Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

The Best of 2021: Our Top 10 Films – Hyperallergic

With lockdowns continuing throughout the year, filmmakers, distributors, and cinephiles had to keep finding creative ways to engage their love of the form. Despite fluctuating restrictions on festivals and theaters, some terrific movies released in 2021. A few frequent Hyperallergic contributors and staff members came together to pick their favorites. Dan Schindel, Associate Editor for Documentary

***

Some filmmakers have their work frequently compared to dreams. Apichatpong Weerasethakul makes films that feel like daytime reveries those moments of lost time when you get so deep in your own head that the world around you seems to become heightened, even as nothing has changed. Appropriately for a story about a woman plagued by multiple possible sensory illusions, it is finely tuned to every facet of its soundscape, its images patient and indelible. Rarely have the real and unreal melded so seamlessly. Dan Schindel

Opens in theaters December 27.

Rysuke Hamaguchis two features for this year are twinned in more ways than one, their materials mirroring each other. Hamaguchis films, such as Asako I & II, have often been about some type of recurrence, and his Haruki Murakami adaptation (Drive My Car) and anthology of shorts (Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy) engage with ghosts of the past in manners both amusing and sublime. The characters struggle with lingering regrets, all their inexplicable and too-human behavior captured with keen observation and mesmerizing ambiguity. Kambole Campbell

Currently playing in select theaters. Read our piece on both films and Hamaguchis work.

Leos Carax made his English-language debut in unpredictable style when this musical masterwork opened Cannes this year. Written and scored by legendary genre-defying duo Sparks, the film fully commits to its promise as a sung-through epic, with Adam Driver giving the performance of a lifetime as a machiavellian comedian. Drawing from grand operatic tradition and the murky power struggles of Hollywood, the end result is singular, an irreverent and deeply melancholy performance about love, fatherhood, and the masculine urge to destroy everything in the pursuit of power. Hannah Strong

Available to stream. Read our first and second reviews.

It is inexpressibly gratifying that Tsai Ming-liang has returned to feature fiction. Few can make quotidian gestures the preparation of vegetables, or a lengthy acupuncture session so mesmerizing. In a time marked by widespread loneliness, this movie arrived as a poignant look at solitude as embodied (embodied being a key term, given Tsais emphasis on physicality) in two very different men. When they come together for one searingly intimate encounter, it lands with full emotional force. Dan Schindel

Available to stream. Read our review.

Many of Robert Greenes documentaries, such as Bisbee 17 and Kate Plays Christine, have interrogated what it means to reenact. Here he elliptically traces the process of his own filmmaking, as he helps a group of six men who each use the same few actors and crew to stage very different scenes unpacking the circumstances of, and their responses to, their sexual abuse by Catholic priests. (In some cases, they even portray each others abusers.) With the films coda revealing the progress or lack thereof in their respective legal cases, its painfully honest about both the potential and limits of catharsis in art. Kambole Campbell

Available to stream. Read our interview with director Robert Greene and three of the films leads.

A disquieting essay on what it means to perceive and be perceived in the contemporary US, where questions around visibility are increasingly haunted by its omnipresent surveillance panopticon. Only through the oblique approach that Theo Anthony takes (avoiding direct depictions of police brutality, looking at everything but the images themselves) can we hope to really grapple with seemingly contradictory elements, like how body cameras have somehow reduced police accountability. Its all in the eye of the beholder, but some beholders are more powerful than others. Dan Schindel

Available to stream. Read our review and our interview with director Theo Anthony.

Mia Hansen-Lves latest borrows its title from the nickname given to Fr, the small community off the coast of Sweden where arthouse titan Ingmar Bergman lived and created some of his most influential films. Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth play a filmmaker couple, Chris and Tony, who travel to Fr, and the narrative eschews convention by also incorporating Chriss latest screenplay as a film within the film, blurring the lines between whats real and fiction. It takes advantage of Frs beguiling landscapes to create a lyrical portrait of the intersection between creativity and romance. Hannah Strong

Available to stream.

Returning to the San Fernando Valley of Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch-Drunk Love, Paul Thomas Anderson creates a romance for the ages. Here its the backdrop for a blossoming friendship between a directionless 20-something (Alana Haim in a luminescent debut performance for the records) and a charismatic entrepreneurial teen actor (Cooper Hoffman, ditto). They dine with superstars, volunteer for politicians, and hawk waterbeds in a loose, effortlessly charming evocation of 1970s Los Angeles. Sweet but never saccharine, its a testament to the heady but fleeting magic of youth. Hannah Strong

Currently playing in select theaters. Read our review.

Jessica Beshir returns to Harar, the city where she grew up, to survey how its changed since she and her family left. What she finds is a dark foreboding of the future for many parts of the Global South should climate change continue unabated, with farmers forced to adapt to changing conditions by replacing coffee crops with khat. Few movies to come out this year so precisely depict the relationship between people and their land. Dan Schindel

Available to stream. Read our review.

Perhaps the biggest populist documentary hit this year, but that palatability by no means suggests technical simplicity. Ahmir Questlove Thompsons directorial debut is extraordinarily assured, often breathtaking in its arrangement, beginning with a sequence intercutting a wild Stevie Wonder drum solo with a newsreel montage encompassing the sociopolitical context of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. He cuts footage of that forgotten event with new recollections from attendees and even the booked performers. It emphasizes the far-reaching emotional effect of the festival, and how painful it is that it essentially disappeared.Told with an exciting and propulsive rhythm, the film is a galvanizing reclamation of history. Kambole Campbell

Available to stream. Read our review.

Many of us also loved and highly recommend Titane, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?, The Power of the Dog, About Endlessness, The Worst Person in the World, Petite Maman, and Cmon Cmon.

See the article here:
The Best of 2021: Our Top 10 Films - Hyperallergic

Human Behavior

Feedback from December 9 and Beyond – Salt Lake City Weekly

Women Need Opportunities, Not PraiseEver since its founding, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been exclusively governed by mena phenomenon by no means exclusive to the LDS tradition. In its 1995 "Proclamation to the World," the church states that "fathers are to preside ... and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children."

But despite obvious power differences, LDS women are often framed as "spiritual and moral giants" who have profound gifts and abilities. In contrast, LDS men are frequently portrayed as hard-headed, prideful, even stupid. Many church members can recall a general authority, bishop or stake president giving a talk in which he vehemently praises his wife while debasing himself. And it is often said that men need the priesthood to keep them in order, while women do not because of their natural proclivity for benevolence.

Sentiments like this hold in place structures that keep women out of church leadership. Ironically, the very attributes and abilities essential for priesthood leadershiplove, discernment, sensitivity, kindnessare supposedly possessed in great measure by women, the very individuals barred from serving in those positions.

