Illusions Revolt!

What are your in-groups and out-groups? ksenia_bravo/Shutterstock.com By   Leslie Henderson , Dartmouth College Anti-immigrant policies, race-related demonstrations, Title IX disputes, affirmative action court cases, same-sex marriage litigation. These issues are continually in the headlines. But even thoughtful articles on these subjects seem always to devolve to pitting warring factions against each other: black versus white, women versus men, gay versus straight. At the most fundamental level of biology, people recognize the innate advantage of defining differences in species. But even within species, is there something in our neural circuits that leads us to find comfort in those like us and unease with those who may differ? Brain battle between distrust and reward As in all animals, human brains balance two primordial systems. One includes a brain region called the amygdala that can generate fear and distrust of things that ...

           JoeyCheung/Shutterstock.com By   Simon Gottschalk , University of Nevada, Las Vegas In the 1950s, scholars worried that , thanks to technological innovations, Americans wouldn’t know what to do with all of their leisure time. Yet today, as sociologist Juliet Schor notes , Americans are overworked, putting in more hours than at any time since the Depression and more than in any other in Western society. It’s probably not unrelated to the fact that instant and constant access has become de rigueur, and our devices constantly expose us to a barrage of colliding and clamoring messages: “Urgent,” “Breaking News,” “For immediate release,” “Answer needed ASAP.” It disturbs our leisure time, our family time – even our consciousness. Over the past decade, I’ve tried to understand the social and psychological effects of our growing interactions with new information and communication technologies, a topic I examine in my book “ The T...