Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

Dogs’ aggressive behavior towards humans often caused by fear. Here’s why – Hindustan Times

A recent study encompassing some 9,000 dogs conducted at the University of Helsinki demonstrated that fearfulness, age, breed, the company of other members of the same species, and the owner's previous experience of dogs were all associated with aggressive behaviour towards humans.

The findings published in the journal Scientific Reports can potentially provide tools for understanding and preventing aggressive behaviour. Aggressive behaviour in dogs can include growling, barking, snapping and biting. These gestures are part of normal canine communication, and they also occur in non-aggressive situations, such as during play. However, aggressive behaviour can be excessive, making the dog a health threat to both humans and other animals.

"Understanding the factors underlying aggressive behaviour is important. In what kinds of circumstances does aggressive behaviour occur and what is the dog's motive for such behaviour? In normal family dogs, aggressive behaviour is often unwanted, while some dogs with official duties are expected to have the capacity for aggressiveness. At the same time, aggressiveness can be caused by welfare issues, such as chronic pain," says doctoral researcher Salla Mikkola from the University of Helsinki.

The canine gene research group active at the University of Helsinki surveyed connections between aggressive behaviour and several potential risk factors with the help of a dataset encompassing more than 9,000 dogs, a sample from a larger dataset from a behavioural survey dataset of nearly 14,000 dogs. The study investigated aggressiveness towards both dog owners and unfamiliar human beings. Dogs were classified as aggressive if they growled often and/or had attempted to snap at or bite a human at least occasionally in the situations described in the survey.

"Dogs' fearfulness had a strong link to aggressive behaviour, with fearful dogs many times more likely to behave aggressively. Moreover, older dogs were more likely to behave aggressively than younger ones. One of the potential reasons behind this can be pain caused by a disease. Impairment of the senses can contribute to making it more difficult to notice people approaching, and dogs' responses to sudden situations can be aggressive," Mikkola adds.

Small dogs are more likely to behave aggressively than mid-sized and large dogs, but their aggressive behaviour is not necessarily considered as threatening as that of large dogs. Consequently, their behaviour is not addressed. In addition, the study found that male dogs were more aggressive than females. However, sterilisation had no effect on aggressive behaviour.

The first dogs of dog owners were more likely to behave aggressively compared to dogs whose owners had previous experience of dogs. The study also indicated that dogs that spend time in the company of other dogs behave less aggressively than dogs that live without other dogs in the household. While this phenomenon has been observed in prior research, the causality remains unclear.

"In the case of dogs prone to aggressive behaviour in the first instance, owners may not necessarily wish to take a risk of conflicts with another dog," Mikkola muses. Significant differences in aggressive behaviour between breeds. Differences in the aggressiveness of various dog breeds can point to a genetic cause.

"In our dataset, the Long-Haired Collie, Poodle (Toy, Miniature and Medium) and Miniature Schnauzer were the most aggressive breeds. Previous studies have shown fearfulness in Long-Haired Collies, while the other two breeds have been found to express aggressive behaviour towards unfamiliar people. As expected, the popular breeds of Labrador Retriever and Golden Retriever were at the other extreme. People who are considering getting a dog should familiarise themselves with the background and needs of the breed. As for breeders, they should also pay attention to the character of dam candidates, since both fearfulness and aggressive behaviour are inherited," says Professor Hannes Lohi from the University of Helsinki.

Follow this link:
Dogs' aggressive behavior towards humans often caused by fear. Here's why - Hindustan Times

Human Behavior

Manufacturing Today Profiles Picavi Pick-by-Vision and the Human Digital Twin – Digital Journal

Larry Olson, Senior Sales Manager at Picavi recently discussed digital twin technology in logistics in the recent issue of Manufacturing Today magazine. Picavi pick-by-vision specialists are creating a human digital twin to perfect support for warehouse staff. According to Olson, No longer are manufacturers mutually exclusive from logistics. Finished goods have to go somewhere, whether to the end-user (direct to consumer, D2C) or to a warehouse, distribution center, or third-party logistics (3PL) facility. Read more here.

When using digital twins for testing process changes, human workers are a variable for which the technology cannot account. Until recently it was difficult to incorporate the specific activities and movements in the warehouse. Pick-by-vision changed this by implementing the human digital twin. It maps a warehouse worker going about day-to-day tasks which are reflected in the human digital twin from transport routes and times to movements and scans.

These data are combined with the important operating parameters, especially tiny details which help identify areas for improvement, such as WLAN coverage or warehouse resources. This highly accurate virtual representation of the worker is continuously improved and updated. This is lean manufacturing in logistics.

The human aspect of process analysis has been neglected in many businesses throughout logistics and manufacturing industries. Although concerns about data privacy are often given as a rationale for hesitancy, the true cause runs deeper. Collecting the data necessary for the human digital twin was next to impossible prior to pick-by-vision. With the right technology accessing these data it is now quite easy to model human behavior.

Pick-by-vision unlocks the data that arises in the logistics process with business intelligence solutions. Integrated analytics create a central point for collecting, aggregating, and visualizing all the important information. These data are collected by the sensors integrated in the pick-by-vision smart glasses and are continuously updated. Users can instantly see which process steps harbor potential for time and cost savings.

Manufacturing Today magazine helps executives at the senior boardroom and production levels stay abreast of the most important operational issues in this dynamic market.

About Picavi USA

Picavi USA Pick-by-Vision solution makes it possible to visually manage the picking process for goods in intralogistics in a consistent manner. The use of this innovation maximizes productivity at warehouses and minimizes error rates. When wearing the smart glasses, warehouse workers have both hands free for their primary tasks, including picking and packing goods. Smart glasses are one of the most significant developments in order picking during the COVID-19 situation. Augmenting reality with context-based information makes work much more precise and the glasses have become an indispensable part of warehouse life during the pandemic.

Picavi USA, based in Illinois, is a subsidiary of Picavi, headquartered in Germany. Safety is the companys top priority. Call (312) 585-8312 to learn more about Picavi USA Pick-by-Vision.

