Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

Is secondhand smoke from vapes less toxic than from traditional … – Missouri S&T News and Research

Posted by Peter Ehrhard On October 23, 2023

Dr. Yue-Wern Huangs graduate student, Ta-Chun Lin, (pictured) coded the respiratory system using AI prompts, and the team is applying for a patent for the device. Michael Pierce/Missouri S&T

According to the National Youth Tobacco Survey in 2020, 33.8% of U.S. middle and high school students report that they have been exposed to secondhand e-cigarette aerosols in indoor spaces. But little is known about how inhaling the heated metals, flavorings and other chemicals in the electronic cigarettes affect health.

So what is the adverse health effect in the secondhand smoke from electronic cigarettes? A Missouri S&T toxicologist is working to categorize the physical, chemical and toxicological properties of secondhand smoke created by electronic nicotine delivery systems when indoors.

Dr. Yue-Wern Huang, a professor of biological sciences at Missouri S&T, and his collaborator Dr. Yang Wang, an assistant professor at the University of Miami, have invented a simulated respiratory system, similar to an artificial lung, that inhales and exhales the same way people take in smoke. His graduate student, Ta-Chun Lin, coded the respiratory system using AI prompts to automate the system to simulate human smoke behavior, and the team is applying for a patent for the device.

Despite extensive studies on primary aerosols generated from e-cigarettes, Huang says that the properties of secondhand smoke are insufficiently understood because the aerosols need to be generated by human subjects using devices.

Usually, to look at this sort of health problem you need to conduct human-to-human research, in this case one person smoking the e-cigarette and one person having the smoke blown at them and inhaling it, says Huang. But we can limit the variables by using the simulated respiratory system to mimic human behavior, since every individual has different health backgrounds and statuses. Our simulated respiratory system is coded to inhale and exhale smoke in four seconds, then pause 30 seconds, to enjoy the smoke, similar to how a smoker would take a puff on a cigarette.

Huang says that the projects original idea comes from testing fabrics for COVID-19 facial protection with Wang. The two noticed that filters would block some types of aerosols much better than others.

I thought it was a crazy idea at first to apply that research to smoking, but he ran with it, says Huang. We are now collaborating on the project, with Yang characterize the aerosols themselves and I am investigating the biological aspects of the organic compounds in things like the liquid flavors and nicotine.

Huang hopes to answer questions such as how does secondhand smoke evolve in controlled environments, will secondhand aerosols induce oxidative stress and cytotoxicity, and what are the roles of metals and flavorings in the secondhand smoke contributing the chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases?

Secondhand smoke still contributes to cardiovascular diseases, reduced cell survival, elevated oxidative stress, and alteration of epigenetic events all can be related to lung disease like idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, says Huang. This work has the potential to produce a transformative understanding of the behavior and control of indoor secondhand aerosols and help the public form informed opinions on e-cigarette usage.

About Missouri University of Science and Technology

Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) is a STEM-focused research university of over 7,000 students located in Rolla, Missouri. Part of the four-campus University of Missouri System, Missouri S&T offers over 100 degrees in 40 areas of study and is among the nations top public universities for salary impact, according to the Wall Street Journal. For more information about Missouri S&T, visit http://www.mst.edu.

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Is secondhand smoke from vapes less toxic than from traditional ... - Missouri S&T News and Research

Human Behavior

How apocalyptic cults use psychological tricks to brainwash their … – Big Think

Roch Thriault was an intelligent and charismatic religious extremist who, in the 1970s, founded a commune known as the Ant Hill Kids in the woods around Quebec. Thriault had persuaded a dozen or so followers to live with him free of sin. Thriault told them to wait in the commune and obey his every command to survive the end times, which he claimed would occur on February 17, 1978.

When that date came and went, Thriault doubled down. The problem was that the commune was not free enough from sin. Thriault became increasingly violent, abusive, and unhinged. He would make people eat dead mice and feces. He punished people by breaking their legs or cutting off their toes. He tortured and murdered children.

The strange thing about the Ant Hill Kids is that few ever wanted, let alone dared, to leave the cult. Gabrielle Lavalle fled once after being tortured, only to return because she couldnt cope with life outside the cult. As a punishment, Thriault pinned Lavalles hand to a table with a hunting knife and used a cleaver to forcibly amputate her arm. Lavalle fled again and reported Thriault to the police. He was finally arrested and imprisoned in 1989, ten years after he began his horrific doomsday cult.

