Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

Winning and Whereabouts of Two Michaels — Waltrip and Jordan – NGSC Sports LLC

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NASCAR, college football, and Michael Jordan may seem like strange blog fellows. But stay with me, portly curmudgeons.

All three became famous in the southern regions of the United States. NASCAR, college football, and Jordan conjure up whiffs of outdoor chicken barbecue tailgates, head-banging booze, and nasty cigars.

In the South winning and losing streaks abound. Nothing smacks of Americana more than who prevails and who gets humbled.

Recall as you no doubt wont that from 1989 to 1998 Prairie View A&M University in Texas lost 80 straight football games, the longest winless streak in college football history.

But that turned out to be a brief downturn compared with the remarkable NASCAR losing streak of retired NASCAR driver Michael Waltrip.

The infamously slow race car driver won exactly none of his first 462 races from 1985 to 2001. You would think after the 0-462 start he might have quit to sell life insurance. Not this Mike, who nobody wanted to be Like. In his 33-year career, he won only four out of 784 races.

To put this load of losing in perspective, his NASCAR- driving brother Darrell snatched first place 84 times in 809 races. Picture Thanksgiving dinners at the Waltrips house: Hey Mike, Ive won 80 more races than you, says Darrell. Pass the mash potatoes.

Richard Petty won 200 races the most all-time. Thats one hundred ninety-six more than Be Unlike Mike.

Yet this black sheep driver remains a big figure in the sport, curiously. Hes been a NASCAR broadcaster and has written articles about the sport.

The question is why? Usually, the guys who get broadcasting gigs are big winners.

Hiring Michael Waltrip in the broadcast booth is like ESPN making Prairie View A&Ms coach, during the 80-game losing streak, the expert color analyst for college football games.

I am not against Michael Waltrip. I actually respect the fact that he kept racing even after not winning 462 consecutive times. Persistence impresses me especially through prolonged losing streaks.

But why so many losses? What was he doing in the car that other guys did better and faster? Was his hand-eye coordination too slow? Was he too risk-averse? Did he not have the guts to accelerate at crucial times in the race in dangerous situations?

Did he just not have a natural talent or work ethic? Should he have sold life insurance? Seems he would have won more often selling these policies even in a business rife with rejections. Did he read Death of Salesman too many times?

If the reason he kept losing was he didnt adjust his pre- and during-race preparations, thats his mistake. No sense doing the same thing wrong over and over.

Whatever the case, as we enter this weekends Darlington Raceway event, the first NASCAR race since the pandemic hit, we should be pondering the life and times of Unlike Mike.

Despite winning only once every 200 races he started a .005 winning percentage he kept driving the car around the oval albeit slowly compared with industry averages.

Most guys wouldnt last 33 years in a profession that resulted in so much hardship. Give him credit. He kept doing what he loved.

Even though he hardly ever won.

Is that winning? How do we define it? Should we look favorably or disparagingly on Waltrip?

The recent ESPN documentary about Be Like Mike Michael Jordan, called The Last Dance, zeroes in on this cosmic question about winning consists of and what price should be paid.

The winner of six NBA championships and arguably the greatest basketball player ever explained how he thought about winning and why he was tough on his teammates:

My mentality was to go out and win at any cost. If you dont want to live that regimented mentality, then you dont need to be alongside me, because Im going to ridicule you until you get on the same level as me. And if you dont get on the same level, then its going to be hell for you.

Winning has a price, Jordan added. And leadership has a price. So I pulled people along when they didnt want to be pulled. I challenged people when they didnt want to be challenged. And I earned that right because [other] teammates came after me. They didnt endure all the things that I endured. Once you joined the team, you lived at a certain standard that I played the game. And I wasnt going to take anything less.

Former teammate Jud Buechler said of Jordan: People were afraid of him. We were his teammates, and we were afraid of him. And there was just fear. The fear factor of MJ was so, so thick.

Jordans words drive to the heart of the matter about what life should or should not be about, how we should we act, how we should treat people, and what price should be paid to win.

No question, Jordan won a ton more than Michael Waltrip. But his teammates feared him. To get what he wanted not necessarily what they wanted he berated and humiliated them. For his own selfish reasons in the name of winning, he mistreated other people.

He punched one of his teammates. He threatened other teammates that if they passed the ball to a certain teammate Jordan didnt want them to, he would never pass them the ball again.

Is that the right way to act? Does the fact that Jordan won, and his badgered teammates benefited financially and emotionally because he willed them to win, make what he did the right way to go about winning?

I dont think so. There is no excuse for being mean to people just for the sake of winning. Jordan scared his teammates into playing harder and better. Scaring people is not appropriate human behavior because it makes them feel bad. No one I know enjoys feeling afraid. Ive seen many coaches use fear on players to get them to play better. It often works. But it isnt right.

No human being has the right to mistreat another for the sake of winning. Think of the longer-term psychological effects on the people being scared. Maybe later in life, they will not be able to shake nightmares and develop paranoia.

They could wake up with images of that person who scared them. Those are serious and horrible experiences that no championship trophy can cure.

I dont know if Waltrip treated his pit crew well. I do know that he should have. Its the right way to get along. He didnt win much at all. Jordan did.

While Im impressed with Jordans drive, Im turned off by his treatment of teammates. A team is about everyone. MJ made it mostly all about his needs not theirs.

The fact that Waltrip kept pursuing his dream after losing so many times is as compelling a sports story as Jordan winning as much as he did.

Loss after loss, he kept getting in the car and racing.

In a similar way, Prairie View A&Ms football team kept putting on their helmets and cleats and playing football games even though they kept losing every Saturday for eight straight years.

In my mind, Waltrip and Prairie View are winners every bit as much as Jordan is maybe more so.