Media ContactCompany Name: Picavi U.S., Inc. Contact Person: Johanna BellenbergEmail: Send EmailPhone: (312) 585-8312Address:321 North Clark Street, Suite 1425 City: ChicagoState: Illinois Country: United StatesWebsite: https://picavi.com/en/company/

Continued here:
Manufacturing Today Profiles Picavi Pick-by-Vision and the Human Digital Twin - Digital Journal

Human Behavior

I Just Found the Page With Everything Jeff Bezos Has Ever Reviewed on Amazon, and It’s Utterly Fascinating – Inc.

This is a story about a little-noticed window into the mind ofJeff Bezos. It's something that's been hiding in plain sight for more than 20 years.

If you find this hidden gem interesting, I think you'll really enjoy my free ebook, Jeff Bezos Regrets Nothing, which is full of similar insights.

Because it turns out thatBezos is not only the CEO of Amazon and the wealthiest person in the world--but he's also Amazon's 78,951,609th-ranked reviewer.

There are only six reviews on his profile, all posted between2000 and 2006. If you've read Bezos's shareholder letters, and seen his interviews,his style will be familiar.

An Amazon spokeswoman confirmed that it was Bezos's own profile and the reviews are his.

Beyond that confirmation, we're left to fill in the context.So, here are the six products Bezos took the time to review, along with excerpts from his commentary, and what I think they tell us about him. The two most recent, #5 and #6, are especially interesting.

1. Wow. A masterpiece.

A little over 21 years ago, Bezos wrote a review for the Oscar-winning, 1997 movie, Life is Beautiful.

"This movie is absolutely all it's cracked up to be," Bezos wrote. "Hysterically funny and simultaneously a tear jerker ... The DVD has dubbed english as an option, but I strongly recommend going with the subtitles."

I can't find any further indication that Bezos has talked about this movie, which was his earliest review. In 2018, he posed for a photo in Miami with a sticker reading, "Life is Beautiful" behind him, but perhaps that's just a coincidence.

However, Bezos is known as a fan of emotional, even tear-jerker stories. In fact, the degree to which he was inspired to start Amazon by reading Kazuo Ishiguro's Remains of the Day is a big part of another famous Amazon review.

Worth noting: the movie is now available on Prime Video, which didn't even exist until years after Bezos wrote his review.

2. Absolutely the best binoculars I've used

Next up, six months later, Bezos was moved to review a pair of very expensive binoculars. They're still on sale at Amazon for $1,469:

"The problem with high power binoculars is that humans can't hold them steady, and that jitter makes it impossible to really look at something without a tripod. The image stabilization in this pair solves that problem and holds things rock steady.

I have only two small complaints: First, for a product this expensive they should pre-install the neck strap for you -- not a big deal, but it would be nice for the customer. Second, I wish the lens cap covers were higher quality ..."

I once ran thefulltext of every Jeff Bezos shareholder letter at the time through a word cloud generator, and found that the number-1 most repeated word was "customer" (even more than, "Amazon"). Interesting to note that this word made its way into his second review, too.

3. Intense and disciplined

This review almost seemsautobiographical. It's about a book calledThe Proving Ground : The Inside Story of the 1998 Sydney to Hobart Race.

The publisher says the bookbook, "describes how the annual sailing competition became one of the worst modern sailing disasters that left six sailors dead and a number of yachts destroyed."

Bezos says the author,Bruce Knecht:

"captures acts of heroism and frailty, but ...never judges these people. Judging these strong people would inevitably over-simplify the reality of human behavior under life-threatening stress."

Hmmm, I wonder if Bezos happened to know any "intense and disciplined" people whom other people would not be able to judge accurately?

4. They were planning to tour the Solar System

Here, Bezos reviews George Dyson's book, Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship, which was about Dyson's father's project, in the 1950s, to equip spaceships with atomicengines, so human astronauts could explore the solar system.

For those of us who dream of visiting the outer planets, seeing Saturn's rings up close without intermediation of telescopes or charge-coupled devices, well, we pretty much *have* to read Project Orion. ... This was not pie-in-the-sky optimism; they had strong technical reasons for believing they could do it.

The younger Dyson was involved with Bezos's Blue Origin, which is now scheduling suborbital flights for tourists, supposedly beginning in July.

(I found a reference to Bezos reviewing Dyson's book in a 2018 profile in Wired, which iswhat led me to look for his review page in the first place.)

5. A grand idea novel!

In January 2003, Bezos gave a glowing review of Cory Doctorow's sci-fi novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom:

In this fun, fast book, the clearly talented Cory Doctorow explores a full-on reputation economy. With the help of a sophisticated, real-time network, people accumulate and lose a reputation currency called "whuffie." ... Cory Doctorow deserves much whuffie for this novel. Highly recommended.

Are you ready for the ironic plot twist? Here's Cory Doctorow, on Twitter, 17 years later (so last April), lamenting several things Amazon has done, to the point that, "its reputation has cratered."

Doctorow's thread runs 10 tweets, so I won't include the whole thinghere, but wow.

6. Long Time Fan

OK, this last review (meaning the most recent) was for a bottle of milk: Tuscan Dairy Whole Vitamin D, to be specific.

"I love milk so much that I've been drinking it since the day I was born," Bezos wrote.

I was stymied trying to figure out the significance, but fortunately, a series of 2006 news articles solved the mystery. The Amazon listing was the subject of a digitally crowd-sourced prank, with people choosing the random listing, and leaving glowing reviews just for the heck of it.

Turns out, Bezos has an absurdist streak too, and likes to be in on the joke. But as of this writing, only 89 people have ever found his review, "helpful."

(Don't forget the free ebook, Jeff Bezos Regrets Nothing.)

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

See original here:
I Just Found the Page With Everything Jeff Bezos Has Ever Reviewed on Amazon, and It's Utterly Fascinating - Inc.

Human Behavior

Wearing A Mask For Covid-19 Protection Is Scientific And Perfectly Normal – Forbes

Protect yourself with masks

Three similarly-themed articles caught my eye this week and instantly raised my ire, given their click-bait tone and hubris. All engaged in armchair psychology and claimed that normal human behavior was somehow pathological.