Sociologists Ryan Cragun, J.E. Sumerau and Emily Williams believe an important factor at play is what they call "soft influence tactics," or rhetoric from those in power that praises, compliments and comforts subordinated groups, while preserving existing power structures.

Women's roles and opportunities have seen modest improvement in recent years, but patriarchy still permeates every aspect of church government. However, as recipients of endless male praise, it is common for LDS women to internalize the idea that they are, in fact, treated fairly and equally. To mask such inequities, LDS men praise women as the "moral and spiritual fabric" of the family and the church, while simultaneously preserving their own power and influence.

A genuine step toward gender equality requires institutional adjustments that allow women the same leadership opportunities currently available to men. Such a shift would come with the notion that one's ability to lead and influence has no correlation with one's gender identity.

I call upon LDS leaders to replace their hollow adulation of women with actual opportunities, so that a more concerted and collective effort can prevail in challenging and overcoming LDS patriarchy.KEITH BURNSMount Vernon, New York

"The Rail World," Dec. 2, Hits&MissesIt's ironic that both semi-trucks and the proposed Uinta Basin rail line received a frown. As noted, the Uinta Basin supplies the Salt Lake Valley with crude oil for refineries. And that crude is currently shipped by "carbon-spewing" trucks via Interstate 80passing Heber, Park City, Parley's Canyon, Daniel's Canyon, Strawberry Reservoir, Jordanelle Reservoir and plenty of national forest.

Trains, while still carbon-spewing, are four times more efficient than trucks. Unless we radically change human behavior, there will be a demand for the refineries' gas and thus still a demand for the Uinta Basin crude. So long as there is that demand, it would be better to trade the carbon-spewing trucks for the somewhat less carbon-spewing rail line.JEFF PARKERMidway

Care to sound off on a feature in our pages or about a local concern? Write to comments@cityweekly.net or post your thoughts on our social media. We want to hear from you!

Link:
Feedback from December 9 and Beyond - Salt Lake City Weekly

Human Behavior

The Untold Truth Of J. Smith-Cameron – The List

J. Smith-Cameron hasn't always been famous. Like any working actor, she's had a few periods without work. As she told the "Death, Sex & Money" podcast, she and her friend Kevin used to spend hours on end chatting in a local diner. "When we were between gigs and we were just auditioning, actors have a lot of time to fill without trying to fall into a desperate void in your mind ... we would come in this diner and nurse a cup of tea and a corn muffin for many hours," she said.

Smith-Cameron also spends her "off" time reading. "Read, read, read, read, read, read," she told the "Back to One" podcast. "Not necessarily dramatic literature, just reading." Another thing Smith-Cameron does is simply to people-watch. "Every time I get on the subway, I mark people, you know, I study them," she said, explaining how it's the perfect chance to "study human behavior." It's clear that Smith-Cameron is always keeping herself in a state of readiness for whatever role comes her way next no wonder she seems to slip so seamlessly into each new character she plays.

Read the original here:
The Untold Truth Of J. Smith-Cameron - The List

Human Behavior

These Schools Pay Students to Take Weekly COVID Tests. Should Others Try It? – Education Week

In the hallways of New Orleans schools, students talk about the headphones, video games, or Christmas presents theyre saving up for with an unusual new source of income: cash incentives for the COVID-19 tests they take.

The money theyre budgeting has accrued gradually in their online accounts, $10 a week for every COVID-19 test they take at school. For students whove participated since the beginning of the school year, those accounts could soon hold a few hundred dollars.

Once kids realized this incentive existed, we saw a lot of our kids really pushing their parents to sign the consent form, said Tiffany Delcour, the chief operating officer of New Orleans schools.

Like many other districts, New Orleans has made routine mass virus testing a key part of its COVID-19 precautions. Weekly PCR molecular tests allow administrators to detect sometimes asymptomatic cases, isolating students before they infect their peers. This has helped to cut down on some of the churn of disruptions caused by constant quarantines and classroom closures in schools around the country, Delcour said.

Around the country, schools with such broad testing programs have seen a major hurdle to their efforts: low student participation rates that can weaken their ability to detect the virus and slow its spread.

In some cases, parents dont consent to have their children tested, fearing the interruption to their family life if they test positive. In others, students themselves opt out because of concerns about inconvenience or even the discomfort of sticking a swab in their nostrils to collect a sample.

Thats why some districtsand some state school testing initiativeshave experimented by rewarding students with gift cards, extra recess time, and even cash to encourage more participation.

What weve heard from districts and schools is that COVID fatigue is real, said Leah Perkinson, the manager of the pandemics health team at the Rockefeller Foundation, which has worked with schools, states, and the federal government to grow testing efforts. People are tired, they are frustrated, they are exasperated ... I think incentives are a way to inject some new energy into this space.

While many large school districts have launched some form of virus testing program, Rockefeller does not track how many offer incentives, though Perkinson said the number is likely quite small.

The pandemic has proven how difficult it can be to change human behavior, and public health officials agree that its too early to determine whether incentives for COVID-19 testing will work in every school.

Schools that have embraced the strategy say anything that gets more students on board is worth it, even if participation is still far from universal.

Even as the emergency approval of vaccines for children as young as 5 has brightened the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, advocates for school testing say its too early to discontinue those efforts.

Many children are not yet vaccinated, precautions like masking are unpopular in many communities, and scientists remain concerned about the emergence of possible more-contagious strains, like the recently detected Omicron variant, which they are still evaluating.

In states like Michigan and New York, governors have called for additional funding for school-based testing as numbers start to rise.

The Biden administration has encouraged broader school testing efforts by setting aside $10 billion in federal aid for such work and by providing additional guidance on how schools can use money from the American Rescue Plan to carry out such work, but such efforts are rare in many parts of the country. Thats in part due to varying state approaches to the pandemic and in part because of the logistical challenges schools face in purchasing testing materials, interrupting class time, and coordinating and tracking regular swabs. In Texas, for example, millions of dollars of money for testing in schools has largely gone untouched, the Dallas Morning News reported.

Some districts, like Los Angeles and New York City, have made participation in regular COVID-19 testing mandatory for in-person learning. But there is not an appetite for such a requirement in many areas, where precautions have become politically divisive.

Support for Schools' COVID-19 Testing Efforts

The Rockefeller Foundation has teamed with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to offer education leaders resources about launching and strengthening school-based COVID-19 testing efforts. Learn more here.

