer support when possible. It became evident that promoting the strength of the community is where true change could begin. Stepping on to the campus of the University of Washington has exposed her to new knowledge, growth, and the development of leadership skills which has proven to be extremely valuable while taking on additional roles. Others have taken notice. Recently, the Renton resident became the proud recipient of a special award for her efforts.

Washington Campus Compact's Student Civic Leader Award recognizes and supports students who are working hard to solve critical issues in their communities. This program offers financial support, an online learning community, and in-person training to foster confidence and success in continued civic engagement.

Mathematical Thinking & Visualization; Society, Ethics & Human Behavior;Applied ComputingParis Bruner is a leader who inspires others with her commitment to working with youth and connecting students with opportunities in the STEM field and beyond. She has taught coding for kids at elementary schools for multiple quarters as a part of her CBLR course work. In 2019 Bruner was promoted to lead teacher for Coding With Kids working with groups of 15 students aged 5-10 years old; volunteered with Achieving Community Transformation (ACT) as an Alternative Spring Break site lead; volunteered as a student ambassador for the office of Community-Based Learning and Research; and was promoted to a staff lead position for the Makerspace, a creative (co-) curricular environment.

Congratulations! to Paris.

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Local Resident is Recognized by Washington State as a Leader - Patch.com

Human Behavior

4 Reasons for Higher Retirement Savings Rates – The 401(k) Specialist

Similar salaries dont necessarily mean similar savings rates, a maddening quirk of human behavior EBRI and J.P Morgan Asset Management set out to study.

The organizations find that, despite having similar salaries, the middle 50% of the research population save about 3% more of their salary at all ages than the bottom 25% of savers.

This 3% difference in savings behavior, if sustained over time, could ultimately explain some of the meaningful gaps between the current retirement plan account balances of middle and low savers.

The study also suggests that for most households, a 401k appears to be their primary retirement savings vehicle, underscoring the importance of the employers role in savings.

Importantly:

The study is part of a new collaboration between the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) and J.P. Morgan Asset Management, which was announced on Wednesday. The project will leverage 22 million Chase households and 27 million 401(k) plan participant records, offering the first truly holistic view of how U.S. households spend and save.

EBRI has been analyzing 401k participant behavior for decades based on the EBRI/ICI Participant-Directed Retirement Plan Data Collection database, Lori Lucas, President and CEO of EBRI, said in a statement. This new collaboration with J.P. Morgan takes this analysis to another level as we can now gain insight into both the spending and the saving sides of the equation to better understand peoples full financial picture.

This collaboration is a significant milestone for the retirement industry, harnessing Chases relationship with nearly half of American households and EBRIs strong pedigree in the employee benefit space, added Katherine Roy, Chief Retirement Strategist, J.P. Morgan Asset Management.

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4 Reasons for Higher Retirement Savings Rates - The 401(k) Specialist

Human Behavior

[Science Solitaire] Time to rethink the power of crowds – Rappler

Maria Isabel Garcia

When humans all over the world were mostly quarantined, we noted how nature was coming back as if it had left us like a prodigal child. During quarantine, certain sounds of animals have been recorded to inhabit the break of dawn different from pre-quarantine dawns. Air pollution dramatically went down in cities around the world. Even fake videos of dolphins now swimming in Venice proliferated as if faking videos would fool nature into doing what we wanted it to do. But if we think about it carefully, nature never left us. We took over it. We crowded nature. That is how we got ourselves into this pandemic in the first place.

With the pandemic, we were all asked to stay apart, to avoid crowded places. But crowding is human nature. It is one of the striking features of being social beings. It can be a mountain and a pit or both at the same time. It can boost our causes and morale as in peaceful protests or concerts. It can also be negative when they amplify infections or our darker tendencies as in looting or mob behavior. It can also be complex like the way we have invented towns and cities where we all crowd and make possible an incredible amount of exchanges in creativity and commerce that uplift lives but also lay waste its waterways and air, and also revealing deep divides in who really gets the net benefit from the urban hype.

As we re-inhabit the places we temporarily allowed to rest, one of the things that will define what kind of normal we arrive at is the way we view and behave as crowds. And maybe it will help, before we re-enter the crowded scene, to know what crowding in the old normal meant, how it could have betrayed us in many ways but most importantly, how we could re-configure the power of the crowds we make.

There is a new map that shows land areas in the world with the degrees of human impact not just where we live but where we farm or mine or extract resources for human consumption. It is a layering of 4 independent mapping efforts.

One of the layers shows that 95% of the entire worlds landmass has been modified by humans and 84% has had multiple human impacts with most of the world in critical thresholds. It also makes us realize that we do not have to have many humans present in a given space to make for a crowd with serious human impact. We do it when we use spaces to serve humans who are crowding in other places just like we clear up forests for cattle-grazing such as the Amazon where there are no crowds, to serve the overwhelming crowds of burger fast food chains. It goes for agricultural areas where there are no crowds but have taken over a third of the planets landmass to feed crowded humans elsewhere.