The first was by Rosa Silverman, who denigrated caution as Covid anxiety syndrome, a maladaptive response to coping with the stress of the pandemic. Cognitive behavior therapy was recommended.

A CNN article carries this theme further, referring to anxiety in a post-pandemic world and quoting psychiatrist Dr. Hector Colon-Rivera, as "It's like suffering from a form of PTSD or trauma that will make some people hyper-vigilant.

Id hardly say that we are in a post-pandemic world. While cases in the US pale in comparison to India (or earlier in our waves) there was a 7-day average of 46,603 cases, 40,287 hospitalizations, and 701 deaths yesterday, per the NYTimes. In the South, only a thirdhave received even one vaccine dose; in the Northeast, that rises to 55-60%. That means large swaths of the population remain unvaccinated, putting themselves and others at risk.

Finally, in my venturing into what seemed like a parallel universe was Emma Greens, The Liberals Who Cant Quit Lockdown. She mistakenly attributes being careful with Covid-19 restrictions to overestimating the diseases risks and being distinctly anxious.

Green continues, misattributing liberals motives as an expression of political identity, and asserting that liberals have veered away from scientific evidence. Insultingly, she chides that we are eroding trust in public health.

Zachary Loeb had a perfect response to this misdirected rebuke:

Do not direct your frustration

at those who continue

to dutifully wear their masks

after all you are still surrounded

by many who refused

to wear them in the first place.

Im not alone in feeling angry, particularly about being called unscientific and irrational. Here is one exchange on Twitter:

Dr. Tara Smith (@aetiology), an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist with impeccable credentials, responded to my concern about variants, Yes. I think we still have a lot of unknowns. We're doing well and, in most places, better every day, but this isn't over yet.

Tara Haelle @tarahaelle), a well-respected science journalist, and others were also angered by the suggestion that this was PTSD. Its inappropriate to attribute a health-seeking behavior to a real and serious mental health condition that many of us may have but which is not necessarily related to our decision to continue being safe and courteous by wearing a mask. Overpathologizing is just as problematic as trivializing PTSD or making it sound like a negative character trait as opposed to an actual condition that reasonably arises out of traumatizing circumstances.

I appear to have hit a nerve in asking virologist Angela Rasmussen, PhD (@angie_rasmussen) to comment.

There are a TON of COVID pundits who are trying to add a psychology degree to their armchair epidemiology and risk communication credentials. It's not "irrational" to be cautious, particularly when the pandemic is not over. Although it's great that cases are going down in the US and immunization is going up, the 7-day average for new cases nationally is still higher than it was this time last year to the tune of 20,000 cases. And we've seen state governors of both parties reopen prematurely only to get hit with surges in cases. Making educated personal risk-benefit calculations is both scientific and highly rational, and we are not making it any easier for ourselves or our communities by shaming people who might be reluctant to take their political leaders' word for it that policies are aligning with the most current and reliable evidence.

Rasmussen was also angry at the suggestion that left people were overzealous in their precautions because they were reflexively doing the opposite of what Trump was saying. Maybe that's true in some cases, but there's no evidence to support that and overwhelmingly many of those people were correctly not listening to Trump and instead following guidance from their local health officials (or the many experts quoted on the topic telling them to use cautions.

I wholeheartedly agree with all of the sentiments expressed above.

Particularly with the risk of variants growing, I think we have good cause for concern. The more the pandemic remains uncontrolled overseas, the greater the risk of mutants evolving that might pose greater dangers.

Also, we have so many people who have refused to wear masks throughout the pandemic and shown poor judgment and reckless disregard for others well-being. Why wouldnt we want to continue to wear masks in public?

Far too many people deny the reality of Covid-19 and assume an ostrich-like stance, while millions die.

Ostrich burying head in sand. Ignoring problems

Furthermore, individuals don't know whether theyve had an adequate immune response to the vaccine. While most people do, many who are elderly, diabetic, or immunocompromised may not have had a protective-level response.

Information about the virus is evolving and some messages to the public have been handled poorly. It would be one thing if the risks of illness were trivial, but they are not. Many people die and at least 10% become long haulers, with chronic and debilitating illness.

So, there is nothing irrational or unscientific about people still choosing to be cautious. We all have to make our own risk calculations based on our health and that of our families. That is neither unscientific nor hysterical nor crazy. It is a sign of being careful and at a different point on the continuum of comfort.

Zachary Loeb said it well in The Plague Poems:

It is not that

I am living in fear

but that

I am living

in a pandemic.

Read the original:
Wearing A Mask For Covid-19 Protection Is Scientific And Perfectly Normal - Forbes

Human Behavior

The outdoor mask mandate has been loosened. So why is everyone still wearing them? – The Boston Globe

I went here and there, maybe only two people did not wear masks, she said, sounding like someone caught in an episode of The Twilight Zone.

It made her so uncomfortable that she hasnt stepped outside barefaced since. It was like I was an outsider, she said.

After a year of smile-free interactions, fogged glasses, maskne, and general mask misery, you would have thought we would have ripped those things off our faces and never looked back.

But masks, we dont know how to quit you.

Why not? For starters, theres intense confusion. Can you really stay far enough away from people on the Esplanade? Then theres the political angle liberals fear theyll look like anti-maskers if they shed their facial badges. And experts in human behavior say a powerful social phenomenon, beyond even Donald Trump, also is driving the behavior.

So many people are ignoring the updated state guidelines which no longer require people to wear masks when they walk, bike, or run alone or with members of their households if they social distance that many who want to stop wearing masks are still covering their faces because its easier than dealing with the glares.

Iriss son, Erez Yoeli, a research scientist at MITs Sloan School of Management whose work focuses on altruism, says that kind of social pressure is the force driving many mask wearers now.

Until people are reasonably sure that others also know the rules have changed that a consensus has built that masks outdoors arent required theyll want to avoid looking like jerks, he said.

David Rand, an associate professor at MIT whose research bridges the fields of behavioral economics and psychology, said its a well-studied phenomenon known as a sticky social norm.