In October, after President Joe Biden urged more school testing as part of a fresh wave of federal efforts, the U.S. Department of Education said in a memo that school districts could use their relief aid to reward families with reasonable incentives, like nominal gift cards, if their students agree to regular screening tests. Schools should also be sure to provide information in languages parents can understand to encourage broad participation and consent, the memo said.

Some states have already introduced incentives into their voluntary plans, which rely on a variety of types of COVID-19 tests . School districts in Colorado and Louisiana can opt into weekly programs, which require separate consent from parents for students to participate and to receive incentives. In exchange for their first test, students in both states get $25 loaded onto an online debit card, and they get $10 for each subsequent weekly test.

But, even with that extra nudge, participation is far from universal in many schools.

Seventy-five Durango, Colo., students signed up to participate when their district began piloting a regular testing program Nov. 1, spokeswoman Julie Popp said. With the help of state-administered incentives, that number grew to 352 students by the end of the month. Thats only about a seventh of the elementary, middle, and high schools combined enrollment, which totals about 2,500 students.

Still, the district has seen value in the program, and it expects participation to continue to grow. Administrators recently decided to roll it out district-wide, Popp said.

Adding serial testing to other efforts, like improved ventilation and universal masking, offers an extra layer of protection, supporting the goal of keeping our schools open and providing a safe and healthy environment for students and staff, she said.

When New Orleans launched its state-administered testing program in August, about 11,000 of the school systems 45,000 students opted in. With the help of incentives and other efforts, that number has grown to about 16,000, Delcour said.

I think there was a fear that if we were testing kids for COVID that we would find more COVID and that would that mean putting more kids in quarantine, she said.

In reality, fewer than 0.05 percent of tests come back positive each week, and schools are able to act quickly to isolate those students and limit disruption.

Educators there also found mass testing particularly helpful after schools closed for two weeks in September in response to Hurricane Ida, leading many students to travel to other states and regions for safety. That testing identified 225 cases, preventing potential classroom outbreaks that could have further disrupted students lives, Delcour said.

Beyond the persuasive power of cash, New Orleans leaders attribute growing testing rates to the hard work of school leaders. In the all-charter school system, some have seen participation rates as high as 80 percent. After consulting principals at the most successful schools, the district made a playbook that recommended verbal communication with parentson calls home, in parent-teacher conferences, and in the school pick-up lineas the most effective tool for building support for testing.

That hard, boots-on-the-ground work is paying off, Delcour said.

Changing human behavior through small actions, known by researchers as nudges, and larger incentives can be more complicated that it seems on the surface, and there can be unforeseen consequences, said Tom Chang an associate professor of finance and business economics at the University of Southern California.

Chang has studied the effectiveness of vaccine incentives and state lotteries, which rewarded millions of dollars to randomly selected recipients of the inoculations to encourage residents to get the jab. His research showed such efforts worked for people who were reluctant but open to getting the shot, but they have had little effect on the most stubborn holdouts, who said they were concerned about unproven claims that the vaccines are not safe.

They are not on the fence thinking about whether they should get vaccinated or not. Thats why incentives and messaging and nudging dont work for them, Chang said. When it comes to testing, I would imagine there are far more people on the fence.

For incentives to be effective, school leaders should make sure they will be received positively and that they wont be viewed as coercive to resistant parents, he said.

Perkinson, of the Rockefeller Foundation, said schools should also ensure they have the capacity to distribute rewards on top of the work of administering tests.

There are a lot of practical challenges in managing an incentive program just like there is in managing a testing program, she said. We are talking about all of these systems changes happening in schools at once.

School leaders should also ensure they are addressing all barriers to testing and ensuring that their approach fits the attitudes of their community, Perkinson said.

In the Hillside, Ill., district, which consists of one school that educates 425 early-childhood through 8th grade children, about 88 percent of students have opted into weekly testing, said Superintendent Kevin Suchinski. He attributes the community buy-in in part to demographics: The vast majority of students are Black and Latino, two communities that have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

On Mondays, cohorts of students start lining up in the gym by 8:45 a.m. to spit into tubes used for saliva-based molecular tests, and the whole process wraps up by 10. Athletes and participants in higher-exposure extracurricular activities, like choir, take an additional test on Thursdays, Suchinski said.

The school does not provide financial rewards for testing. Rather, it has incorporated COVID-19 precautions like proper mask wearing and participating in testing into its positive behavior interventions and support system, through which students earn points for good behaviors, like helping a classmate, that can later be traded for small toys, lunch with a teacher, or extra recess time.

That has made testing feel like a part of the schools culture and a way for students to support each other, Suchinski said.

We wanted to teach why it was important to test, we wanted to reinforce it, and we wanted to reward it, he said. We are all in this together.

Excerpt from:
These Schools Pay Students to Take Weekly COVID Tests. Should Others Try It? - Education Week

Human Behavior

‘The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, And The Global War On Democracy And Public Health’ Book Review – Eurasia Review

By Thomas J. DiLorenzo*

In his must-read new book,The Real Anthony Fauci, Robert F. KennedyJr. describes how journalist Liam Scheff chronicled Faucis secretive experiments on hundreds of HIV-positive foster children at Incarnation Childrens Center (ICC) in New York City and numerous sister facilities in New York and six other states between 1988 and 2002 (p. 245). He describes in detail how Faucis NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) and his Big Pharma partners turned Black and Hispanic foster kids into lab rats, subjecting them to torture and abuse in a grim parade of unsupervised drug and vaccine studies (p. 246).

The real Anthony Fauci was a greedy egomaniac hell bent on creating an image of himself as the savior of the world during the AIDS crisis while generating billions in profits for his pharmaceutical industry partners. The partners would then share some of the loot with Fauci and others in various ways, including sharing in patent rights, the revolving door of very highly paid jobs for former government bureaucrats, paying multimillion dollar user fees to the NIAID, distributing shares of stock, etc.

The pharmaceutical industry remunerated Incarnation Childrens Center for supplying children for the tests, writes Kennedy. The tests involved giving the children experimental drugs that were toxictheyre known to cause genetic mutation, organ failure, bone marrow death, bodily deformations, brain damage, and fatal skin disorders (p. 246). Torture is not too strong a word to describe what happened to these children. If the children refuse the drugs, says Kennedy, theyre held down and force fed. If the children continue to resist, theyre taken to Columbia Presbyterian hospital, where a surgeon puts a plastic tube through their abdominal wall into their stomachs. From then on, the drugs are injected directly into their stomachs (p. 246). This wasnt science fiction or a sick horror movie, says Kennedy, but Fauci-funded AIDS research.