Why do these doomsday cults attract such unwavering loyalty among their followers? How is it that a person can persuade people to do terrible things to themselves and to others in the name of some bizarre prophesy? Here we look at three common techniques these cults use.

Doomsday groups often will cut off members of the cult, both from the outside world and even from each other. When you surround yourself every moment and every day with the same message and like-minded fanatical individuals, there is little room for doubt or introspection.

We often hear about how dangerous the echo chamber of the online world is. Our fears, biases, and paranoias are reinforced and given fuel by the constant reinforcement of others. Now, multiply and amplify that effect, and you can imagine a cult. In normal, everyday interactions, you run up against competing ideas. Your friend might ask, Are you sure about that? In a cult, there is no dissent and no checks on the fanatical dogma you are given.

When Thriault first started his Quebec cult, he demanded all his followers cut off ties with their families. As the years went on, the Ant Hill Kids were forbidden from talking to each other unless Thriault was there as well. There were no opportunities to question. Other cults, like Heavens Gate and the Branch Davidians, would live in gated communities where access to the outside world was filtered through their leaders.

The reason that people often join doomsday cults in the first place is due to a manipulative trick known as a love bomb. This is when a cult from the leaders down to the newest recruits showers someone with affection, care, and support. Not only is this intended to make people feel welcome and at home, but it subtly and insidiously establishes a dependency relationship. Everything you need or want has to come through the cult. At first, this is generously given. After a while, its given with a few conditions attached. In the end, affection and love are given only to those who behave exactly as they are supposed to.

A notorious example of this was known as flirty fishing, a technique used by the apocalyptic cult The Children of God (or The Family International), in which members would deliberately enter sexual relationships with potential converts. This fishing was a deliberate nod to Matthew 4:19, where Jesus tells his disciples they will become fishers of men. It is thought that the cults women used flirty fishing with over 200,000 potential converts.

Between them, fear and love account for the vast majority of all human behavior. And, if you believe Machiavelli, fear is the stronger of the two. Almost all doomsday cults inspire a degree of fear. At the smallest level, this is the fear of being ostracized. As we have seen, cults take very deliberate care to make sure that their members believe that there is nowhere else they can live. People are dependent on and defined by their cult. Being cut off from that is a great source of fear.

More than that, though, is the very real physical abuse that doomsday cults use to keep people in check. Thriault would make his followers sit on lit stoves, or he would make them sit naked in the cold and whip them. Jim Jones would publicly beat members of his Peoples Temple cult and limit their food supply.

Of course, one of the defining characteristics of doomsday cults is the ever-present fear of death. Often, this is simply the reinforced idea that the world will end soon. For instance, Heavens Gate, led by Marshall Applewhite, isolated its members and used the fear of an imminent spaceship arrival to control their behavior. The Peoples Temple, though, did something all the more traumatic: They would hold suicide drills. Alan Warren, author of Doomsday Cults: The Devils Hostages, describes them like this:

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Jones had paper cups filled with wine passed out to them after telling them they were celebrating. After a few toasts and everyone had imbibed on their cup of wine, Jones told them they had just drunk poison, and within 30 minutes, they would all be dead. Some of the group panicked and started to cry, but most of them just sat in the venue, silent and contemplating their lives. After 45 minutes passed, Jones told them that this had only been a drill, and none of them were going to die. He just wanted to test their loyalties.

Using these techniques, doomsday cults break down your sense of self and any notion of true or false, right or wrong. They then fill these gaps with cult dependency and the offer of salvation. Youre broken; we can fix you. You have nowhere to go; we can offer you a home. No one wants you; we are your family.

In fact, most kinds of emotional manipulation rely on these techniques. If someone can make you feel insecure, incomplete, and inadequate, then they can present themselves as the solution. That happens not just in cults but also in abusive relationships.

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How apocalyptic cults use psychological tricks to brainwash their ... - Big Think

Human Behavior

Human action pushing the world closer to environmental tipping … – Morung Express

Alison Kentish Inter Press Service

Melting mountain glaciers. Unbearable heat. An uninsurable future. Space debris. Groundwater depletion. Accelerating extinctions. The United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security said this week that these six environmental tipping points can have irreversible, catastrophic impacts for people and the planet.