A norm got established, he said, and now, even though the rationale behind the norm has changed, the norm has not kept up. The norms are stickier than the official rules.

Amid the politicization of masks, liberals have made COVID protection or prevention behaviors part of their identity, he observed. If youve spent the past year feeling good about yourself because youre wearing a mask, how can you take it off?

Its not like wearing a mask endangers other people the way not wearing does but even so, hostility is growing toward people who are wearing masks in situations where others dont think they need to.

Priscilla Kwok, a local public school teacher, said that as she was walking to her Lyft, which requires masks, an unmasked man yelled at her: Wearing masks? You gotta be kidding me you [expletive] idiot.

Its very difficult to know what constitutes rational behavior during a pandemic like COVID-19 so theres a limit to how much you might judge anybodys choices, Nate Silver, the well-known statistician, tweeted on Tuesday.

But Id argue one sign of *irrationality* is if a person doesnt change their behavior much after being vaccinated.

For most of the year, at least in liberal Massachusetts, weve been the ones who shamed. It was our sport. But now one of our most educated suburbs, Brookline, is the one being mocked internationally for its initial refusal to lift the outdoor mask mandate.

Theyre gonna need Lin-Manuel Miranda specials to tell educated white liberals to trust the science, tweeted Astead Herndon, a CNN political analyst and New York Times reporter on May 2.

Another attack appeared a couple of days later, in the form of an Atlantic articlethat ridiculed Brookline as part of a larger trend: The Liberals Who Cant Quit Lockdown.

Part of the problem is that even people whove been waiting for this moment might not be ready. Its been a year, but it still feels too soon, especially since in the US were nowhere near herd immunity, and the question of the vaccines effectiveness against variants lingers in the publics mind.

To tell people overnight, Dont worry about it, take off your masks and enjoy life, seems confusing, said Aisha Langford, an assistant professor at NYUs Grossman School of Medicine.

We need clear messaging about whats safe and whats not, she said, so that people feel more comfortable restarting the activities they stopped during the pandemic.

Masks may have turned into a security blanket, said Barbara Kamholz, an associate professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine.

When people are in very high risk or traumatic situations they typically develop ways of coping to maximize safety, she said. In this case, wearing masks per CDC guidelines was one example of healthy, scientifically sound coping to maximize safety.

But the challenge, she said, comes now, when the state has said we can take masks off in certain outdoor situations. Because the coping behavior kept a person safe, it can be very hard to give it up.

Despite the constant messaging or perhaps because of it many people are confused about the latest rule change. Some people think the new state guidance applies only to fully vaccinated people (it doesnt).

Others dont trust the government, particularly since at the beginning of the pandemic, the CDC instructed people NOT to wear masks unless they were sick or caring for someone who was sick and not able to wear a mask. Whos to say theyve got it right this time?

In Watertown, even though she knows the new rules and trusts the CDC, Purnima Thakre cannot bring herself to walk barefaced, and allows herself only the periodic indulgence of pulling down her N95 for a quick gulp of full-strength air.

Ive gotten used to wearing masks, she said. I feel like its normal.

Beth Teitell can be reached at beth.teitell@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @bethteitell.

Excerpt from:
The outdoor mask mandate has been loosened. So why is everyone still wearing them? - The Boston Globe

Human Behavior

‘The only way society gets to reopen safely is if we are all vaccinated’ – UC Santa Cruz

This story is part of UC Santa Cruz's vaccination advocacy campaign, Arm in Arm, which is aimed at communicating to our campus community the importance of the COVID-19 vaccine for a safe reopening of California and UC Santa Cruz.

California now has the lowest rate of COVID-19 infections in the United States.

The San Jose Mercury News reports a major surge of hope. The states case rate is now less than a third of the United States average. Nonprofit journalism venture CalMatters ran a headline hailing Californias stunning COVID reversal.

The news may be encouraging in the nations most populous state, but UC Santa Cruzs COVID experts say this is not the time to slack off when it comes to protecting yourself against the coronavirus.

They point to a complex reality that lies beneath the optimistic headlines. Variants are surging, U.S. vaccinations are falling from their peak levels, herd immunity is still a distant goal, and there is no sure-fire way of knowing whether others around us have been vaccinated.

Thats why Associate Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Rebecca DuBois, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology A. Marm Kilpatrick, and Associate Professor of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology Susan Carpenter are urging all unvaccinated people to book an appointment to get their shots immediately, and follow CDC safety guidelines even after the vaccinations take effect.

The only way society gets to reopen safely is if we are all vaccinated, Carpenter said. This virus will continue to thrive and mutate if we let it run rampant through communities. The only weapons we have in our arsenal against this virus are to socially distance, wear our masks, and get vaccinated.

She likened potential victims of COVID to a water source. Dry up the lake, and watch COVID shrivel up.

We need to remove [COVIDs] ability to replicate by removing its reservoir, Carpenter said. The sooner we all get vaccinated, the sooner the virus loses places to grow. We are seeing a rise in variants, and if we are not vigilant and keeping a step ahead of this virus we could end up back at the beginning. We do not want this. Right now our vaccines are working against the variants we see arising. Therefore, we are in an active race against the virus, and the only way for us to emerge victorious is to get vaccinated as soon as possible.

Safety in numbers

Mass vaccinations started in the U.S. on December 14, 2020. DuBois pointed out the vaccination rollouts have been going on long enough to show that the vaccines are extremely safe and incredibly effective.

There have been over 300 million COVID vaccine doses administered in the USA alone, with over 226 million of those doses being the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, DuBois said. If there were safety concerns in those vaccines, we would have seen them by now. There have been over 8 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine administered.

DuBois, Carpenter, and Kilkpatrick agreed that the temporary pause on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was necessary while the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reviewed six reports of blood clots among people vaccinated with the J & J shot in the United States.

I think people should view this type of scrutiny as a reassuring and positive thing, knowing that any safety concerns at all, even a possible one in a million event, is investigated thoroughly, DuBois said.

