Research results in applied psychology often have a big impact on the general public because those works address questions that people can directly relate to. Who isn’t interested in what we are like and how we relate to others? Sometimes the research results cause great controversy and can even lead to rapid changes in public policy.
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The US Supreme Court on Friday decided to hear the case King v. Burwell of whether the subsidies provided by the health exchanges set up by the federal government under Obamacare are constitutional. This is ominous. Why?
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Congresswoman Barbara Lee of California is one of the most progressive members of Congress. In this interview with Stephen Colbert, she also shows that she is a pretty good sport. It is one of the silliest of such interviews by Colbert that I have seen and he pushes the limits quite a bit but Lee does not flinch and gives as good as she gets.
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The revelations of CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi’s abusive behavior towards women have been stunning. Among many women who moved in the same circles as he did, his behavior was apparently common knowledge and they took care to avoid him and quietly passed the warning along to other women who might be unsuspecting. But that quiet network was not enough to prevent some women from not knowing and thus falling victim. To make it worse, there was also a belief among some that he was gay, thus leading some women to put their guard down in his presence and think that he only wanted to be their friend. Among men, the reactions were all over the place but the primary one was why no women had publicly accused him of behaviors that had been apparently going on for a long time.
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Jordan Klepper of The Daily Show points out the things that the Democratic party did not talk about during the election. I am not saying that doing so would have changed the outcome but it was curious how they ran such a defensive, and even apologetic, campaign when they did have some achievements to their credit.
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It has always been the case that people have tried to change their appearance using many techniques, hairstyles and makeup being the most common. While a person’s body belongs to themselves and they can pretty much do what they want with it, sometimes the things they do completely baffle me because I would never have dreamed of going so far.
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Despite all the media hype about how crucial this mid-term election was and the much-ballyhooed sophisticated methods each party supposedly had developed for getting their supporters to the polls, the number of people who actually voted may turn out to be a historic low. As NPR’s Robert Siegel reports:
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In a previous post where I discussed the strong bond that dog owners have with their pets and the joy of reuniting with them, I recalled the case during Hurricane Katrina when one young man refused to be evacuated unless his dog was rescued too. It was only when a person working for Oprah Winfrey’s network promised that he would take care of the dog and that they would be reunited later that he agreed to go. Their reunion later was something to see.
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Yesterday the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down its verdict on the six same-sex marriage cases from the four states in its jurisdiction (Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, and Tennessee). District judges had in each case ruled that the bans on such marriages in each of those states was unconstitutional and the three-judge panel looked at all the cases together. The panel ruled 2-1 to reverse the lower courts and uphold the bans, meaning that same-sex marriages cannot proceed in these four states. The majority opinion is, frankly, appalling. I do not say this simply because I disagree with the conclusion but for reasons that I give below.
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Whoever the candidates and parties are, in US elections there is always one certain winner.
(This clip aired on November 4, 2014. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post. If the videos autoplay, please see here for a diagnosis and possible solutions.)