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Winning and Whereabouts of Two Michaels -- Waltrip and Jordan - NGSC Sports LLC

Human Behavior

Heightened disgust sensitivity is associated with greater fear of sin and fear of God – PsyPost

Disgust sensitivity appears to play a role in religious fundamentalism, according to new research published in Frontiers in Psychology. The findings indicate that those who are more prone to feelings of disgust are more likely to feel anxious about committing a sin and express more fear of God.

I was raised in a very religious Lutheran household, but upon moving from Minnesota with its more egalitarian, independent Protestant ethos to Florida, where I attended fundamentalist Christian schools, I entered into an authoritarian religious culture, said study author Patrick A. Stewart, an associate professor of political science at University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

As someone who read, memorized, and studied the Bible on a daily basis, the sermons, lessons, and behavior of those Southern fundamentalists were at odds with the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels, and more coherent with the nation building in the Old Testament which meant sorting people into the people and everyone else (the damned).

This started my interest in politics. As an outsider, I was in a position to see and experience things differently, especially how individuals used religion to increase their personal wealth and power. I was also able to see religion, with its organization of humans and rules regarding correct behavior, as distinct from faith, which is personal and seen in ones behavior. The questions became: Why is this the case? and how does it benefit group members enough to put their self-interest aside?'

Studying the adaptive qualities of emotional response, both predispositions and contextual influences, has long been my focus; disgust which is connected with many discriminatory behaviors is one of those key emotions for understanding human behavior, Stewart explained.

Stewart and his colleagues examined the relationship between disgust sensitivity and the fear of God using a scientific survey and an experiment.

The survey assessed religious fear, disgust sensitivity, anger, and anxiety in 523 participants who were recruited from a large southern American university. The researchers found that sexual disgust and pathogen disgust were associated with fear of sin and fear of God, respectively.

In other words, people who reported being more disgusted by the thought of casual sex or hearing strangers having sex were more likely to agree with statements such as I am afraid of having immoral thoughts. People who reported being more disgusted by stepping in dog poop or seeing mold were more likely to agree with statements such as I worry that God is upset with me.

To get a better understand of potential causal connections, the researchers conducted an experiment in which 175 participants either viewed three disgust-inducing images (dog feces, vomit, a cold sore) or three neutral images (a chair, a tree, a mushroom) before completing an assessment of religious fear.

Stewart and his colleagues found that participants who viewed the disgusting images tended to report significantly greater fear of sin (but not greater fear of God) compared to participants who viewed the neutral images.

Stewart told PsyPost he hopes the findings highlight the importance of the concept of the human behavioral immune system (HBIS), which refers to a variety of psychological processes that serve to protect us as individuals and society from real or perceived pathogens.

Chief amongst these is the emotion of disgust, which helps to prevent the contact with and ingestion of things that might make us ill. Importantly, the human behavioral immune system influences a variety of social and political behaviors, including as demonstrated in our paper religious behaviors.

Specifically, we showed that the ease with which someone experiences the emotion of disgust, particularly in response to everyday contaminants (e.g., dog poop), is related to the degree to which a person endorses attitudes and behaviors related to excessive concern with right or wrong morality, sinful behaviors, and a fear of God (religious scrupulosity). We also showed that religious scrupulosity increased when disgust was provoked, suggesting that disgust may have a causal effect on some religious attitudes, Stewart explained.

Religion is behind some of most beneficial actions humans have engaged in to help their fellow human; it is also behind some truly horrific behaviors. Understanding the roots of these behaviors, and what might lead to both the good and bad of religion is important for those who want individuals to live their best lives.

Perhaps most important for right now, we live in a time where, as more people become sick with coronavirus, higher levels of disgust will likely be prevalent; understand the actions through the human behavioral immune system will be important in avoiding political predations such as those occurring in the wake of the Spanish flu in 1918 (e.g., the spread of fascism and communism both authoritarian governing institutions), Stewart said.

The study like all research includes some limitations. The participants were relatively young and an overwhelming majority identified as Christian.

Our studies draw from populations that are geographically and economically limited; Arkansas, while a southern state with midwestern tendencies, is still rather poor in comparison with the rest of the United States and is also fervently religious in its culture in comparison with other parts of the country. As a result, engaging different regions and socio-economic backgrounds is important, Stewart explained.

Likewise, given religious extremism is not inherent to just Christianity understanding the role of disgust in other cultures and religions will be highly important for avoiding the worst excesses of leaders who abuse people of faiths trust.

Disgust as an emotional response is rather broadly constructed. Different images, smells, scenarios provided might lead to different forms and levels of disgust; understanding the responses beyond the written word, such as through facial displays and/or behavior, is likewise important for better understanding its role in our lives, Stewart added.

The study, The Effect of Trait and State Disgust on Fear of God and Sin, was authored by Patrick A. Stewart, Thomas G. Adams Jr., and Carl Senior.

(Image by Pexels from Pixabay)

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Heightened disgust sensitivity is associated with greater fear of sin and fear of God - PsyPost

Human Behavior

Gestures Heard As Well As Seen – UConn Today

Gesturing with the hands while speaking is a common human behavior, but no one knows why we do it. Now, a group of UConn researchers reports in the May 11 issue of PNAS that gesturing adds emphasis to speechbut not in the way researchers had thought.

Gesturing while speaking, or talking with your hands, is common around the world. Many communications researchers believe that gesturing is either done to emphasize important points, or to elucidate specific ideas (think of this as the drawing in the air hypothesis). But there are other possibilities. For example, it could be that gesturing, by altering the size and shape of the chest, lungs and vocal muscles, affects the sound of a persons speech.

A team of UConn researchers led by former postdoc Wim Pouw (currently at Radboud University in the Netherlands) decided to test whether this idea was true, or just so much hand waving. The team had volunteers move their dominant hand as if they were chopping wood, while continuously saying a as in cinema. They were instructed to keep the a sound as steady as they could.

Despite that instruction, when the team played audio recordings of this to other people, they found the listener could hear the speakers gestures. When the listener was asked to move their arms to the rhythm, their movements matched perfectly with those of the original speaker.