In a new report, the CDC said the blood-clot side effect is extremely rare, occurring at a rate of about 7 per 1 million vaccinated women between 18 and 49 years old," the CDC wrote. "For women 50 years and older and men of all ages, this adverse event is even more rare."

DuBois praised the Johnson & Johnson vaccine for its one-dose formulation and its ability to be stored in a refrigerator rather than an ultra-cold freezer like the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which will enable its distribution to hard-to-reach individuals or those who lack the ability to schedule two appointments for inoculation.

For all three vaccines now available in the U.S., the protection from COVID-19 greatly outweighs the risks of severe side effects, said Kilpatrick, who emphasized personal safety and economics as compelling reasons to get vaccinated.

Vaccines greatly reduce the chance of getting sick and dying, and also reduce the chance of transmitting the virus to someone else," he said. Reducing transmission in the community is our fastest and best way to restore our society economically and socially.

DuBois emphasized civic pride and social responsibility as reasons to get vaccinated, along with a desire for more personal freedom.

Getting a vaccine is a great way to show that you care about your community," DuBois said. In addition, it is your opportunity to safely start doing your favorite things again. I got my vaccine and got to give my 92-year-old grandma a big hug.

Even those who have recovered from COVID-19 should get vaccinated, DuBois said.

Scientists are generally observing higher levels of antibodies in vaccinated people compared to people who were naturally infected," she said. "So there is still a benefit to getting the vaccine, even if you had COVID in the past."

Is herd immunity within reach?

A strong messaging campaign is essential to achieving herd immunity, Carpenter said.

The only way we get back to 'normal' is to achieve herd immunity worldwide, she said. Therefore we need everyone to take the vaccine. The data shows that these vaccines are safe, and we see in Israel where over 50% of the population has been vaccinated just how effective their vaccine campaign has been. In Israel, society is reopened and their case rate is staying very low. This should encourage all those who are hesitant that we can get back to normal if we get vaccinated.

But in this stage of the pandemic, herd immunity remains an elusive goal, according to scientists and public health officials interviewed for a recent New York Times article.

Carpenter agreed that the numbers of people who are refusing to be vaccinated are going to inhibit the United States in getting to herd immunity anytime soon, if ever, as the article states, she said. I think it's the unfortunate reality we are facing.

It is very frustrating as the only way the pandemic ends is if we reach herd immunity, so trying to get that message out there is important.

Kilpatrick agreed that human behavior will play a strong role in whether the United States achieves herd immunity.

The herd immunity threshold, when the fraction of people that are immune is high enough so that each person infects, on average, less than one other person, can definitely be reached by a combination of vaccination and infection, but it's worth noting that the threshold level changes as social patterns change, Kilpatrick said. If we stop wearing masks and resume pre-pandemic social behavior then the threshold will be much higher than if we maintain some pandemic measures.

In some communities, even with pre-pandemic behavior, vaccination may keep immunity above the level needed to prevent the virus from being sustained locally, whereas in others lower vaccination will allow for low to moderate levels of transmission until infection leads to immunity increasing to the threshold in that community, Kilpatrick said.

The common thought among scientists is that we will not reach herd immunity to the point where this virus disappears entirely, DuBois said.

Even if the USA becomes mostly vaccinated, the rest of the world has a long way to go, so the virus will continue to spread globally, DuBois said. People should not be holding out hope that the virus will simply disappearit will keep coming back into our community and infecting susceptible individuals. However, I do think we will eventually reach a point where the majority of Americans have some level of immunity, preferably via vaccination and not natural infection, and there will be fewer cases of severe disease.

Taking precautions

The three COVID experts agree that people should also take measures to avoid getting infected if they frequently have contact with unvaccinated people.

Protection from vaccination one dose for J&J or two doses for Pfizer or Modernaagainst symptomatic and severe disease and death is relatively high, Kilkpatrick said, noting that the vaccines are 7095% effective against symptomatic disease.

Data is less robust for more severe disease, but protection is likely similar or possibly higher," he said. "But that protection rate is definitely not 100%."

As a result, people should still take measures to avoid becoming infected, and should adjust their own behavior to reflect their specific risk of severe disease and death that increase enormously with age and substantially with preexisting conditions.

Kilpatrick also noted that the vaccines are 6090% effective when it comes to reducing the chance of an infected person transmitting COVID to another person. Thats a very significant amount of protection, but it still leaves room for vigilance, he said.

Wearing masks in public is an important way to reduce the chance of becoming infected or transmitting the virus if people are indoors, Kilpatrick said. "Outdoors, masks are important if people are having close contact with other people.

Many Americans have celebrated the recently updated CDC guidelines, listing more activities that vaccinated individuals can safely resume. For example, the agency recently eased face mask guidelines for fully vaccinated people outdoors.

But we are not yet at the point where every adult has had the ability to get their full course of a vaccine , DuBois said. Until then, it is still important to wear masks.

We need to encourage the culture of mask wearing until this pandemic is over, Carpenter said. We do not know who has been vaccinated and who has not. Also remember no one under 16 has been vaccinated yet, and so I think we should be setting an example for our children and continue to wear masks until we know it is safe."

Bad information

Though the vaccine rollout has been impressive, with around 100 million Americans fully vaccinated, misinformation on vaccines and vaccine safety remain widespread and damaging, the experts agreed.

"Countering this misinformation is difficult because people often don't seek out other information, Kilpatrick said. For example, people who identify as politically conservative are currently less likely to get vaccinated. There are some strategies that appear to be effective in reaching a subset of the population that currently is not choosing to get vaccinated, but it is time-consuming and challenging. This is one of the biggest current challenges in ending the pandemic in the U.S.

Carpenter would like to believe that anyone could be persuaded to take the vaccine when presented with the facts. All scientists and medical professionals have a moral responsibility to work against misinformation, listening to people's concerns and providing them with information to help alleviate them, Carpenter said.

Engaging at a local level will be important, she said.

For those who are vaccine hesitant, it can be helpful for them to know that their friends, family, colleagues, or other trusted individuals received the vaccine," DuBois said. "So spread the word and celebrate when you get your shot."

Find information and locations to receive your COVID-19 vaccination on the UCSC Student Health Center website.

