The Social World
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When humans form communities, they are capable of banding together in groups of almost any size: from two-person couples to international organizations.
In this promo shot, two Asian men share cigarettes with two European men after a generous, seafood picnic along the Pacific coast of North Korea in 2014. (Uri, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Table of Contents
Books (11)
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544 pages
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Canonical Works (14)
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… can you point out a fruit of giving that’s apparent in the present life?
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You can get to know a person’s ethics by living with them. But only after a long time, not casually; only when attentive, not when inattentive; and only by the wise, not by the witless.
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Possessions, honor, and popularity are brutal, bitter, and harsh.
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Readings (32)
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⭐ Recommended
The panic attacks started after Chloe watched a man die.
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⭐ Recommended
… these hours were often spent in the company of close friends: women and adolescent girls used the twilight to enjoy the company of female friends, while some youth reported visiting friends’ houses where they played and listened to music, completed their homework or chatted. Others spent their pocket money on movies or karaoke.
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⭐ Recommended
… studies gave statistically significant positive results indicating that people really could tell when they were being looked at from behind
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… engineering education successfully turns potential critics into agents of cultural reproduction
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Hearing about the latest reality TV show with 20 beautiful women chasing after a rich bachelor, watching a commercial showing a woman getting excited about a kitchen cleaner, or even taking a class with a White instructor are all ways the environment can conspire to make us think about our social identities.
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… ways of understanding their [group’s] distinctiveness which challenge dominant characterizations with the goal of greater self-determination
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Sexual harassment is more prevalent for women supervisors than for women employees.
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⭐ Recommended
Pride is a highly pleasant emotion; this internal reward can incentivize people to undertake and persevere at costly but socially valued courses of action. Pride has a full-body display featuring an erect and expanded posture and gaze directed at the audience and thus it appears to generate common knowledge about the individual’s enhanced value. This display conveys achievement and dominance, is produced by congenitally blind individuals, and is recognized by young children and by adults across cultures.
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… feeling close to the match is associated with an 86% increase in the probability of assimilation of political views. Our analysis also uncovers an asymmetry: Interacting with someone with opposite views greatly reduced feelings of closeness; however, interacting with someone with consistent views only moderately increased them.
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⭐ Recommended
… studies suggest that diversity statements [should] be aspirational, emphasize autonomy, and express a value for difference
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Just as a pulley system transforms minimal muscular strength into significant lifting capability, institutions act as cooperative pulleys, transforming weak reputational incentives into powerful drivers of cooperative behavior.
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When I took the stand at the trial in San Francisco in 1993 I could not have done worse…
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Participants who were asked to talk with another person expected to learn significantly less from the conversation than they actually reported learning afterward, regardless of whether they had conversation prompts and whether they had the goal to learn (experiments 1 and 2). Undervaluing conversation does not stem from having systematically poor opinions of how much others know (experiment 3) but is instead related to the inherent uncertainty involved in conversation itself.
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Hannah Arendt knew what was at stake. In 1951, she published a hefty book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, which traced the roots of what was happening in Europe…
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⭐ Recommended
Therapy assumes that someone is sick and that there is a cure, e.g., a personal solution. I am greatly offended that I or any other woman is thought to need therapy in the first place. Women are messed over, not messed up! We need to change the objective conditions, not adjust to them.
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An inability to engage with our communities hurts everyone
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Aśvaghoṣa twice refers to a story in which the ṛṣi Vyāsa was kicked by a prostitute…
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… a simple guide that shows you the term isn’t as cringey or scary as it’s all made out to be
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Of course, there will be instances where a stranger will not be amenable to your overtures (this isn’t permission to harass people on the street), but your intention should be to brighten someone’s day without worrying what they think about you.
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… during this season we remember and celebrate the lives of all our departed loved ones
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… a defense against reality
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Audio/Video (47)
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3h 10 m -
⭐ Recommended
I would frequently see adults recount something a child had said that was particularly provocative or deep by describing it as “adorable.” “How cute they are.” Even well-meaning adults just kind of dismiss children’s larger questions and ideas.
59 min -
… how we see the world is dependent upon what we expect to see
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We always say “Nobody knew,” and that means that everyone who knew was a nobody.
1h 45 m -
27 min -
… two stories of people trying to figure out what to say or if they should say anything in this moment of backlash.
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… the fight for disability rights in the UK and India, the remarkable life of Helen Keller, how a Rwandan Paralympic volleyball team made history, and the invention of the Invacar
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22 min -
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We wrote our names all over the city because we felt invisible. And it was fun. I existed when I did graffiti.
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Why do we see more information [about other people’s stuggles] as threatening rather than as clarifying? At the point that we can see that things are hard for all of us, then we [should] know that it’s a structural problem.
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Deepa’s Russian pens pals were obsessed with Bollywood
33 min -
… the kind of tragedy that befell Tierney and her daughter can be averted if we appeal to the better parts of human nature
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On the six stories we tell to justify ownership.
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🥇 Best of
Each year, Ma collects more and more superstitions
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13 min -
You read the road as if it’s encrypted with what a father should say on a drive like this.
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12 min -
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i open the screen door slowly
n wait for Abuela n her red walker
to begin the procession
from the back door out to the street5 min -
Morning: walking my neighborhood, I come upon a colony
of ants busy at work…5 min -
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth5 min -
I too have had my hands full of what keeps me
contained…5 min -
Across from me she
was crying badly…5 min -
We were thirty-one souls, he said, in the gray-sick of sea…
5 min -
The people I love the best
jump into work5 min -
when the day calls i will answer
5 min
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