Because of the way the human body is constructed, hand movements influence torso and throat muscles. Gestures are tightly tied to amplitude. Rather than just using your chest muscles to produce air flow for speech, moving your arms while you speak can add acoustic emphasis. And you can hear someones motions, even when theyre trying not to let you.

Some language researchers dont like this idea, because they want language to be all about communicating the contents of your mind, rather than the state of your body. But we think that gestures are allowing the acoustic signal to carry additional information about bodily tension and motion. Its information of another kind, says UConn psychologist and director of the Center for the Ecological Study of Perception and Action James Dixon, one of the authors of the paper.

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Gestures Heard As Well As Seen - UConn Today

Human Behavior

Escalent Launches EVForward to Predict Purchase Behaviors Among the Next Generation of EV Buyers – dbusiness.com

Livonias Escalent has launched EVForward, a new insights platform that helps automakers and utilities plan for the continued growth of electric vehicle market share, such as that for the Tesla Model 3 (pictured). // Photo courtesy of Tesla.

Escalent, a human behavior and analytics firm in Livonia, has launched EVForward, a new insights platform that helps automakers and utilities plan for the continued growth of electric vehicle market share.

The tool provides actionable analysis based on inputs to inform the steps industry players need to take today to inspire broader adoption of EVs and ensure their success with future buyers.

We took a hard look at the types of consumer information companies have been using to power their EV strategies, says Mike Dovorany, automotive and mobility vice president at Escalent. We found insights regarding future buyers specifically, those who arent early adopters were virtually non-existent. EVForward closes that gap and helps automakers and utilities position themselves for success as EV adoption grows over the next decade.

Escalent says EVForward is the largest, most comprehensive study of the next generation of EV buyers, with more than 600 variables encompassing proprietary survey information and Acxiom profiling data. Where other studies have relied on the behaviors of early adopters and self-identified intenders, EVForward is focused on the broader marketplace that will determine key aspects of EV mass adoption, from timing and cost to required features and infrastructure support, according to Escalent.

As a platform, EVForward provides tools for stakeholders to explore the studys findings in ways that best equip them to make strategic decisions, such as custom queries and data manipulation. Additionally, EVForward answers questions, such as:

For more information on EVForward, visit here.

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Escalent Launches EVForward to Predict Purchase Behaviors Among the Next Generation of EV Buyers - dbusiness.com

Human Behavior

Expanding Paved Areas Has an Outsize Effect on Urban Flooding – Scientific American

Blockbuster flooding events such as Hurricane Harvey grab headlines, but urban flooding is a routineand growingproblem: in a 2018 report, 83 percent of municipal stormwater and flood managers surveyed in the U.S. reported such inundation in their areas. Though heavier downpours fueled by climate change are a factor, the expansion of pavement and other impervious surfaces is making the situation worse because it prevents the land from absorbing these torrents of water. On that broad point, researchers largely agree. What they have not agreed on is how much worse.

Now a study published in March in Geophysical Research Letters has found that, on average across the U.S., every time a city expands roads, sidewalks or parking lots by one percentage point, the annual flood magnitude in nearby waterways increases by 3.3 percent. (Some of the floodwater that the ground cannot absorb runs into nearby rivers and streams, so measuring their levels can help track changes in flooding severity.) Hydrologist Annalise Blum and her co-authors say the mathematical model they used makes their finding more accurate than previous studies. And it could help answer other questions about human impacts on water systemsan emerging field called sociohydrology.

Blum says previous research that looked at just one or two waterways was too narrowly focused to parse how much various human interventionssuch as paved surfaces, dams or leveescontribute to flooding. To untangle the role of impervious areas from the noise of other influences, Blum and her colleaguesincluding Paul Ferraro, an economist at Johns Hopkins Universityused an extremely large data set covering 39 years of records from 280 stream gauges, which measure water levels in rivers and streams. They also adapted a statistical model more common to economic studies. Economists use this technique to isolate how a particular policy might alter human behavior. Blum and her team tweaked it to leverage differences among all the stream-gauge data, thus isolating the role of paving from other human modifications. By using data in both time and space dimensions, we were able to soak up all of that noise and isolate the causal effect, says Blum, who was a postdoc at Johns Hopkins when she conducted the new study and is now a AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow.

Maura Allaire, a water economist at the University of California, Irvine, who was not involved with the new study, says the research design is a major contribution to natural sciences and hydrology in particular. Conducting similar analyses for other human-made contributors to flooding could help cities take targeted steps to ameliorate them. These approaches could include discouraging building in a floodplain if that was shown to be a dominant factor or increasing green infrastructure and permeable surfaces throughout a city to absorb more rainwater.

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Expanding Paved Areas Has an Outsize Effect on Urban Flooding - Scientific American

Human Behavior

Waymo Develops a Machine Learning Model to Predict the Behavior of Other Road Users for its Self-Driving Vehicles – FutureCar

Author: Eric Walz

The emerging field of machine learning has important uses in a variety of fields, such as finance, healthcare and business. For self-driving cars, machine learning is an important tool that can be used to predict the behavior of other road users, such as other human drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists.

For Alphabet subsidiary Waymo, machine learning is one of its most important tools in its arsenal to build the world's best autonomous driving system it calls "Waymo Driver" that performs better than a human driver.

However, unlike a computer, human drivers have the ability to anticipate and predict what others on the road might do and can learn from past experiences, something that's difficult to train a computer to do and requires lots of processing power. So Waymo developed is own machine learning model that can do the same job and with less compute.

For example, when approaching an intersection a human driver might anticipate that another driver traveling in the opposite direction will make a left turn in their path or a pedestrian may enter the roadway. By anticipating this behavior the driver can mentally prepare to brake if needed. Predicting these types of behaviors for a computer is challenging for engineers working on self-driving vehicles.