Go here to read the rest:
'The only way society gets to reopen safely is if we are all vaccinated' - UC Santa Cruz

Human Behavior

Helpful behavior during pandemic tied to recognizing common humanity – UW News

Engineering | News releases | Research | Social science | UW and the community

March 10, 2021

A new University of Washington study links helpful behavior during the pandemic, such as donating medical supplies, to individuals feelings of connection to others.Dennis Wise/U. of Washington

During the COVID-19 pandemic, people who recognize the connections they share with others are more likely to wear a mask, follow health guidelines and help people, even at a potential cost to themselves, a new University of Washington study shows.

Indeed, an identification with all humanity, as opposed to identification with a geographic area like a country or town, predicts whether someone will engage in prosocial behaviors particular to the pandemic, such as donating their own masks to a hospital or coming to the aid of a sick person.

The study, published March 10 in PLOS ONE, is drawn from about 2,500 responses, from more than 80 countries, to an online, international study launched last April.

Researchers say the findings could have implications for public health messaging during the pandemic: Appealing to individuals deep sense of connectedness to others could, for example, encourage some people to get vaccinated, wear masks or follow other public health guidelines.

We want to understand to what extent people feel connected with and identify with all humanity, and how that can be used to explain the individual differences in how people respond during the COVID-19 pandemic, said author Rodolfo Cortes Barragan, a postdoctoral researcher at the UW Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, or I-LABS, who co-led the study with postdoctoral researcher Nigini Oliveira at the Paul G. Allen School for Computer Science and Engineering.

In psychology, identification with all humanity is a belief that can be measured and utilized in predicting behavior or informing policy or decision-making. Last spring, as governments around the world were imposing pandemic restrictions, a multidisciplinary team of UW researchers came together to study the implications of how people would respond to pandemic-related ethical dilemmas, and how those responses might be associated with various psychological beliefs.

Researchers designed an online study, providing different scenarios based in social psychology and game theory, for participants to consider. The team then made the study available in English and five other languages on the virtual lab LabintheWild, which co-author Katharina Reinecke, an associate professor in the Allen School, created for conducting behavioral studies with people around the world.

The scenarios presented participants with situations that could arise during the pandemic and asked people to what extent they would:

In addition to demographic details and information about their local pandemic restrictions, such as stay-at-home orders, participants were asked questions to get at the psychology behind their responses: about their own felt identification with their local community, their nation and humanity, in general. For instance, participants were asked, How much would you say you care (feel upset, want to help) when bad things happen to people all over the world?

Researchers found that an identification with all humanity significantly predicted answers to the five scenarios, well above identifying with country or community, and after controlling for other variables such as gender, age or education level. Its effect was stronger than any other factor, said Barragan, and popped out as a highly significant predictor of peoples tendency to want to help others.

This bar chart shows that identification with all humanity had a larger effect size than any other variable on cooperative behavior during the pandemic.Barragan et al., 2021, PLOS One

The authors noted that identifying with ones country, in fact, came in a distant third, behind identification with humanity in general and ones local community. Strong feelings toward ones nation, nationalism, can lead to behavior and policies that favor some groups of people over others.

There is variability in how people respond to the social aspects of the pandemic. Our research reveals that a crucial aspect of ones world view how much people feel connected to others they have never met predicts peoples cooperation with public health measures and the altruism they feel toward others during the pandemic, said co-author Andrew Meltzoff, who is co-director of I-LABS and holds the Job and Gertrud Tamaki Endowed Chair in psychology.

Since last spring, of course, much has changed. More than 2.5 million people worldwide have died of COVID-19, vaccines are being administered, and guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, especially regarding masks, has evolved. If a new survey was launched today, Barragan said, the research group would like to include scenarios tuned to the current demands of the pandemic and the way it challenges us to care for others even while we maintain physical distancing.

While surveys, in general, can be prone to whats known as self-serving bias the participant answers in ways that they believe will make them look good researchers say thats not evident here. They point to the sizeable differences between responses that identify with all humanity, and those that identify with community or country, and note there would be little reason for participants to deliberately emphasize one and not the others.

The project is part of a larger multidisciplinary effort by this same UW research team to bring together computer scientists and psychologists interested in decision-making in different cultural contexts, which could inform our understanding of human and machine learning.

An eventual aim of the study is to use tools from artificial intelligence research and online interactions with humans around the world to understand how ones culture influences social and moral decision-making.

This project is a wonderful example of how the tools of computer science can be combined with psychological science to understand human moral behaviors, revealing new information for the public good, said co-author Rajesh Rao, the Hwang Endowed Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the UW.

For COVID-19 and future humanitarian crises, the ethical dilemmas presented in the study can offer insight into what propels people to help, which can, in turn, inform policy and outreach.

While it is true that many people dont seem to be exhibiting helpful behaviors during this pandemic, what our study shows is that there are specific characteristics that predict who is especially likely to engage in such behavior, Barragan said. Future work could help people to feel a stronger connection to others, and this could promote more helpful behavior during pandemics.

Additional co-authors were Koosha Khalvati, a doctoral student in the Allen School and Rechele Brooks, a research scientist with I-LABS.

The study was funded by the UW, the Templeton World Charity Foundation and the National Science Foundation.

For more information, contact Barragan at barragan@uw.edu or Meltzoff at meltzoff@uw.edu.

Original post:
Helpful behavior during pandemic tied to recognizing common humanity - UW News

Human Behavior

The Role of Influencing Human Behavior to Drive a Circular Economy – waste360

The Recycling Partnership (TRP), a national nonprofit committed to improving recycling has released a new white paper titled, Start at the Cart: Key Concepts for Influencing Behavior to Drive a Circular Economy. The paper offers insights on human-behavioral concepts and how to leverage them to successfully drive recycling actions and habits.

First, the paper observes that, Like other behaviorsrecycling behaviors are learned, adopted, prioritized, forgotten or overridden, restarted or remembered. Behaviors shift and evolve and devolve based on conditions and influences. In other words, people and the decisions they make are shaped by many fixed and changing factors, all day every day. But, while there is no one-size-fits-all solution that will turn everyone into a better recycler, there is a growing need and opportunity to connect peoples values to proper and repeated recycling behaviors and positive habits that can be repeated and eventually become natural.