Many of these children died as a result of the research. Investigative journalist Vera Sharav, who spent years investigating all of this, told Kennedy that Fauci just brushed all those dead babies under the rug. They were collateral damage in his career ambitions. She said that at least 80 children died from Faucis drug torture chamber in the Manhattan foster home alone.

You probably never heard of this, but the BBC produced a documentary of the savage barbarity of Dr. Faucis science projects in 2004 entitled Guinea Pig Kids. A BBC investigative journalist said in the documentary that I found the mass graves at Gate of Heaven cemetery in Hawthorne, New York. I couldnt believe my eyes. It was a very large pit with AstroTurf thrown over it. Under it one could see dozens of plain wooden coffins there may have been 100 of them (p. 247).

The New York City Administration of Child Services commissioned a four-year investigation of Faucis Dr. Mengelestyle experiments and found that eighty of the 532 children who participated in Faucis clinical trials diedand twenty-five died while enrolled in a medication trial (p. 251). By 2003 Faucis NIAID was running 10,906 clinical trials involving children in ninety countries (p. 257). Today Fauci, his longtime vaccine-manufacturing billionaire partner Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the World Economic Forum are desperately campaigning to have every child in the worldeven infantsinjected with their latest vaccine. These are the same people who have publicly fantasized about all humans someday having an implanted digital ID in their bodies to achieve their goal of transhumanism. They say they want a digital IDimplanted into everyone for purposes of government monitoring of all human behavior by some kind of super, internationalgovernment institution. (Where is James Bond when we need him?)

Another charming fact about Fauci that Kennedy discuses is that Fauci has also funded (with your hard-earned tax dollars) experiments where Beagle puppies had their heads locked into cages where they could be eaten to death by flies. He also gave University of Pittsburgh researchers $400,000 to graft the scalps of aborted fetuses onto living mice and rats (p. 253). Not exactly the type of job one would expect a good Jesuit Catholic schoolboy like Anthony Fauci to have. Fauci is a Catholic in the same sense that abortion worshipper Joe Biden is a Catholic.

The man is in reality a sociopath who has pushed science into the realm of sadism writes Kennedy (p. 253). Who else but a criminal sociopath would have any involvement at all in such things? (Or for that matter in dropping atomic bombs on helpless Japanese civilians; firebombing entire European cities occupied by civilians; lobbing thousands of artillery shells a day on your own countrys cities also occupied only by civilians, i.e., Atlanta, Charleston, and Vicksburg during 186165; killing four hundred thousand Filipinos for refusing to be occupied and conquered by your government; mass murdering fifty thousand Plains Indians to make way for the railroads, as General Sherman once announced, etc., etc.ad infinitum? But I digress).

Government bureaucrats love crises like wars, hurricanes, depressions, pandemics, etc. because in times of crises millions of average citizens become childlike, their IQs seem to be cut in half (at least), and they beg for a substitute mommy and daddy to protect them, their new mommy and daddy being the state. All of a sudden they are willing to abandon all of their civil liberties and embrace totalitarianism like a drowning man embraces the side of a lifeboat. This is exactly the behavior of millions of Americans since March of 2020.

Theabsenceof a crisis, on the other hand, creates a crisisfor government bureaucrats. To the bureaucrat there is a crisis crisis whenever there is no real crisis. It is imperative, therefore, that every government bureaucrat becomes ahysteric who is constantly trying to alarm the public with theperceptionof a crisis or an impending crisis. He is professional liar, in other words, and can rely on the socialist indoctrination organs known as the media to hype his crises. After all, itsperceptionsthat count in politics, not reality.

Fauci is no more than your ordinary, run-of-the-mill bureaucratic crisis monger and serial liar, as Kennedy documents in chapter 11, Hyping Phony Epidemics: Crying Wolf. Early in his government career Fauci was involved in promoting hysteria over what was called the swine flu. NIAID and its pharmaceutical industry puppet masters told Congress and the White House that the swine flu was the same strain of virus that caused the infamous 1918 Spanish flu epidemic that is said to have killed 50 million people worldwide. The government poured money into Faucis NIAID and Big Pharma made big bucks by getting President Ford (in 1976) to give them $135 million to supposedly inoculate 140 million Americans. In the end, writes Kennedy, the actual number of pandemic swine flu casualties in 1976 was not 1 million but 1 (p. 358).

Patients injured by the experimental swine flu vaccine filed 1,604 lawsuits forcing the government to pay out over $80 million in damages and incur tens of millions in legal fees. Kennedy hits the nail on the head when he concludes that At the dawn of Dr. Faucis career, he learned that both pandemics andfake pandemicsprovide an opportunity to expand the bureaucracys power and to multiply the wealth of its pharma partners (p. 360, emphasis added).

Then there was the 2005 bird flu hysteria where Fauci once again predicted unprecedented carnage. This time he partnered with Bill Gates and hired the now disgraced and discredited British conman statistician Neil Ferguson to construct models that predicted up to 150 million people could die from the bird flu. In the end, about 100 people died from it, and most probably had comorbidities that were the real causes of death. That was after President Bush asked Congress for $1.2 billion for Big Pharma to come up with another of its experimental vaccines.

The 2009 Hong Kong swine flu caper was a carbon copy of the earlier ones. Fauci promised to fast track a vaccine once again, and the mediadutifully poured on the government-sponsored hysteria.

By the Fall of 2009 thousands of Americans were complaining about devastating side effects of the new Fauci shot. Fauci promised the public that Big Pharmas new drug was perfectly safebut in reality there was an explosion of grave side effects, including miscarriages, narcolepsy, and febrile convulsions as well as severe neurological injuries, paralysis from Guillian-Barre syndrome and cataplexy as well as brain damage (p. 365). Some things never change. The epidemic never materialized and As usual, there was no investigation of Dr. Fauci or the other medical officials who choreographed this multi-billion-dollar fraud (p. 366). Congress would never investigate it because too many fingers would be pointedat themfor funding the whole charade. They just collect their millions in campaign contributions from Big Pharma as a form of kickback for the millions in taxpayer dollars given to these corporations and then move on to the next phony health crisis for which they will also take no responsibility.

In 2016 Fauci diverted billions from taxpayer-funded research on malaria, influenza, and tuberculosis to his newest scam, the zika virus. Right on cue, he enriched his Big Pharma partners with $2 billion to produce yet another vaccine to prevent microcephaly, a supposed effect of the zika virus. In the end, there were fifteen cases of the virus in the USandnoneof them was associated with microcephaly. Dengue fever was another Fauci scam in that same year that funneled additional billions to Big Pharma withsurprise!the exact same scenarios and results.