The University released its 2023 Interconnected Disaster Risks Report on October 25. It states that climate change and human behavior are among the drivers of these tipping points.

Human actions are behind this rapid and fundamental change to the planet. We are introducing new risks and amplifying existing ones by indiscriminately extracting our water resources, damaging nature and biodiversity, polluting both Earth and space and destroying our tools and options to deal with disaster risk, it stated.

In terms of accelerated extinction, it states that the current species extinction rate dire at as much as hundreds of times higher than usual due to human action.

It says the life-saving resource groundwater, which is stored in reserves known as aquifers, is a source of water for over 2 billion people and is used overwhelmingly (around 70%) in the agriculture sector. It adds, however, that 21 of the worlds 37 major aquifers are being used faster than they can be replenished. In terms of space debris, while satellites make life easier for humanity, including providing vital information for early warning systems, only about one-quarter of the objects identified in orbit are working satellites. This means that satellites critical for weather monitoring and information are at risk of colliding with discarded metal, broken satellites, and other debris.

According to the report, climate change and increasing extreme weather events have resulted in skyrocketing insurance prices in some parts of the world. The report warns that rising coverage costs could mean an uninsurable future for many.

Another tipping point, unbearable heat, is a cause for major concern. The report states that, currently, around 30 percent of the global population is exposed to deadly climate conditions for at least 20 days per year, and this number could rise to over 70 percent by 2100.

And a warming earth is resulting in glaciers melting at twice the speed of the last two decades.

Report authors say the six risk areas of concern are interconnected, which means that going beyond the brink of any tipping point would heighten the risk and severity of others.

If we look at the case of space debris, it has to do with the practice of putting satellites into our orbit without regard for handling the debris that comes as a result. At present we are tracking around 34,000 objects in our orbit and only a quarter of these are active satellites. Were planning thousands more launches in the coming years. We may reach a point where it gets so crowded in our orbit that one collision can create enough debris to set off a chain reaction of collisions that could destroy our space infrastructure entirely, said Dr. Jack OConnor, Senior Scientist at UNU-EHS and Lead Author of the Interconnected Disaster Risks report.

We use satellites every day to monitor our world. For example, we observe weather patterns that can give us data to generate early warnings. We sometimes take these warnings for granted, but can you imagine if we pass this space debris tipping point and we are no longer able to observe weather patterns? Now a storm is coming to a populated area, and we cant see it coming, he said.

While the report is sobering, its authors are quick to point out that there is hope. Lead Author Dr Zita Sebesvari suggests using the tipping points interconnectivity as an advantage for finding solutions.

These tipping points share certain root causes and drivers. Climate change is cutting across at least four out of the six points. Therefore, decisive climate action and cutting our emissions can help to slow down or even prevent; accelerating extinction, unbearable heat, uninsurable future, and mounting glacier melting, she said.

The report was published just one month before the United Nations Climate Conference (COP28). Dr OConnor says the report can be instructive for policymakers.

I think the report is connected to the COP process. Reducing our emissions is key, and we will need to integrate this with other contributing factors such as global biodiversity loss.

The authors say passing these tipping points is not inevitable. They say the points are meant to spur action, to adequately plan for future risks, and to tackle the root causes of these serious issues.

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Human action pushing the world closer to environmental tipping ... - Morung Express

Human Behavior

What We Get When We Give | Harvard Medicine Magazine – Harvard University

From where in the body might kindness flow? Folklore and belief systems far and wide point to the heart. Ancient Egyptian mythology, for example, maintained that the leap to the afterlife required a test. Before the deceased could enter, their heart had to be weighed, placed on a balance under the watchful eyes of the gods.

The dead persons heart wasnt beating, but it wasnt considered dead weight; it held proof of virtue. If the person had lived a life of goodness, their heart would be light as a feather and the gates to the afterlife would swing open. But if their life had been filled with greed, their heart would be heavy. For this person, there would be no welcome to the afterlife; instead, their heart was fed to Ammit, a soul-devouring goddess with the forequarters of a lion, the hindquarters of a hippo, and the head of a crocodile.