That's where machine learning comes into play, allowing Waymo's autonomous vehicles to make better decisions. Machine learning is commonly used to model and reduce some of this complexity, thereby enabling the self-driving system to learn new types of behavior.

Waymo collects data from the real world from driving millions of miles and billions more miles in computer simulation built from data collected from its fleet. To navigate, Waymo's autonomous vehicles rely on highly complex, high-definition maps and vehicle sensor data. However, this data alone is not enough to make predictions, according to Waymo.

Simplifying a Complex Scene

The behavior of other road users is often complicated and difficult to capture with just map-derived traffic rules because driving patterns vary and human drivers often break the rules they're supposed to follow.

The most popular way to incorporate highly detailed, centimeter-level maps into behavior prediction models is by rendering the map into pixels and encoding all of the scene information, such as traffic signs, crosswalks, road lanes, and road boundaries, with a convolutional neural network (CNN).

However, this method requires a tremendous amount of processor power and takes time (latency), which is not ideal for a self-driving vehicle that needs to make decisions in a fraction of a second.

To address these issues and make better predictions Waymo developed a new model it calls "VectorNet", that provides more accurate behavior predictions while using less compute than CNNs, the company says. VectorNet essentially takes a highly complex scene and simplifies it using vectors so it can be processed with less computing power.

Map features can be simplified into vectors, which are easier for machine learning models to process.

This complex scene can be broken down into vectors to make is easier to process.

For example, an intersection crosswalk can be represented as a polygon defined by several points and a stop sign can be represented by a single point. Road curves can be approximately represented as polylines by "connected the dots." These polylines are then further split into vector fragments.

In this way, Waymo's engineers are able to represent all the road features and the trajectories of the other objects as a set of simplified vectors instead of a highly complex scene, which is much more difficult to work with. With this simplified view, Waymo designed VectorNet to effectively process its vehicle sensor data and map inputs.

The neural network is implemented to capture the relationships between various vectors. These relationships occur when, for example, a car enters an intersection or a pedestrian approaches a crosswalk. Through learning such interactions between road features and object trajectories, VectorNet's data-driven, machine learning-based approach allows Waymo to better predict other agents' behavior by learning from different behavior patterns.

Waymo proposed a novel hierarchical graph neural network. The first level is composed of polyline subgraphs. Then VectorNet gathers information within each polyline. In the second level called "global interaction graph", VectorNet exchanges information among polylines.

Here is the simplfied intersection with the input vectors that are converted to polyline subgraphs.

To further boost VectorNet's capabilities and understanding of the real world, Waymo trained the system to learn from context clues to make inferences about what could happen next around the vehicle to make improved behavior predictions.

For example, important scene information can often be obscured while driving, such as a tree branch blocking a stop sign. When this happens to a human driver, they can draw upon past experiences about the possibility of the stop sign being there, although they cannot see it. Machine learning makes these types of predictions using inference.

To further improve the accuracy of VectorNet, Waymo randomly masks out map features during training, such as a stop sign at a four-way intersection and requiring the CNN to complete it.

In this way, VectorNet can further improve the Waymo Driver's understanding of the world around it and be better prepared for any unexpected situations.

The intersection is broken down to create a global interaction graph.

Waymo validated the performance of VectorNet with the task of trajectory prediction, an important task for a self-driving vehicle that interacts with human drivers on the road. Compared with ResNet-18, one of the most advanced and widely used CNNs, VectorNet achieves up to 18% better performance while using only 29% of the parameters and consuming just 20% of the computation when there are 50 agents (other vehicles, pedestrians) per scene, Waymo reported.

Also this week, Waymo announced its latest funding round of $750 million. With the new funding, Waymo has raised $3 billion since March. The company is working on self-driving cars, commercial robotaxis and self-driving trucks that will all be powered by its advanced AI software.

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Waymo Develops a Machine Learning Model to Predict the Behavior of Other Road Users for its Self-Driving Vehicles - FutureCar

Human Behavior

David Shribman: In the quiet, nature roars back – Hastings Tribune

Herds of goats abandoning their habitat in the Great Orme headland and wandering into the Welsh coastal town of Llandudno. Bobcats and ravens spotted in parts of Yosemite that just weeks ago were the province only of humans. A coyote appearing in the backyard of a suburban home in Westchester County, New York. The endangered least tern and snowy plovers turning up in Southern California, where whimbrels and ring-billed gulls are making unusual appearances.

Is nature roaring back to reclaim its sovereignty on a planet scarred by the novel coronavirus?

It is catching me off guard that this sort of thing can happen this quickly, said Jerry Dennis, a naturalist in northern Michigan. But it doesnt take very much time. Nature is strong and resilient. We will see more of this the longer this goes on.

The human species is in partial vernal hibernation, retreating to its nesting places, sheltering in place, surrendering much of its dominion over the Earth, at least for a season. There is no real evidence that the withdrawal is anything but temporary, though the Paris-based International Energy Agency reports that global carbon-dioxide emissions are on track to decline by 8%, the largest annual reduction ever, returning to levels not seen in a full decade. Nor is there any suggestion the Earth is healing from a century of industrial surge.

But if nothing else, the planet is taking a breather.

Around now, the grizzlies come out in Yellowstone National Park, eating winter-kill elk and bison carcasses left out on the plains. This year they are doing so unimpeded by human traffic.

It is great that Yellowstone gets a rest, said David Quammen, a nature writer and former professor of Western American Studies at Montana State University. That rest may help the grizzlies come out of the back country and into the front country because there are no people driving around. It can only be good for them. Maybe we will come out of the far side of this thing and say we need to recalibrate our relationship with the rest of the world.

Of course it is possible, even likely, the rebound in emissions may be larger than the decline. The wildlife liberated by the human retreat may itself retreat from the backyards into the back country.