The paper then goes on to discuss the three stages of influencing recycling behavior: infrastructure (the conditions that shape the opportunity and ability to recycle), knowledge (the specific information about what, when, and how to recycle), and engagement (Can the person see or imagine themselves and their peers doing the recycling behaviors, and do these behaviors align with their values?).

Key points related to each stage are as follows:

This work reminds readers that awareness about how, when, and where to recycle is criticaland many municipalities may benefit by increased messagingbut increased awareness does not always drive behavior change. It is not enough to ask people to do better, the authors note. Instead, a recycling-related request must be specific, concise, and clear. For instance, a call to recycle right will not yield specific behaviors, whereas a call to keep diapers out of recycling is clear, and more likely to lead to the desired behavior.The paper offers a framework on how to educate for better behavior and reminds readers of the free resources available through TRP.

The paper goes on to talk about the key measures of recycling behaviorbecause, to influence and ideally change behavior, measurement and data are essential. The three metrics used most commonly are: participation rates, capture rates, and contamination rates. But, the authors remind readers that data doesnt capture underlying dynamics or barriers. So a simple high-level metric is not enough to truly understand what is happening within a community or program. Ask the question: Do people have the tools the recycling container and information they need in order to recycle? What looks like resistance, may also be a lack of ability, clarity, or true access.In many cases, there is a need to better understand the audience that a recycling program is servingand, once this happens (through investigation and research), resources and information can be tailored accordingly to meet the needs and interests of a particular subgroup or community. Building relationships and trust are critical.

Overall, what is most needed, the authors assert, is a system of messaging that is based in behavioral science, data-backed, and includes standards and resources that are measurable and easy to adapt to meet people where they are and influence them from messengers they trust.

Recycling is an ever-moving stream of materials that adds up as a result of billions of decisions and actions, many of which are rooted in personal habits, values, or emotions. And, through research and measurement, ideal behaviors can be effectively instructed, prompted, and often entirely reset within your community. Collective success depends on perpetual support for people to accurately and automatically recycle.

Download the report here.

Read more:
The Role of Influencing Human Behavior to Drive a Circular Economy - waste360

Human Behavior

Dessa adds one more to her long rsum podcaster with BBC’s ‘Deeply Human’ – Minneapolis Star Tribune

The idea was hatched long before the pandemic. And it wasn't even her idea.

Dessa wants people to know this about her new science podcast, "Deeply Human," so no one thinks she turned all nerdy on us just because her cool full-time gig as a touring musician was abruptly shut down last spring.

"I was always pretty nerdy about this stuff," the Minneapolis rapper/singer unabashedly admitted.

Premiering this week as a joint venture from the BBC and St. Paul-based American Public Media (APM) you can hear the first episode now via various streaming sites "Deeply Human" nonetheless became a great way for Dessa to remain the dynamo she's famous for being during the COVID-19 lockdown.

It's actually a pretty cool podcast, too.

Where most science-related TV and radio shows sorely lack colorful language, delivery and personality, Dessa has been fine-tuning all of those skills for 15-plus years of writing songs and performing them on stage, starting with the Doomtree crew.

"I would never say to anyone, 'Hey, I'm a scientist!'" she said in an interview two weeks ago from New York, where she splits her time these days.

"I'd say, 'I'm a communicator and writer who loves science.' A lot of my education in science is autodidact. I'm just a scientist by night or I guess you might say by day, since my real day job is at night."

As the title suggests, "Deeply Human" is centered around human behavior and the real-life experiences of everyday people.

Episode One, for instance, is all about how people go about choosing the right romantic partner, especially in the era of swipe-approving dating apps. Subsequent topics include shows about dj vu, living with chronic pain and menopause.

Just as she does in her songs and concerts, Dessa infuses the show with personal stories or those of people she knows. Episodes are a half-hour long and premiere every Monday via the BBC.

Case in point: In the first episode, Dessa candidly recounts her own experiences using the dating app Tinder and ponders whether it has helped or hurt her chances of settling on the right partner. Her mom, Sylvia, even gets in on the discussion, as do a couple of true scientists well versed on the topic.

"I am the type of person who thinks about checking every box when I meet someone, which is a bad mental habit," Dessa admitted.

"The hyper-abundance of choices out there [via dating apps] cannot only lead to decision paralysis, but also to more of an insidious phenomenon where you're taking a survey of all the decisions available to you and making an amalgamation of everyone's best features in your head.

"That isn't the real world. That amalgamation is not a real choice."

That first episode also casts a light on the origins of the podcast, and how Dessa got the job to host it.

She was picked largely on the strength of her 2019 memoir, "My Own Devices," and subsequent concerts and TED Talks, in which she recounted working on a study with neuroscientists at the University of Minnesota trying to pinpoint lovesickness in her brain.

That work caught the attention of the podcast's co-creators at the BBC and APM. They wanted to launch a podcast "exploring why we do the things we do" and quickly settled on their host, explained Chandra Kavati, APM's vice president of distribution and underwriting.

"Dessa's talent, combined with her natural curiosity to understand herself through science, seemed like an amazing fit," Kavati said.

Unfortunately, the podcast became an easier fit for Dessa once the pandemic suddenly cleared her calendar of all tour dates. She was actually in London working on the podcast last March and "had to scramble to get home before the travel bans," she recounted.

After spending much of last year back in the Midwest, she is now in New York again, finishing up "Deeply Human" episodes. She's also working on music there.

Throughout 2021, Dessa plans to release one new song on the 15th of every month in a series of singles she's calling "Ides." Two songs, "Rome" and "Bombs Away," are already out.

"It's 100 percent a response to the pandemic," she said. "We still don't how much longer we're going to be stuck at home, so I liked the idea of issuing one song a month, something to look forward to, like when you're watching a TV series and it feels good just knowing there's another episode."

True to form, Dessa believes she can balance her podcast "actually an insane amount of work," she said alongside her music career once things start to become more normal.