This ancient tale is just one example of the hearts symbolic link to goodness. Christian art depicts Jesuss heart aglow, sacred and filled with benevolence. Hindu and Buddhist traditions consider the heart chakra the center of compassion.

And in Dr. Seusss tale, the Grinchs heart is two sizes too small.

With advances in our understanding of anatomy and physiology over the past few centuries, science has shifted the focus for our actions and emotions from the heart to the brain. Yet, in a sense, the ancient Egyptians may have been on to something. Emerging evidence suggests that good deeds can become etched into our bodies, including the cardiovascular system and that our hearts and our health benefit when we are kind to others.

In his book The Healing Power of Doing Good, nonprofit leader Allan Luks quoted survey respondents attempting to articulate the feelings they experienced when doing volunteer work. It makes you explode with energy, one said. Others described a relaxation of muscles that I didnt even realize had been tensed and a euphoric feeling of being zapped by an energy bolt. Luks coined the term helpers high to describe these feelings.

Dopamine is released when we give to others. Scientists have actually witnessed this in the lab.

This sensation has physiological origins. Gregory Fricchione, the Mind/Body Medical Institute Professor of Psychiatry at HMS and director of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, describes it as a release of chemical juice. When we help others, he says, neurotransmitters flow up in a tight bundle of axons called the medial forebrain bundle through the subcortex with exit ramps to many of the important structures of the brain the fear-conditioning amygdala, the memory-forming hippocampus, and the motivation-moderating medial prefrontal cortex.

Among these neurotransmitters is dopamine. This feel-good chemical is linked to the brains reward center. And its released when we give to others. Scientists have actually witnessed this in the lab. A few years ago, a small study from an international research collaboration that included scientists from the National Institutes of Health used magnetic resonance imaging to measure brain activity associated with making a charitable donation. The findings, reported in PNAS, suggested that this action engages the mesolimbic system of the brain, triggering a euphoric rush of dopamine in much the same way that anticipating a reward, like money, does.

Numerous other processes may be implicated in the helpers high, says Fricchione: pain-reducing endogenous opioids, endorphins, and perhaps even the neuromodulating chemicals that make up the endocannabinoid system. Then theres oxytocin, the so-called affiliation hormone, which has plentiful receptors in the amygdala, where it helps suppress fear and anxiety.

Best known for its role in inducing contractions during childbirth and in mother-infant bonding, oxytocin is closely linked to empathy and altruistic behavior.

Oxytocin receptors are found throughout the cardiovascular system, including in the heart. The hormone can cause blood vessels to widen, encouraging blood flow and lowering blood pressure. And its been shown to counteract oxidative stress and inflammation, both of which can contribute to atherosclerosis, heart attack, and stroke a hint of how the transient mood boost one gets from helping others may relate to longer-term health.

The molecules rewarding good deeds with good feelings are linked to ancient, deep-rooted instincts. Perhaps their release is an evolutionary nod that whatever we are doing including giving is good for us. But this possibility raises a paradox that has irked evolutionary theorists dating back to Darwin: If the natural world has been shaped by cutthroat competition, what explains our drive to share limited resources with others?

When Stephen Post was a high school student in the late 1960s, there was a focus on the brutishness of human nature. Trendy books like Lord of the Flies and The Territorial Imperative emphasized peoples more selfish and violent tendencies. There was a bias toward cynicism that I feel was unfounded, recalls Post, who, in addition to directing the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics at Stony Brook University, heads the board of directors for the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, a nonprofit that disseminates research on the health benefits of kind giving. To be kind was to be deluded. The thinking was, as the French philosopher Sartre argued, if anybody looks at you with kindness, watch out, because theyre after your wallet. But you really cant explain an awful lot of human behavior with that model in mind.

Since then, Post says, science has helped rewrite the story by highlighting the ubiquity of altruism across cultures throughout human history. For example, researchers have identified an intrinsic propensity in toddlers as young as fourteen months to help others with tasks without being influenced by rewards, encouragement, or threats.

Fricchione sees altruistic pro-social behavior as a logical extension of fundamental mammalian behaviors the drive to nurture offspring and attach to caregivers. It would be strange if evolution only provided us with a brain reward-motivation circuitry that supported gimme, gimme, he says. Of course, we know individuals like that, and they make us angry and frustrated, because we feel they arent behaving as good mammals. Evolution has provided us with the structures and functions that remind us that we survive better by cooperating as a group not only when were seeking social support, but when were giving it.