In every single instance, Kennedy writes, Fauci and others at National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention load up the committees that vote for permission to market all of these experimental drugs with people who have Big Pharma connections or who are current executives for one or another pharmaceutical company. It is all rigged, all permeated by mountains of lies repeated over and over by the lying lapdog media which pockets millions or billions in advertising revenue from Big Pharma. (Have you watched network television lately?). It is not about public (or private) health at all, but to make more billions for Big Pharma, to bloat the NIAID budget even more than it already is, while throwing a few crumbs to Big Pharmas supporting cast of house pets in the public health bureaucracy and academic world. They fully intend to keep this racket going forevereven if it kills you.

*About the author: Thomas DiLorenzo is a former professor of economics at Loyola University Maryland and a member of the senior faculty of the Mises Institute. He is the author ofThe Real Lincoln;How Capitalism Saved America;Lincoln Unmasked;Hamiltons Curse;Organized Crime: The Unvarnished Truth About Government; andThe Problem with Socialism.

Source: This article was published by the MISES Institute

Excerpt from:
'The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, And The Global War On Democracy And Public Health' Book Review - Eurasia Review

Human Behavior

On the (Show) Road Again – I-Connect007

Much has happened the past two yearspolitically, technically, and sociallythat has greatly changed the path forward from what we had envisioned before the pandemic. Finally, here we are again, on the road between two full, in-person exhibition and technology events, AWE and CES.

How We Got HereAdvances in augmented/virtual reality (XR) hardware are significant but the need for XR is different than what we had envisioned just a few years ago. We still see gaming and entertainment as a driving force, but its future in military, medicine, and service has increased as expected. We did not expect, however, the somewhat sudden and accelerating interest in the meta universe or metaverse. What is the metaverse? Meta means transcendence and verse means universe, so we are approaching the capability of entering a virtual universe that is not reality but does exist outside of reality. What does that mean? Its not just the future of Facebook, although Facebook and other social media sites will play a major role. In my opinion, the metaverse is a combination of the real world that you and those you communicate with occupy, while the XR world is generated by your devices.

Figure 1: A scene from the Augmented World Expo (AWE) in early November. John Hanke from Niantic gave an inspirational keynote about building the metaverse using technology to improve our experiences in the real world by enriching it with fun and magic, and helping people lead more fulfilling lives. Source: AWE Twitter

How will we build this artificial reality? It will be accomplished through XR technology, applying 5G, and 6G cloud transmission technology (which is coming sooner than you think), as well as wearable and viewable supporting hardwaresuch as advanced vision devices, haptics, and all the new hardware that we saw at AWE and expect to see at CES. In fact, such advances have precipitated the need for a second AWE in June 2022.

Expect to hear a lot of talk about the metaverse as this trend grows in sophistication. For now, lets look at some of the XR devices recently announced.

Virtual HeadsetsIt seems that we have moved rapidly from the heavy, wired uncomfortable headsets to lighter headsets that are almost like eyeglasses. At AWE, a company from Finland called Dispelix showed VR glasses that use a thin, transparent waveguide to take in a projected image and relay it to the eye. They are similar in size and comfort of a normal pair of glasses yet have tiny XR projectors at very high image quality.

Niantic, best known for developing Pokmon GO, showcased a software platform called Lightship for building real world metaverse apps that will power future XR glasses. The company announced it will be using the technology at next years Coachella music festival. As I understand it, they will use a visual positioning system for AR glasses. These AR glasses will be embedded with a display that understands its exact real-world position. It then lets virtual objects (such as Pikachu in Pokmon GO) stay anchored to a specific real-world location for you to find when you get there. This is a critical component needed to make AR glasses, such as the kind thatNiantic is building with Qualcomm.

Perhaps the most interesting device I saw at AWE was a pair of smart glasses by Viewpointsystem GmbH, a company based in Vienna. This device is small and comfortable, but it has amazing capability and great potential. I was given the opportunity to interview them and see it work for myself. It first records what you see, then analyzes and determines your expressions, and provides an idea of what youre thinking or doing. This patented process called Eye Gestures mimics a human beings ability to form an opinion about what they observe.

Figure 3: Eye Gestures allows digital interaction in a way that is more intuitive and convenient.

According to company information, The VPS Fact Finder prepares all data from the VPS 19 Smart Glasses for further use. The software visualizes recorded vision and perception. This hardware used with the IMOTIONS software has amazing XR as well as metaverse potential. You gain a holistic view of human behavior and have precise, objective representations of eye sequences as well as the visual behavior of the wearer. There is so much more that this system is capable of. Over the next few years, with the expansion of the metaverse, this type of device may be a key to breaking down the barrier between human and machine. Viewpointsystem will be at CES so we will be looking for more detailed information there.

Other areas of interest included HaptX gloves, which enable very realistic touch and feel; Care AR, a Xerox company enabling service teams to instantly provide remote visual XR support for their customers and field service technicians, including drone collaboration; and other devices including some very high-end VR glasses by Lenovo.

Looking Ahead to CESCES dwarfs AWE, APEX and so many other shows, but expect it to be about half its normal size and somewhat different for 2022. There will still be more than 1,600 exhibitors, with more than a third of them Fortune 500 companies. The best part is its in person and I plan to be there. Here is some of what I expect to see.

Figure 4: The last time CES met in person was 2020.

New Smart PhonesSamsung has released its new line of phones, including something I have misseda modern version of last decades foldable phone. I miss the easily carried flip phone, but I do not want to give up all the features of a modern smartphone. It looks like Samsungs Galaxy Z Fold3 and Galaxy Z Flip3 may be a step in that direction, and I expect new designs at CES, both with smartphones and smart watches.

AutomotiveWe should see everything from portable device fast chargers to advanced heads up displays, transparent technology (allowing the driver to have an unobstructed view of the surroundings of the vehicle from whatever angle is required), advanced dash cams, navigation, entertainment, and, of course, all the technology for the upcoming new electric vehicles including new advanced cars themselves.

Figure 6: Features in electric cars will be a highlight of CES.

Windows 11Microsofts latest operating system is out and many of us on the MS inside track are using it, although it will be available to everyone in early 2022. I expect all new computers and devices shown at CES this year will be Windows 11 compatible. Do we need Windows 11? My initial response is, not really. It has some new features but most of them could easily have been part of a Windows 10 update. It is, however, a good excuse to do a clean OS install. Some of the neat features include a new OS repair tool that finds and fixes OS errors on your computer quickly and automatically; a new widgets feature; new wallpapers and themes; the enhanced and simplified start menu; an enhanced search feature that will help you find recently used apps, files, and pictures quickly and easily; and an upcoming compatibility with Android apps, auto HDR, and more.