And this return-of-nature phenomenon may be just an industrial-world phenomenon. While the newly emboldened wildlife of Western cities brings joy in these dark times and a welcome reminder of natures resilience, the worlds wildlife wont be saved by a temporary economic lull, said Charlie Gardner, a researcher at the University of Kents Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology. To achieve that, were going to have to ensure conservation moves to the top of the agenda in the post-pandemic world.

And yet the anecdotes multiply.

Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University, saw a fox wandering into her backyard in Carlisle, Massachusetts, a suburb only 26 miles northwest of Boston.

Because we are staying home, animals realize that those stupid people are in hibernation and that they can go back out safely, she said. Its like the Munchkins coming out in The Wizard of Oz. But we also know this virus jumped from wild species to people and thus is also an example of nature fighting back in this case reacting to animals being crowded out and causing more contacts with people.

Carl Hiaasen, whose Florida novels often include environmental themes, is seeing an unusual stream of cardinals and woodpeckers at his home.

Theres an amazing influx of bird life I didnt notice before the pandemic arrived, and down the street there are a pair of ancient gopher tortoises that we didnt used to see, Hiaasen said in a telephone conversation the other day. In the recusing of the human race, they have figured out we werent the threat we once were.

Former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and his wife, Wendy, are avid birders. Were getting a lot of emails from people who know we watch for birds, he told me. These people are slowing down and for the first time noticing and taking an interest in birds.

Its happening all over. We are hearing more birdsong, said Paul Wiegman, a southwestern Pennsylvania naturalist. There isnt the constant din of traffic in the background. Its nice to hear that in the spring.

Some of this is imaginary, to be sure, but some of it is real. Byron Shissler, a Fort Hill, Pennsylvania, wildlife biologist who has conducted studies throughout the eastern United States, said that animals react decisively to human behavior.

In places that normally have human activity that has been restrained, there will be more wildlife, he said. We noticed, for example, that deer retreated from parks when people were present and came out when the people retreated. It is natural behavior. Deer become more nocturnal when people are around.

And so while all this may just be temporary it may simply be that in our leisure and idleness we are hearing birdsong that always was there, and noticing wildlife that was just beyond our ken it nonetheless is incontrovertible that there is a small but discernible uptick in our apprehension of nature, and of our appreciation of the natural world.

The Rev. Jim Antal, former president of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ and author of Climate Church, Climate World, published in 2018, noticed an American woodcock in his yard as he changed his snow tires in Norwich, Vermont, the other day. It got him to thinking, and to hoping.

In just about every religion, the Earth is the Lords, and creatures are as much Gods creation as we are, he said. With our retreat into our homes, theres a reclaiming of the Earth by the creatures of the Earth. Wouldnt it be wonderful if humanity woke up and saw how much better life is if we are conscious of sharing it with all of creation, not just with other humans?

This spring has been a great social experiment in communal living, in family cohesion, in national purpose, in personal group selflessness. It also has opened our ears to birdsong and sharpened our eyes to nature. It may not have changed the Earth. But it may have changed us.

And isnt that a mourning dove I see outside my window right now?

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David Shribman: In the quiet, nature roars back - Hastings Tribune

Human Behavior

DEM Offers Tips on Preventing Conflicts with Coyotes – Newport Buzz

Keenly intelligent, extraordinarily adaptable, and willing to eat almost any available food whether natural, including small animals, birds, insects, and fruits; scavenged roadkill; or easily obtainable human-provided sources such as garbage, pet food, birdseed, and compost Rhode Islands coyotes are on the move again.

Typically, adult male and female coyotes breed in late winter and the female gives birth to a litter of 4 to 8 pups in April. Consisting of the adult pair and the pups, this social unit will be maintained until the pups become yearlings and disperse on their own or get booted out by their parents. Noisy, hungry pups must be fed. That means adult coyotes will be seen and heard foraging and hunting for food in rural, suburban, and even urban Rhode Island neighborhoods over the next several months. As daylight hours increase, adult coyotes may spend more time actively foraging during daytime than they would at other times of the year. The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) advises Rhode Islanders that the No. 1 key to minimizing interactions and conflicts with coyotes is reducing food sources available to them, either intentionally or unintentionally around our homes and neighborhoods. Coyotes that rely on natural food sources remain wild and wary of humans. Feeding coyotes or any wild animal however, makes them less fearful of people and they can become casual or even bold when encountering people.

If you see coyotes that are bold and brazen, its often directly related to intentional feeding or easy and reliably available food sources associated with human activities, said DEM wildlife biologist Charles Brown. Intentionally feeding wild animals habituates them, causes them to lose their inherent fear of humans, and may lead to brazen behavior. It also leads to a whole series of problems, including frequenting areas close to homes and preying on domestic animals such as chickens, cats, and small dogs.

Coyotes play an important ecological role by controlling populations of rodents, resident geese, and in some cases white-tailed deer, Brown said. Shy and elusive by nature, most coyotes usually make every attempt to avoid interactions with people. Coyote attacks on people are very rare. On the other hand, more than 4.5 million people are bitten by dogs each year in the United States, over half of dog bite injuries occur at home with dogs that are familiar to us, and over 800,000 receive medical attention for dog bites, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

HOW TO CUT DOWN ON COYOTE CONFLICTS

Remove attractants from your yard. This means removing all food and water sources like pet food dishes and birdfeeders and keeping barbecue grills clean of grease. Dont put meat or sweet food scraps in your compost pile, and keep compost in secure, vented containers. Put your trash in containers with secure lids and store them in sheds and garages away from doors if possible. Put garbage for pickup outside on the morning of collection, not the night before. If you have fruit trees, pick up fallen fruit.

Cut back brushy edges and dense weeds from around your yard and structures like sheds. These areas provide cover for coyotes and their prey.