Post agrees that the key is in community. Group selection theory says that a certain amount of our evolution occurred in groups, he says. So, my group is going to do better to the degree that it exhibits compassion and helping behavior.

In 2010, Nicholas Christakis, MD 89, a sociologist-physician who then held faculty positions at HMS and Harvard University, attempted to map out how groups could become kind. Analyzing data from a series of experiments that used a public goods game, in which participants could dole out money, in the form of tokens, to strangers who were also participants in the experiments, he found that those who received funds from others were more likely to give money to other strangers in a future game. An individuals generosity caused a chain reaction that reverberated out, extending to three degrees of separation. Capturing the pay-it-forward phenomenon in the lab, these findings, published in PNAS, drew widespread interest.

How two people treat each other in one part of the city may relate to how two other people treat each other in another part of the city, says Christakis, who now directs the Human Nature Lab at Yale University. In other words, he says, altruism is contagious. The kindness of individuals cascades, ultimately creating a stronger group that is better equipped to survive.

Christakis sees kindness as one of several pro-social tendencies weve evolved because they are key to maintaining social cohesion, a thesis he describes at length in his 2019 book, Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society. The flip side of this, he adds, is that we find it stressful to be antagonistic or to be alone. Isolation from a group causes wear and tear on our body, explains Christakis. Indeed, according to the American Heart Association, loneliness and social isolation are associated with a 29 percent increased risk for heart attack or premature death, while emotions like anger and hostility are also considered to be coronary disease risk factors.

To Christakis, those health threats are the kind of inverse of evolutions way of telling us to be kind. We have to be kind to other people so theyll want to be in our group, and we have to support the group so that the whole is greater than its parts.

While the health benefits of kindness are probably not incidental, Christakis adds, they are multifaceted. Its not as straightforward as saying that kindness can completely prevent or cure a disease. Pro-social behaviors like kindness are probably exceedingly complex physiologically, acting upon our bodies in multiple ways, not all of which are understood.

How does this complex mix play out in the modern world? One way to find out is to examine the health outcomes of people who complete measurable acts of altruism. In a 2013 randomized controlled trial published in JAMA Pediatrics, a group of teens was assigned to complete volunteer work. After two months of weekly volunteering, the young people displayed significant decreases in risk factors for cardiovascular disease systemic inflammation, total cholesterol levels, and BMI compared to their non-volunteering peers.

Other research has found lower risk of early death among those who volunteer. A 2020 American Journal of Preventive Medicine study of nearly thirteen thousand volunteers over age 50 who were assessed over a four-year period revealed that those who spent more than a hundred hours per year volunteering had a 44 percent lower risk of mortality compared to those who did not volunteer, even after controlling for factors like stress, health behaviors, and personality traits.

One of the authors of that study is Eric Kim, an affiliate scientist at the Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Kim acknowledges that the physiological mechanisms linked to the helpers high could drive health benefits, but he also highlights additional drivers. Volunteers tend to get more exercise, use preventive health services more often, and experience better social cohesion, for example.

Kim, who is also an assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, argues that one of the most important effects of volunteering is that it contributes to a persons sense of purpose. If you have a will to live, that will to live will help push you past all kinds of barriers that emerge when youre trying to enact positive health behaviors, he says.

In a study of nearly fourteen thousand retired adults published in 2020 in Preventive Medicine, Kim and colleagues found that those with a higher sense of purpose in life had a lower likelihood of becoming physically inactive, having sleep problems, or developing an unhealthy BMI. Similarly, a 2016 meta-analysis in Psychosomatic Medicine described a lower relative risk for cardiovascular events among people with a higher sense of purpose, even after controlling for variables like conventional cardiovascular risk factors and psychological distress.

People often ask me how they might increase their sense of purpose, says Kim. The answer is, its very difficult. But one of the most scalable ways, that is kind of on the easier side, is volunteering.