There is also what appears to be significant backward compatibility, making the transition quite painless. There are some bugs and there have already been a few updates and fixes. So far, I like it. Unless youre comfortable setting up a computer from scratch, lets wait until CES to hear more.

New GPUs

Over the past year, NVIDIA and AMD have introduced a new generation of graphic processing units (GPUs). The new generation is so powerful that the use of scalable link interface (SLI), which allows the use of more than one GPU on a computer, has almost gone away. The new generation are not that much more expensive if you can get them at list price, which right now you cant. GPUs and their powerful processing capabilities are also used for cryptocurrency mining, thus the demand for GPUs has increased exponentially. This has created a shortage and led to scammers selling them on average for almost double the price.

We are also looking forward to seeing new offerings from the approximate 185 automotive exhibitors; Samsung, Sony, LG, and other smart home exhibitors; all the amazing advanced new ideas and devices at Eureka Park (perhaps the most exciting area); and so much more, including the annual Showstoppers event.

Stay tuned as we bring you highlights during and after the show. There is much to look forward to in a (hopefully) post-pandemic 2022.

Dan Feinberg is an I-Connect007 technical editor and founder of Fein-Line Associates.

See the original post:
On the (Show) Road Again - I-Connect007

Human Behavior

Pandemic toll nears 800,000, as Delta rages and Omicron threatens – JD Supra

The coronavirus pandemic is nearing another grim mark: 800,000 deaths in this country in its two-year run, with 1 in 100 of the fatalities occurring among those 65 and older.

The pandemic toll exceeds the population of cities like Washington, D.C., Seattle, Denver, Boston, and Memphis, and is heading toward the equivalent of spots like Charlotte and Fort Worth. The virus for some time now has proven to be deadlier than the military casualties the country experienced combined in World War II plus the Vietnam and Korean wars.

Still, millions of shoppers are cramming into stores and malls seeking seasonal bargains and gift-giving wonders. Tens of millions of travelers are ready to jump into cars, trains, buses, and planes for holiday and year-end journeys, to gather with friends and family.

Amid the bright lights and festive whirl, though, will the nation show an exhaustion with protective measures against the long coronavirus pandemic and will a worrisome winter turn into weeks or months more of death and dire illness for all too many?

Research clarifying Omicron perils

Pandemic uncertainty prevails. Experts have shared glimmers of better news, though, about Omicron, the latest and disconcerting coronavirus variant. It appears to spread fast and wide, though limited data suggests this viral strain may cause a milder illness.

Vaccine makers also are reporting that Omicron has mutated in ways that may reduce the effectiveness of existing shots against it. At the same time, though, it also appears from early research that boosters bring up present vaccines protection against the variant to high levels.

This has convinced even many doubters about boosters, so they are now more robustly endorsed by experts.

Federal regulators who earlier expanded the eligibility to all vaccinated patients 18 and older for a third dose of the Pfizer and Moderna product after six months or a second dose after two months of another vaccine (Pfizer or Moderna) or of the Johnson & Johnson shot lowered the booster recommended age. They now say it can be given safely and with excellent effect to previously vaccinated patients who are ages 16 and 17.

Experts have strongly encouraged those 50 and older to get boosters, pronto.

Vaccination demand, which had been sluggish, at best, and perhaps even stalled for months, has risen in recent days causing challenges to providers, particularly pharmacies. But, after seeing a rush for kids ages 5 to 12 to receive coronavirus vaccinations, the pediatric rates have slowed, especially for adolescents.

As of Dec. 10, federal officials reported that more than 200 million Americans are fully vaccinated and that almost 52 million have gotten boosters.

An unrelenting Delta assault

At the same time, as vaccinations take a central role in the battle against Omicron, it is the Delta variant that is savaging swaths of the country, causing patient surges mostly of the unvaccinated that are swamping hospitals and health systems with states in the Northeast and Great Lakes area slammed now.

After weeks of declines, following a brutal summer of the fourth and Delta variant-driven pandemic surge, cases are spiking and so, too, are deaths. Officials report 120,000 cases on average are now occurring daily, a 38% increase, while hospitalizations have jumped to an average of 64,000 daily. The country is reporting more than 1,200 deaths a day, on average.

Hospitals in four states Maine, New Hampshire, Indiana, and New York are struggling so much with the current coronavirus wave that officials have mobilized National Guard assistance.

A lethal political calculus

Still, the politically partisan and virulent resistance only grows to various steps to quell the pandemic, especially requirements for people to get vaccinated. NPR has reported how an array of GOP personalities and operatives including those notorious for their careers in spreading wild disinformation have aligned themselves with fact-free extremists opposed to evidence-based science and modern medicine, particularly vaccines.

The bizarre Republican strategy of allowing the coronavirus pandemic to rage and then blaming Democrats and Biden for this is confounding but real: 40% of those telling opinion surveyors they are party backers also are refusing vaccinations. The more heavily that a given county voted for former President Trump, news media analyses show, the lower their vaccination rates and they, as a result, have substantially higher coronavirus deaths and cases.

The unvaccinated, federal officials report from their research, are at 14 times greater risk of dying from the coronavirus than those who have gotten their shots.

Experts estimate that 163,000 of the U.S. coronavirus deaths between June and November of this year alone were preventable by safe and effective vaccines (see figure, above)

We are not done with the coronavirus and the huge trauma it has inflicted on us all. Please get tested, if appropriate, AND get vaccinated, AND get those booster shots. Officials are trying to make it as easy and convenient, as possible and its free. If youre uncertain about getting a booster or optimizing your mixing and matching of coronavirus shots, talk to your doctor, pronto. And, while youre at it, ask about and get your annual flu shot.

We cannot ignore disease and death and embrace nihilism and fatalism. We cannot allow anti-science fanatics to destroy centuries of progress with the viral spread of ever-wilder fantasies and conspiracies. Our health system, the envy of the world, cannot be a toy that will be smashed and ruined by selfish belligerence. Here are wise words to be heeded from Francis Collins, the respected and retiring leader of the National Institutes of Health (and an elite researcher who has argued that religious faith and science can and must coexist):

I do think we need to understand better how in the current climate people make decisions. I dont think I anticipated the degree to which the tribalism of our current society would actually interfere with abilities to size up medical information and make the kinds of decisions that were going to help people. To have now 60 million people still holding off of taking advantage of lifesaving vaccines is pretty unexpected. It does make me, at least, realize, Boy, there are things about human behavior that I dont think we had invested enough into understanding.

We basically have seen the accurate medical information overtaken, all too often, by the inaccurate conspiracies and false information on social media. Its a whole other world out there. We used to think that if knowledge was made available from credible sources, it would win the day. Thats not happening now.