Chase coyotes off your property. Keep coyotes wild by hazing them, which means doing things to scare them or chase them away. According to the website CoyoteSmarts.org (or here on Facebook), the following actions are effective hazing tactics:

o Be as big and loud as possible. Do not run or turn your back.

o Wave your arms, clap your hands, and shout in an authoritative voice.

o Make noise by banging pots and pans or using an air horn or whistle. The sounds also can alert the neighbors.

o Throw small stones, sticks, tennis balls, or anything else you can lay your hands on. Remember: the intent is to scare and not to injure.

o Shake or throw a coyote shaker a soda can filled with nuts and bolts, pennies, or pebbles and sealed with duct tape.

Protecting pets. Keep pets, particularly cats, indoors. Coyotes dont distinguish between domestic and wild animals and are likely to view cats and small dogs as potential food and larger dogs as competition. For the safety of your pets, always keep them leashed when outdoors and feed them indoors. Outdoor feeding can attract many wild animals. Do not leave small dogs outside unattended, especially at night.

When confronted by a coyote. Stand up and look big. Wave your arms. Yell loudly. Dont lose your head. Keeping an assertive posture and making eye contact will convey a message of authority that coyotes will typically respect. Maintain eye contact. If the coyote does not retreat, walk slowly away toward the house. Do not turn your back on the animal.

Report aggressive behavior. Coyotes that exhibit bold or aggressive behavior towards humans should be treated with caution and reported to authorities. Also, animals that appear or act aggressively or are noticeably sick should be reported to the DEM Division of Law Enforcement (222-3070) or to your local animal control officer. Also, any contact between a coyote and a dog or other domestic animal should be immediately reported to your veterinarian and animal control officer.

Never feed coyotes. Feeding coyotes or other wild animals causes behavioral changes that will almost certainly cause unintended problems for neighbors and the animals that were meant to benefit. Report neighbors that are feeding coyotes to the DEM Division of Law Enforcement (222-3070) or to your local animal control officer.

Adult female coyotes typically weigh 33-40 pounds, while males typically weigh 34-47 pounds. They often look heavier because of their thick fur. The first appearance of coyotes in Rhode Island occurred in the mid-1960s, part of a range expansion into the eastern United States that began at the end of the 19th century. Coyotes can currently be found in all Rhode Island communities except New Shoreham. They may hunt and travel alone or sometimes will travel as a group, usually an adult pair with their offspring from the most recent litter. In our area, coyotes are mostly nocturnal, mainly to avoid interactions with people. They remain active year-round and do not hibernate. Coyote pairs are territorial and will exclude other coyotes from their established territory.

Coyotes are now well established as part of our native fauna and unless you live on Block Island, you can expect that coyotes occur in your town or neighborhood and at some point, you may actually see one in your yard, on the bike path, or crossing a farm field, said DEM wildlife biologist Charles Brown. Not all coyotes exhibit bad traits and those that do have likely been encouraged or conditioned to behave that way because of human behavior.

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Human Behavior

Beyond fear toward trust: Using dual role of emotion in COVID-19 mitigation, recovery – The Jakarta Post – Jakarta Post

Transparency and empathy are perceived as essential to building the public trust that is necessary to building effective COVID-19 policies. While transparency has been discussed broadly and at length, discussions on empathy have been rather absent in the political arena.

Empathy is just one of the emotional responses to the unprecedented pandemic. Fear of death, distrust of the government, concerns over social chaos, anxiety over job loss and a global economic crisis are some other emotional responses to the possible impacts of COVID-19. World leaders have used phrases like take courage, dont panic and be kind in their speeches to build public trust and help people look beyond fear.

However, COVID-19 has presented an entirely new and unprecedented challenge to all societies and governments. Lack of knowledge about SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease, has caused confusion around the world.

No country is immune to the virus, and this has prompted a variety of human responses, including among policymakers. Some policymakers have a grasp on the issues at hand, while others have missed the mark.

This essay examines how understanding the roles emotion plays in human behavior can help understand how decisions are made in the context of state-society relations during the pandemic. Understanding the psychological aspects of decision-making and information delivery with regard to COVID-19 is critical to understanding how people might behave toward certain policies, such as lockdowns and physical distancing.

Emotion, reason and policy

According to the American Psychological Association,emotionis a complex reaction pattern, involving experiential, behavioral, and physiological elementsby which an individual attempts to deal with a personally significant matter or event.

In general, however, emotion is often viewed as negative, bad, weak and irrational. Many philosophers and scholars also perceive emotion as opposite and subordinate to reason, or rationality. Emotion is to do with consequences, mistakes and misconceptions. This is the characteristic that Jonathan Mercer has identified as epiphenomenal anda source of irrationality.

In fact, psychologists and neuroscientists have found that emotion determines our worldview and helps us make decisions, as it is intertwined with cognition (emotion as rational). Emotion is also part of an efficient strategy for gaining material advantages (emotion as strategy).

Although this approach is rather instrumentalist, emotion is recognized as part of the solution rather than merely the cause of problems. In the decision-making process, emotion helps us to better understand how actors will frame information, develop a sense of identity and constitute a political community, and how a community can heal after trauma.This also implies that emotion is not limited to individuals and that it has a social dimension; for example, when people relate to collective situations such as the transboundary COVID-19 pandemic. In this case, since a nation-state is an imagined political construct run by human beings, state behavior can also be analyzed through the emotional aspects.

Furthermore, emotion is important in looking at how society might judge policy. Accordingto the introduction to an article by Richard D. French published onthe LSE blog, ordinary citizens judge policies based upon the meaning they attach to it, rather than undertaking a rigorous rational analysis.They refer to their own experiences when they react to policy, and this indicates whether they will obey or disobey a policy the government has made.

Indonesias series of misconceptions

In the first two months of 2020, Indonesia rejected the very notion that COVID-19 would emerge in the country. Indonesian Health Minister Terawan Putranto assured the public that COVID-19 was unlikely to emerge in Indonesia and that there was no government cover-up, and instead called on the Indonesian people to enjoylife, eat well and remember to pray.