Another layer is the Global Human Footprint Index. Explore it by zooming in on the places in the world you want to see. Zoom in on Metro Manila and see that it is colored black. That means that the human impact there is extreme. So it is no co-incidence that the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the Philippines is in Metro Manila. Human footprint is how we can measure the impact of human crowds on ecosystems. It could also indicate the quality of life that human crowds have in the spaces they crowd, so it goes both ways.

That is the kind of crowding we did that gave way to this pandemic. This would not matter if there were another planet we could move into but even with the recent success of space tourism, the space tourists could only get as far as the International Space Station. And it is silly and foolish to hinge our new normal on hopes for new real estate development in Mars. There is no Planet B.

But there is also NO Species B. Out of the about 9 million species estimated to inhabit the planet, we humans turned out to be both the most destructive and most creative, so far. Because we humans are the way we are, we made this heck of a mess and good or bad, we are also the only ones with the ability and capacity to change the direction that the human crowd is headed for.

So it is crucial that we redefine how much we can afford crowds in certain critical areas such as the few remaining wild spaces left for nature to do its thing to give us clean air, water and do its web-of-life turns to keep life all of life in a balance.

It could mean serious changes for many aspects of lives that depend on crowds. Here are just some ways we can turn the crowd to work for a better normal:

For tourism, it would mean an abiding respect and adherence to carrying capacity of the areas for tourism and definitely not on how many people want to tick those areas off of their FOMO or YOLO lists which are endless. It would also mean an imperative for tourist crowds to make it an essential part of the nature of tourism itinerary to do restoration activities such as planting trees, beach clean-ups (even in nearby areas that are more affected), wildlife rescue, recycling, and upcycling activities.

For events that rely on physical crowds to gather insights, or cheer them on like conferences, concerts, and sports events, it should be an imperative and not a favor to give visible and audible space for messages on the grave human impact on nature and why no one is exempted. The human impact of any event, especially high-profile ones with crowds should always carry a publicly delivered measurement of carbon footprint not just what they consumed but more importantly, what measures were taken to save on the carbon footprint.

For commerce especially with online delivery, you can do a powerful positive pivot for the impact of the crowd if you worked with groups to help make your packaging work but matter so much less in terms of environmental impact. The online ordering crowd is a powerful player in human impact in nature. I found it gravely sad and ironic during the pandemic when I try to order an item made sustainably but will come in paper, bubble-wrap, and plastic packaging that negates all that.

Data mining as the tool to get to the wisdom of the crowd has always been glorified by many as the edge that will define the success of many organizations but I remain very skeptical. I am skeptical not because I do not understand the math or its power but because I do. All that math and power by AIs still rest on the value settings made by individuals who are given to both the Jekyll and Hyde (and the gray in-betweens) of human nature the complex nature all humans possess. Data-mining for consumer behavior did tell us what the old normal valued and we all fell for that wisdom. Look at where it got us.

But this Species A who is capable of data-mining and more importantly, ethical value setting, should make sure that data-mining from all kinds of crowds can be married with what we know about the pitfalls of our own human nature. That our own behaviors can be self-destructive and worse, consummately destructive if we all did it as a crowd. We have this window of a chance now set a new set of values and make the crowds, including the ones we belong to, work for a better normal. Rappler.com

Maria Isabel Garcia is a science writer. She has written two books, "Science Solitaire" and "Twenty One Grams of Spirit and Seven Ounces of Desire." You can reach her at sciencesolitaire@gmail.com.

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[Science Solitaire] Time to rethink the power of crowds - Rappler

Human Behavior

COVID-19 has also closed other peoples houses – Grand Island Independent

In 1826, Frederick Douglass, a young enslaved orphan, was shipped from a plantation on Marylands Eastern Shore to a home in Baltimore. Upon crossing the threshold of the new place, his conception of the world, and of himself, changed forever. I had been treated as a pig on the plantation, Douglass later wrote. I was treated as a child now. Along with this magical new sense of his own humanity, Douglass soon learned a skill that became the foundation of his life: reading.

The transformation of Frederick Douglass from property to statesman is an extreme case. But for millions of kids, other peoples houses contain new worlds, with the potential for new meaning and new lives. A friends house is a learning experience unlike any available in school. Its a chance to examine your own life, and the way your family lives and relates to one another, in the light of a different model. Its also an experience all but foreclosed by the coronavirus lockdown, compounding the damage done by shuttered classrooms.

Alice Fothergill, a sociologist at the University of Vermont, co-authored a book about children whose lives were disrupted by Hurricane Katrina. In an email, she wrote:

In my research on families in crisis, we definitely saw that children and youth needed that interaction with other adults outside their families. Indeed, those other adults were crucial during Hurricane Katrina recovery we saw them as a safety net for kids. Also, we found that families really relied on other families for informal support, resources, transportation, company, child care, etc. Many of those families are those you are talking about the families of the kids friends. We saw that, in the disaster aftermath, not having those other families nearby or available became an incredible challenge.

In some cases, the households of friends reinforce what kids learn at home. One study suggested that closely networked families develop common norms for behavior that constrain childrens actions, increase communication with one another about childrens activities and whereabouts (with resulting benefits in terms of their own ability to monitor and supervise children) and develop shared norms for evaluating childrens behavior.