We can quell the coronavirus and we must do so before it mutates again in ways that can be even more disastrous.

Originally posted here:
Pandemic toll nears 800,000, as Delta rages and Omicron threatens - JD Supra

Human Behavior

North Andover Support Services director talks mental health, the pandemic and the holidays – Wicked Local

Lincoln to North Andover on the Bay Circuit Trail

Four fast friends hike the Bay Circuit Trail part 4

Scott C. Smith, Photos courtesy of Rich & Sue Harbert

In addition to joyful Christmas carols, family gatherings and festive light displays, the holiday season tends to bring some unwanted deliveries like depression, anxiety and other challenges to mental health to some.

And this year, the usual holiday blues are met with an ongoing pandemic that has ravaged the nations resources and laid bare the needs of our mental health system.

There have been a lot more really significant needs than we could have anticipated and a much greater demand than I think anybody anticipated, North Andover Community Support Director Deanna Lima said.

The towns Community Support Department housed in the North Andover Police Department headquarters on Osgood Street and lead by Lima and supported by Case Manager Crystal Clunie was initially conceived by former Selectman Phil DeCologero as a tool in the battle against opioid addiction in town.

But Limas role has been a baptism by fire, literally. When she started, the Columbia Gas explosions had the town in a state of devastation and fear.

And as that situation was winding down, the COVID-19 pandemic emerged to further test the mettle of the 375-year-old community.

Initially, it was the chaos, the fear and the unknown, so it was people needing information, reassurance, guidance, Lima recalled. And very quickly, it moved into people needing basic needs, which is how we got to open the food bank and help folks with food, household supplies, getting connected to resources being provided in the community.

That was the first year. As the pandemic aged into 2021, we started to see the breadth of psychological, social and emotional impact the pandemic has had.

People started to exhibit signs of anxiety, depression, and at that point people had been quarantining and isolating for a long time, so using other means of coping that arent necessarily health, like alcohol and other substances, indulging in behaviors that arent healthy. And the effects of that catch up, Lima said.

Indeed, the addiction epidemic that dominated headlines before COVID-19 has only worsened in its wake, with addicts unable to attend in-person counseling and support meetings and the isolation of quarantine creating scores of new addicts in need of help.

After that first year, year and a half, the need has become social and emotional support. And people dont always know that thats what they need, dont know how to ask for that, dont feel comfortable asking for that, so that need manifests itself in a lot of different ways, Lima continued.

And often it manifests itself in challenging behaviors. You see kids acting out, you see adults acting out," Lima concluded. "Thats what we continue to see is the ongoing stress that the pandemic has had on folks, and people really adjusting to a new normal.

And the pre-pandemic problems that created the need for her position especially addiction and the issues it brings require even more attention than before in that new normal.

Theres less access to treatment because of the pandemic, and definitely far more barriers, Lima said. The social support that is critical to success in treatment has been decreased by the pandemic.

While some have adapted to virtual support groups and online therapy, others have not. And Lima said a big challenge with addressing addiction during the pandemic has been the normalization of substance abuse over the past 21 months.

You see it on social media quite frequently, its very prevalent, the use of alcohol and all kinds of substances, Lima said.

To mitigate holiday season anxiety and depression during the ongoing stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, Lima suggests managing expectations.

People tend to imagine and stick to ideas on how they want holiday photos and parties to be, how they want kids to behave, how much they can spend on gifts, and more. But reality, especially this year, will always beg to differ.

You have to be realistic about what can happen, Lima said. Were in a very different time right now, and celebrations arent going to look how they used to look, and people arent going to have the same responses that they once did, so you have to be realistic about those things. Human behavior is difficult to manage, so you cant expect more than what is reasonable, especially from children and folks who are disregulated anyway.

And with the political climate of the past year, politics is bound to come up in many family discussions. Lima suggests avoiding confrontation and being open and honest about our own comfort and limits when it comes to political talk.

Most people have someone in their family or social circle that triggers them and gets them excited, and its important that we learn how to disengage from conversations and discussions that are triggering, but in a healthy way, Lima said. Its important to model that for children and for others, to say Its OK that our opinions differ, I would rather not discuss this, or This isnt the time or place. But acknowledge it. Dont pretend that it doesnt exist.

Anyone in the community who needs help navigating services can reach out to the North Andover Community Services Department via the town website, and the department has a Facebook page as well.

Continue reading here:
North Andover Support Services director talks mental health, the pandemic and the holidays - Wicked Local

Human Behavior

At least 2 bipedal human species lived nearly 3.7 million years ago – NPR

On the left is a nearly 3.7 million-year-old fossil footprint now believed to have been made by an early human. On the right is the rear footprint of a young black bear. Left: J. DeSilva/Right: E. McNutt hide caption

On the left is a nearly 3.7 million-year-old fossil footprint now believed to have been made by an early human. On the right is the rear footprint of a young black bear.

The early humans who walked the Earth nearly 3.7 million years ago were not walking alone. Fossil footprints in Tanzania reveal that two human species once lived in the same place at the same time.

Scientists had long thought that one set of unusual prints there was left by a bear walking on its hind legs, but a new analysis published in the journal Nature suggests that's not right. Instead, it appears that the tracks were left by some unknown early human species that was strolling around that spot at the exact same time as Australopithecus afarensis the species of the famous partial skeleton "Lucy."

Australopithecus afarensis has long been assumed to have been the only human species living way back then, and scientists have considered it an ancestor of modern humans. But recent discoveries of other remains, such as jaws, skulls and foot bones, have hinted that an unexpected diversity of hominins may have lived during this period.

At this particular prehistoric site, at Laetoli in northern Tanzania, all the footprints were made in the same layer of mud. That means individuals from these two early human species must have passed through within hours or days of one another, says Ellison McNutt, a biological anthropologist at Ohio University's Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine.

It's possible that the unknown species that made the weird footprints "looked up across the landscape and saw an Australopithecus afarensis walking somewhere else," she says. "It's really cool that we may have two hominin species, at least, living at the same place."

McNutt studies bipedalism because walking on two legs is a unique and distinctive human trait. "It's a very strange way of kind of moving through the world, and it's very different from other animals," she notes, adding that how and why humans evolved to do this is still a mystery. "This seems to be one of the things that sort of makes hominins and our lineage very different from the other living primates."

And walking upright seems to go way back in human evolution. Millions of years ago, a volcano erupted and covered Laetoli in ash. That ash turned to mud, and all kinds of creatures left tracks; when the volcano erupted again, another layer of ash preserved the tracks. In the 1970s, paleontologists uncovered tracks from animals including ostriches, giraffes, hyenas and, of course, what was later identified as Australopithecus afarensis.