Also just like her: She used a personal anecdote based off "Deeply Human's" dating episode to predict how the podcast might affect her personal life coming out of the COVID lockdown.

"I learned all this good info to help me, and then the pandemic shut down dating altogether," she complained.

More seriously, she said the great payoff for her new podcast has simply been "learning useful stuff."

"I get to talk to brilliant people and have a real conversation with them, not just asking them for a sound bite," she raved.

"I get to have a personal Q&A with someone who knows a ton of stuff about some topic that fascinates me. And at the end, when I'm connecting all the pieces together for each episode, it does feel a bit like an art instead of a science. It feels creatively satisfying, too."

Chris Riemenschneider 612-673-4658 @ChrisRstrib

When: New episodes post Monday mornings.Where: Download or stream via BBC.co.uk, iHeartRadio.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other platforms

More here:
Dessa adds one more to her long rsum podcaster with BBC's 'Deeply Human' - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Human Behavior

‘The Adjustment Bureau’: The Death of Free Will and the Problem of Fate – The Great Courses Daily News

By David K. Johnson, Ph.D., Kings CollegeThe bureau is a secret organization that controls all world history by designing a plan for it. (Image: jgolby/Shutterstock)The Bureau at Work

The Adjustment Bureau is based on a short story by Philip K. Dick entitled Adjustment Team. The story is about the bureau: a secret organization that controls all world history by designing a detailed plan for it, and then makes sure no one deviates from that plan.

To prevent humans from deviating from the plan, they recalibrate peoplereconfiguring their neural pathwaysto get people to behave as they should. They have tried letting us do things on our own. The first time was toward the end of the Roman Empire. That led to the Dark Ages. The second time was around 1910, which led to two world wars, a Great Depression, Fascismbasically the worst horrors of the 20th century.

The story follows David Norris, a candidate for Senate, who accidentally finds out about the bureau. They threaten to reset himwipe his memories and personalityif he ever reveals their existence, and then tell him to stay away from a girl he has fallen in love with, Elise Sellas because their being together is not in the plan.

But David and Elise choose to be together despite the cost. And in the end, because of their persistence, the Chairmanwho created the plan in the first placedecides to change the plan so that they could stay with each other.

This is a transcript from the video series Sci-Phi: Science Fiction as Philosophy. Watch it now, on The Great Courses Plus.

At first glance, The Adjustment Bureau appears to be a movie about the triumph of free will, but upon closer examination, there is no reason to think humans in the movie actually have free will.

David doesnt choose to pursue or be with Elise despite being recalibrated by the bureau. In fact, the bureau never even touches Davids brain in the film. They just threaten to reset him and tell him the consequences of his actions.

Indeed, the reason David is so attracted to Elise is because a previous version of the plan meant for them to be together, and parts of it never got erased. Also, the film depicts humans as clearly not free. Their rational decision process is always predictable; thats how the agents know when they must make an adjustment.

Learn more about the enigma of free will.

In one scene, a Bureau agent called Thompson suggests that while humans have the free will to choose which toothpaste to use or which beverage to order, for the important things, they only have the appearance of free will.

But these ordinary not-important choices are, at best, based on impulse without direction or purpose. Decisions dictated by randomness are no freer than those that are determined. Furthermore, since these choices are predictable, they cannot be considered free.

The moral of the movie seems to be that a simple life with your true love is more important than the fulfillment of grandiose goals that will ultimately leave you empty. But on the other hand, this movie clearly illustrates how humans can lack free will without being fated.

Although the term is slippery and can mean many things, the most common understanding of being fated includes the notion of conscious control by an outside force, like the bureau. If you are fated, you are fated by something. If some event is fated, its included in some plana plan someone wrote. The word fate might sometimes just mean inevitable, but notice that, for example, once a person jumps off a cliff, hitting the ground is inevitable, but we usually wouldnt call it fated.

With this understanding in mind, we can see how humans could lack free will but not be fated to behave as they do. When the bureau steps back, human behavior is not fatedit is not forcibly aligned to the Chairmans plan. But if human nature is as it is depicted in the film, and our actions are either determined or random, then human behavior is still not free.

Even if our behavior is dictated by our environment and DNA, unless you think that our environment and DNA have a conscious will, we are not fated to behave as we do. So we can lack free will without being fated.

Learn more about the human free will in the sequels of The Matrix.

None of this means that humans are not fatedeither individually or collectivelyto behave as they do. It just means that humans lacking free will doesnt necessarily mean they are fated. But there are arguments that suggest fate can determine our actions.

One possibility is we consider the Chairman in the movie as God. In this case, the plan David is rebelling against in The Adjustment Bureau may simply be Gods. Indeed, at one point in the film, Agent Mitchell suggests that the Agents of the Chairman are sometimes called angels.

God is traditionally defined as a perfect beingthat is, a being with ultimate power, knowledge and goodness. Those who believe God exists are called theists. And many theists believe that God has a plan for their lifeindeed, for all of humanityand that God himself ensures that plan is brought to fruition.

Christian philosophers, like Clark Pinnock and Thomas Jay Oord, for example, believe that God has granted humans robust free will. Therefore, how our lives and human history pans out is totally up to us. Others believe that God doesnt dictate individual lives but is in control of the broad strokes of human history.

But many think that our actionsboth individually and collectivelyare fated by God. Indeed, denominational divisions in the church are often drawn along these lines. It should be pointed out that no major Christian philosopher holds the view that we are fated in a complete manner because such a view would be impossible to defend philosophically.

The most common understanding of being fated implies the notion of conscious control by an outside force, such as God. If some events are fated, it is part of some plana plan that will inevitably happen.

Some Christian philosophers believe that God has granted humans robust free will. Hence, how our lives and human history pans out is totally up to us. Others believe that God doesnt dictate individual lives but is in control of the broad strokes of human history.

No major Christian philosopher holds the view that our actions are fully fated because such a view would be impossible to defend philosophically.

Read more from the original source:
'The Adjustment Bureau': The Death of Free Will and the Problem of Fate - The Great Courses Daily News