Friends houses can also be departures from the norms on display at home. What I valued from my own childhood was discovering what was different about other kids houses and lives, and perhaps adopting some of it as my own. Matthews house was packed with siblings yet it projected an aura of easy calm and confidence. How did that work? At Philips house, I learned you could grab a guitar and make your own music, which had never occurred to me before. Bills older brothers had a record collection that has followed me through life and their meticulousness in caring for their stuff made me wonder why I was so careless about mine.

Exposure to other families can provide a different template for relationships, emailed psychologist Katherine Rosenblum of the University of Michigan. The egocentrism of earlier years gives way to a sense that not all families are like mine in their relational patterns, but also potentially in terms of culture, practices/beliefs etc.

Learning there is more than one way to do things is foundational. My friend Daniel Pink, an author of books on business and human behavior, recalled: In my childhood (or at least the childhood that my memory has confected) the revelations were always around food. Whoa ... their tuna salad tastes so different! They put mustard on that? Theyre allowed to drink Coke? Also, Jim Goodrich had a refrigerator that made ice in the door which to 8-year-old was more amazing than space travel.

To a child, these are not trivial discoveries. After all, if their tuna salad tastes better, perhaps its worth considering their religious or political beliefs, or examining more closely their interpersonal dynamics. Pluralism rests on a delicate platform of such minute observation and comprehension.

The pandemic will have devastating consequences for students who fall behind because they lack the structure and support they need to learn at home. For some of those same kids, and for others besides, closing a window onto the lives of others will be equally damaging. I cant remember much about the classrooms of my youth. But I vividly recall the lessons I learned in other peoples houses.

Francis Wilkinson writes editorials on politics and U.S. domestic policy for Bloomberg Opinion. He was executive editor of the Week. He was previously a writer for Rolling Stone, a communications consultant and a political media strategist.

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COVID-19 has also closed other peoples houses - Grand Island Independent

Human Behavior

Helping CEOs Weather the Storms: Psychologist Coaches Wear 4 Hats – CEOWORLD magazine

CEOs need help. Todays business leaders have to contend with industry competition, changing consumer behavior, new technology, and fears of an impending recession. With the sands beneath their feet shifting, theres never been a more uncertain time to be a CEO. CEO turnover increased by 12.9% in 2019 over 2018, according to a survey by Challenger, Gray and Christmas, Inc. There were 1,640 CEO transitions last year, compared to 1,452 in 2018, representing the highest total since tracking started in 2002. This greater uncertainty and turnover has driven an increase in the number of coaches offering to help executives succeed.

Coaching is a booming industry that shows no signs of slowing down. In 2016 there were 53,300 coaches working worldwide who generated $2.4 billion in revenue and these numbers continue to grow. The field of coaching is highly variable. Since there is no regulation about who can call themselves coaches, many have vastly different backgrounds and trainings; the result is a cluttered field of people claiming they can help executives. How can you determine whom to count on for such an important job?

The decision to hire a coach to work with a CEO is an important one. Companies invest millions of dollars and thousands of hours on selection and training for their top executives, all of which can go down the drain if there is an unexpected exit or termination. Finding a coach with proper training and qualifications should be priority number one.

There is a subset of coaches who have experience in the business world, and are trained as psychologists, holding a PhD or PsyD in psychology. This means at least five years of study and a wide variety of experiences in multiple fields. In addition to having business experience, psychologist coaches have experiences working with groups, families, and individuals with areas of focus including work, family, and self-management.

These qualities give psychologist coaches deep knowledge of the roots of human behavior and motivation, and unique insights into another human beings inner and interpersonal world. Through their training, psychologists become experts in creating sustained behavioral change. Psychologist coaches combine their expertise with their knowledge of business to understand the complex strategic, organizational and psychological needs of CEO clients. They use these insights to help CEOs analyze, process and make decisions in their fast-paced, VUCA world.

The question of which coach to pick can be simplified by understanding what coaches can provide, and what clients can expect from their coaches. The list below shows four hats that psychologist coaches wear when working with their CEO clients:

By wearing one or more of these four hats, psychologist coaches can help CEOs sustain themselves in tumultuous times. Reducing CEO turnover means less money lost in search and development, lower severance payouts, and better safeguards on intellectual property. Successful and long-tenured CEOs improve corporate stability and general morale. People want to know that there is a competent captain at the helm. Investment in CEO success through coaching is an insurance policy against disaster. Psychologist coaches really can help CEOs weather the storm.

References:CEO turnover up 22% over last year, the report shows by Valerie Bolden-Barrett.Challenger Survey: CEO Turnover Repor Most CEO Changes on Record.International Coach Federation (ICF): ICF Global Coaching Study.CEO Report: Turnover Up 22% Over Last Year by Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Written by William H. Berman. Heres what youve missed?

Worlds Best CEOs.Worlds Best Companies.

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Helping CEOs Weather the Storms: Psychologist Coaches Wear 4 Hats - CEOWORLD magazine