At the same time, the workers uncovered another set of tracks that also seemed to show bipedal walking, but those didn't look so distinctively human. Eventually, scientists decided they must have been left by a young bear, given that bears lived in Africa back then. A bear's hind feet can look somewhat human, bears can walk bipedally, and they don't always leave distinctive claw-prints.

"It was kind of a reasonable thing, sort of," says McNutt, who adds that the more instantly recognizable footprints from the human species were so exciting that these other ones got ignored for decades.

She came across a reference to these forgotten footprints, however, while studying bear bipedalism when she was a graduate student at Dartmouth College. She realized that she and her colleagues could test the bear hypothesis with the help of a nearby rehabilitation center for black bears in New Hampshire. It had young bears with paws of a comparable size to the footprints.

"We ended up with four little juvenile bears that we had stand up and walk through mud for either applesauce or maple syrup, which was very cute, as their reward at the end of it," she explains.

By examining the paw prints left by the bears and by comparing them with the mysterious fossil footprints as well as human footprints and chimpanzee footprints, the research team determined that the fossils' features looked more humanlike. It looks like the feet must have had a relatively large "big toe," for example.

What's more, the walking pattern preserved in the tracks shows a kind of cross-step, with the foot crossing in front of the midline of the body. People sometimes cross-step while walking over uneven surfaces or regaining their balance.

"That actually is one more piece of evidence that it's not a bear," says McNutt, "because bears don't have the anatomy at their hip and their knee to allow them to stand up and maintain their balance while cross-stepping."

The researchers also looked at more than 50 hours of videos taken of wild black bears and found that they hardly ever walk on their hind legs. "When a bear stands up, he's usually holding on to a tree," says McNutt. "Or maybe he'll take a step or two, but he doesn't usually take four or more, which is what you'd really need to get to the five we have preserved at this site."

All of this evidence has convinced Stephanie Melillo, a paleoanthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, who was not part of the research team. "They do a very convincing job of showing that the prints are not made by a bear," she says, and adds that the prints' shape does suggest that they were made by an unknown early human.

"If it's the case that this is a second species, this discovery shows that Australopithecus afarensis and something else were really in the same time, at the same place," says Melillo, who notes that this kind of link is harder to make with such precision when fossilized bones are found at other sites.

And it means that bipedalism didn't necessary evolve once and proceed in an ever-progressing straight line to how modern humans walk today, but rather that different versions could have existed simultaneously in different branches of the family tree.

Footprints, unlike bones, capture an actual behavior of early humans and let scientists imagine these distant but familiar species strolling across the land at Laetoli.

"This site is unique," says Melillo. "It's not just these two hominins. We see these hominins together with birds, and with antelopes and hyenas, an entire African ecosystem of animals. It really does give you a really good image of what kind of environment the hominins were occupying."

Read the original post:
At least 2 bipedal human species lived nearly 3.7 million years ago - NPR

Human Behavior

Study uncovers a feedback loop effect between attachment anxiety and manipulative mate retention behaviors – PsyPost

People who fear abandonment and have an excessive need for approval become more likely over time to use manipulative tactics to keep their romantic partner in a relationship. But men and women who engage in such tactics end up becoming more anxious about their relationship. Those are the findings from new research published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

Although mate retention had been researched for decades in the field of evolutionary psychology, it had yet to be connected to the large research area of attachment theory, which to me seemed like an obvious intersection, said study author Nicole Barbaro, an adjunct professor at Utah Valley University and research scientist at WGU Labs.

Attachment theory describes how people bond to others and maintain their relationships. People can be secure or insecure in their attachments, and insecure individuals can be either anxious or avoidant. People with an anxious attachment style are fearful of rejection and abandonment, while people with an avoidant attachment style tend to distrust others and shun intimacy.

Theoretical frameworks of mate retention were also historically male-centric, for example sperm competition theory, and I wanted to explore frameworks that could explain both male and female mate retention behavior in any type of relationship, Barbaro said.

Previous research has indicated that anxiously attached individuals tend to engage more frequently in cost-inflicting mate retention strategies (such as snooping through a partners phone or talking to another person at a party to make a partner jealous.) Barbaro and her colleagues replicated those findings with a study of 104 young adults who were currently in a sexually active relationship that had lasted at least three months.

But one area that has been left unclear is whether cost-inflicting mate retention strategies lead to anxious attachment or whether anxious attachment leads to cost-inflicting mate retention strategies. To better understand this, the researchers examined two waves of data from 489 heterosexual couples who had participated in the Processes in Romantic Relationships and Their Impact on Relationship and Personal Outcomes (CouPers) study, longitudinal research conducted at the University of Basel.

Barbaro and her colleagues found that cost-inflicting strategies predicted higher attachment anxiety 18 months later. But the reverse was also true: higher attachment anxiety predicted more frequent use of cost-inflicting strategies. In other words, those who engaged in more frequent cost-inflicting mate retention behaviors tended to become more anxiously attached and those who were anxiously attached tended to become more likely to use cost-inflicting behaviors.

The findings indicate that high anxious attachment is a strong risk factor for negative and manipulative partner-directed behavior for both men and women, Barbaro told PsyPost. This relationship appears to be reciprocal, meaning that high attachment anxiety can lead to negative behaviors, which in turn appear to also predict later attachment anxiety.

The study provides new insights into how mate retention behaviors and attachment orientations interact over time in romantic relationships. But the study like all research includes some limitations.

This line of work is still, overall, in early stages, Barbaro said. Research in this area still needs to evaluate these behaviors using more than self-report survey measures. We still want to know the mechanisms underlying these associations between attachment and mate retention behavior, for example, what triggers are activating the attachment system and motivating specific types of behaviors? We still want to know how these processes impact other aspects of relationship functioning. For example, other research shows the impact of negative mate retention on relationship satisfaction how does this connect with attachment orientations?

This is a line of research that I developed as a graduate student in an effort to develop a single evolutionary framework that explained both mens and womens mate retention behavior and its great to see that a broader interest in this area has taken off in recent years, and Im excited about the new insight researchers will uncover.

The study, The (bidirectional) associations between romantic attachment orientations and mate retention behavior in male-female romantic couples, was authored by Nicole Barbaro, Rebekka Weidmann, Robert P. Burriss, Jenna Wnsche, Janina L. Bhler, Todd K. Shackelford, and Alexander Grob.

See original here:
Study uncovers a feedback loop effect between attachment anxiety and manipulative mate retention behaviors - PsyPost