Denial was also indicated in the series of statements made by other ministers, who joked thatIndonesians were immune to COVID-19since they had a restricted license for bringing it into the country.The compassionless joking eventually stopped when the countrys first two confirmed cases of COVID-19 were announced onMarch 2.

After declaring a national emergency on March 14, President Joko Jokowi Widodo admitted that the government was withholding some informationto prevent public hysteria and avoid stigmatizing people who had contracted the disease.The day before, another decision was made that engendered misperception when the government declared the 188 Indonesian crew members of theWorld Dreamcruise ship as Coronavirus Immunity Ambassadors who would inspire all Indonesian citizens to live healthily to boost theirimmunity.

According tothe DroneEmprit analysis published in early Marchon emotion and public perception regarding the governments approach to COVID-19 mitigation (based on data gathered from March 7 to 14, 2020), trust issues dominated public perception, followed by surprise, anger and fear (Graphic 1). Public trust primarily concerned the accuracy and transparency the governments data, which illustrates President Jokowis misconception about transparent data. People tend to demand transparency when they are afraid; without it, the government loses public trust.

Meanwhile, the public reacted with surprise to a dramatic increase in the death toll. Their anger was directed toward those who politicized COVID-19, such as social mediabuzzer(an Indonesian term referring those who generate buzz on social media) and politicians. Fear not only relates to public trust in government, but also describes the helplessness citizens feel about their incomprehension of the situation.

Graphic 1: The Indonesian public's emotional response to COVID-19 (Drone Emprit (2020)/via CSIS)

These emotional responses show how trust issues have come to dominate state-society relations in Indonesia amid the COVID-19 epidemic in the country. This behavioral relationship between the government and the public is by no means isolated to COVID-19, and it must be acknowledged that state-society relations in Indonesia have been tense during the Jokowi administration.

However, this does not mean that Indonesia is at all helpless. Although the stigmatization of COVID-19 patients, aggressive objections to burying the COVID-19 dead and civil disobedience exists with regard to the governments COVID-19 policies, civil society in Indonesia has embraced the traditional spirit and culture ofgotong royong(mutual cooperation)through volunteerism and crowdfunding campaigns. Therefore, compassion and resilience prevails in society during this difficult time, beyond the ideas of the nation-state and governance.

Beyond Indonesia: Emotion and constructive COVID-19 mitigation

While there is no one-size-fits-all policy to combat COVID-19, applying the lessons learned is surely invaluable under the current circumstances. One of Indonesias takeaways is to adopt a more sensitive, compassionate approach to communicating information on the coronavirus.

Sensitivity to emotion can be employed in several ways to help citizens overcome their fears and to rebuild public trust as the essence of successful policymaking.

First, it prompts the development of collective identities in government and society. World leaders have adopted a compassionate approach to public discourse with an aim to reduce anxiety among their citizens who do not understand the kind of enemy they are facing.

Countries like Singapore and South Korea have experienced previous outbreaks of coronaviruses (SARS and MERS), so they were generally better prepared. Although the characteristics of the COVID-19 virus may still be unknown, various policies have proved relatively effective at flattening the curve of infection.

In awebinar on South Koreas COVID-19 experienceproduced by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies Indonesia (CSIS Indonesia), Gil H. Park of Daegu University says that sensitivity to emotion played an important role. The government must have a communication strategy based on a compassionate approach, which will allay the public's fear and anger while presenting fact-driven information that is gathered and delivered by experts and the private sector. South Korea has applied social distancing to family unitsto alleviate individual fears of becoming a virus spreader, which implies the governments compassion and consciousness in avoiding blaming others.

Singapore has taken the opposite approach. Although its government has shown great performance in providing public facilities and enforcing public compliance, some Singaporeans have taken to WhatsApp to scapegoat foreign workers as COVID-19 spreaders.

Success stories are not limited to high-income countries like Singapore and South Korea; take Vietnam, for example. According to anarticle inThe Diplomatby Minh Vu and Bich T. Tran, the secret to Vietnams low number of confirmed cases is its proactive approach to prevention through evidence-based policymaking and the mobilization of nationalism. Through the latter, Vietnam framed the virus as a common foreign enemy.

In adopting a sensitive approach, the government reframed the publics fear of COVID-19 in the narrative of a unified community and correctly co-opted the Vietnamese sense of nationalism (as a sociopolitical dimension of emotion) into its approach to COVID-19 mitigation. Nationalism, without disregarding the importance of transparency, became its strategy to mobilize a collective humanitarian response against the virus.

Second,emotions reflected in the representations of women. According toThe Guardians article onfemale politicians and COVID-19 management, New Zealand's Prime Minister has been praised for her science-based, empathetic approach to risk communication. Ever since the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings, Jacinda Ardern has become well known for her feminine style of politics that is empathetic, decisive and down-to-earth. Another example is Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wens warm, authoritative style. The two leaders styles have engendered trust and compliance among their citizens and even political opponents. Thatfemale leaders have a special touch in managing the epidemic is, however, ahypothesisthat does not apply toAung San Suu Kyi.

Third,a compassionate approach in the discourse on global solidarity can be used as a strategy to gain material advantages for COVID-19 mitigation and recovery. During the confusion of the early months of the pandemic, states took the every man for himself approach.As Stephen Walt writes inForeign Policy,the pandemic has reified the importance of the state asthe main actors in global politics andmade effective cooperation among states difficult to achieve. On gaining more insight into the impacts of COVID-19 on externalities, however, states realize that they need international cooperation.

This behavior shows how foreign policymakers were as surprised as ordinary citizens were by the magnitude of the coronavirus. For example, ASEAN has gradually gained ground on the regional pandemic through its spirit of solidarity as seen inthe Special ASEAN-China Foreign Ministers' Meeting on Coronavirus Disease, the ASEAN Special Summit and the ASEAN Plus Three Special Summit. However, these platforms are still in the proposal stage for material advantages such as research and development, economic recovery packages, and medical and food supplies. Solidarity, in this sense, is an instrumentalist discourse.

Reflections and a way forward for Indonesia

Destructive emotions in state-society relations are counterproductive to curbing the spread of COVID-19. The Indonesian government and people should redirect such emotions as part of its anticipative measures and toward building resiliency. Emotion should reinforce a collective motivation to cope with COVID-19, not disrupt social cohesion.

The government should put an end to its policy inconsistency and instead turn to scientific data, translating it into more digestible language so all Indonesians can comprehend and respond to its policies. The government must start to adopt sensitivity to emotion as an approach to policymaking and political communication, not just on COVID-19 but also other issues.

If the government continues to engage influencers to deliver their policies to the public, this effort must utilize knowledge-based information that places people's lives and livelihoods at its heart, rather than its aim to maintain a good public image that only causes ire among its citizens.

As regards multilateralism, Indonesia has taken an active role in ASEANs solidarity narrative in proposing the COVID-19 trust fund. Although the future of this mechanism is indistinct due to the ASEAN members seeming lack of political willingness, it should maintain the narrative of compassion to fund the fight against COVID-19 through post-pandemic recovery.

On a societal level, the governments inability to reach its citizens in their everyday lives should motivate civil society to establishcivil resilience, because a resilient state and economy lies in the resilience of its citizens. What has been done to this point through altruistic community actions should be highly appreciated; nevertheless, challenges still remain insocial stigmatization and civil disobedience. Civil society should continue withcompassionate engagement and action, as it possesses the necessary collective emotions and shares the language and understanding.

To conclude, COVID-19 is a global stress test forall governments, societies and people in the world. Emotion plays a Janus-faced role in the pandemic: It causes public distrust and erroneous policymaking processes on the one hand; on the other, it encourages social unity and community engagement among the efforts overcome the multidimensional global crisis toward anticipating a similar challenge in the future. Since no one knows when the pandemic will end and what kinds of long-term impacts it will cause, psychological resilience is tremendously needed as a constructive way forward for both government and society.

***Research Intern, Department of International Relations, CSIS Indonesia

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.

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Beyond fear toward trust: Using dual role of emotion in COVID-19 mitigation, recovery - The Jakarta Post - Jakarta Post

Human Behavior

‘White Lines’ Review: lex Pina’s show is an exercise in discomfort and no amount of sex and drugs soften that – MEAWW

Spoilers for White Lines

Picture this: Its the middle of nowhere. Just rice farms for miles and miles in rural Spain. In the middle of this is a man chained to a giant stack of loudspeakers. Three men, wearing noise-canceling headphones gently headbang as the shackled man is tortured with increasing decibels of his own music. Till his eardrums burst with a sickening thud, and blood gushes out, and the scene goes unnervingly silent.

Picture this, as well: An attractive and rich middle-aged woman, while talking to a powerful priest, questions his belief in God while masturbating him inside his pants, with a haughtily bored expression on her face.

lex Pinas new crime drama on Netflix, White Lines, doesnt try to shock. It tries to create discomfort. Its not always torture porn. Its human behavior too. Theres a scene where old friends gather together after two decades to try and move past an event, a figure, from their old lives. The dinner party that was supposed to be an intense affair, however, turns into a festival of uncomfortable revelations and shameful emotions.

The ten-episode first season of the show follows Zoe Walker (Laura Haddock), as she tries to uncover the mystery behind the two-decade-old death of her brother Axel (Tom Rhys Harries), a supposedly free-spirited DJ from Manchester who moves to Ibiza in Spain. The show shifts between the present and the past, often juxtaposing thematically connected events, to make sense of things.

Discomfort is part of Axels narrative. In the first half of the show, Axel is portrayed as this talented artist from a working-class family with dreams of finding freedom through his music. He is devilishly handsome, charming and a doting elder brother. Hes a rebel. Hes everything a distorted loving memory would remember him as. But as the show progresses, we realize thats only half the picture.

Hes a masochist. Hes a hedonist. Hes manipulative. Hes arrogant. Hes an addict. Hes all things bad you can imagine. And this revelation doesnt build up to a climax. Its unloaded on viewers in swift takes. The whiplash of this new information is as uncomfortable as it gets.

Theres visible discomfort in other parts of the show as well, the more non-Axel aspects. Take the Calafat family for example. They control the nightlife and the drug trade in Ibiza. They are, for all intents and purposes, royalty there. But inside their Spanish revival mansion, there is a mother who is manipulative and controlling (Beln Lpez), a son who has an obvious Oedipal complex (Juan Diego Botto), a daughter who despises the aforementioned two (Marta Milans), and a patriarch whose hatred for his son only rivals the reversal of that equation (Pedro Casablanc). Even when they are civilized with each other, the inherited trauma the children share combined with passive and active aggression from the parents, is more disconcerting to watch than Donald Trumps press briefings.

But the more uncomfortable thing to witness is the protagonist herself. Zoe suffers from depression. Shes lived her entire life with her self-worth chipping away, one morsel at a time. Shes unsure of her decisions, and shes unsure of her wants and needs. Its not the self-doubt thats the problem though. Its how her immediate family treats it. Her husband and her father, out of love and care, strip her off all agency, gaslighting her on every step. Its as if they want her to depend on them, even at the cost of her not being who she could have been.

White Lines is a crime drama. But its so much more than that. Its an almost-ten-hour-long journey that while engrosses you, also makes your skin crawl. Not with gory visuals. No. There is some of that, but nothing overwhelming. The show does that with what it perceives as nothing but the feelings and emotions and thoughts that inhabit the innermost sanctum of our minds. And no amount of sun-soaked beaches, gratuitous nudity, and parties soften that blow.

White Lines is available for viewing on Netflix.

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'White Lines' Review: lex Pina's show is an exercise in discomfort and no amount of sex and drugs soften that - MEAWW