Yet even if its relatively easy to get into volunteering, its not just about going through the motions. Kim points to a 2012 study in Health Psychology that found a lower risk for premature mortality among volunteers but there was a caveat. Surveying participants about their motivations, researchers found that those who volunteered for self-oriented reasons had a similar mortality risk as those who didnt volunteer at all. And in the JAMA Pediatrics paper on teen volunteers, the cardiovascular benefits of volunteering were greater among those individuals whose survey responses displayed an uptick in empathy, defined as caring about what happens to other people.

Acts of altruism can also burden the body. Caregiving, for example, can become an immense stressor contributing to myriad health issues. Thats why Post doesnt think that altruism itself is the best medicine. Altruism really conveys an action; it can be habitual, routinized, or externalized, he says. It doesnt get to the kindness. It doesnt get to the heart. Rather, intentional acts of kindness that do not become a burden are key. Post describes what he calls kind giving or kind altruism, an idea related to the Buddhist concept of loving-kindness that meditation works to finesse. Its not how much you do for others, but the kindness you pour into it, he adds.

Researchers found that those who volunteered for self-oriented reasons had a similar mortality risk to those who didnt volunteer at all.

Christakis points out that a propensity for kindness, like any evolved tendency, varies between individuals. But there are ways to cultivate it. He remembers a radio interview he listened to during a drive from Cambridge to the Longwood campus thirty-five years ago. The interviewee, a Buddhist monk, was asked how he might maintain his state of Zen instead of succumbing to road rage if a driver cut him off on the streets of Boston.

I recall that, without missing a beat, the monk said he would imagine that in that car, theres a woman in the back, and the man is driving desperately because shes pregnant and going into labor, says Christakis. So, the monk had trained himself to reframe what was happening around him in the most positive and favorable light.

Post echoes the importance of cultivating a kind disposition that pervades ones life whether youre donating money, volunteering, or just stuck in a traffic jam. The science bears this out. Its how you can actually de-stress. Its how you can be visionary. And its how you can experience joy and happiness, he says.

Its actually pretty simple, Post adds with a shrug. I mean, you can just be kind.

Molly McDonough is the associate editor of Harvard Medicine magazine.

Images: The Trustees of the British Museum (papyrus); John Soares (Fricchione); Evan Mann (Christakis)

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What We Get When We Give | Harvard Medicine Magazine - Harvard University

Human Behavior

Psychological Anime: 12 Series You Should Watch – But Why Tho?

Anime encompasses various genres that span the spectrum from whimsical adventures to epic shonen battles. Within this spectrum exists a subgenre that delves into the human psyche. Psychological anime is a genre of anime that tantalizes the mind and captivates the soul. These intricately woven narratives venture beyond the boundaries of conventional storytelling, exploring the enigmatic labyrinth of human emotions, fears, and desires.

What sets psychological anime apart is its ability to grip viewers, leaving them both bewildered and exhilarated as the stories unfold. Most psychological anime are captivating because of their intricate characters, exploration of the human psyche, and the thought-provoking concepts they present. These anime often feature complex themes and morally ambiguous situations, encouraging viewers to think deeper about the human condition and their beliefs.

The emotional intensity and varying unique art styles further immerse the audience in the storytelling. Additionally, the unconventional narrative structures and the exploration of taboo subjects make psychological anime stand out as engaging and thought-provoking entertainment that resonates with many viewers.

In this article, I will discuss and recommend twelve psychological anime, in no particular order, that I feel are must-watches and stand out amongst the subgenre.

There is no way we can not talk about psychological anime without mentioning Perfect Blue. Perfect Blue is an amazing psychological anime due to its profound character, Mima Kirigoe, complex and suspenseful plot, exploration of identity and obsession, and striking and visual style directed by Satoshi Kon. The film emotionally engages the audience and offers a commentary on the Japanese idol industry while being a masterpiece in the psychological thriller genre, making it an exceptional and influential work in anime and cinema.

Paranoia Agent delves into complex themes like the human psyche, societal pressures, and urban lifes impact on individuals, challenging viewers to contemplate these subjects deeply. The series non-linear narrative structure and interconnected stories add an element of intrigue and mystery that keeps the audience engaged. Furthermore, it provides in-depth character exploration, allowing viewers to connect with multi-dimensional and relatable characters as they grapple with their fears and insecurities. Paranoia Agent excels at building suspense and psychological tension, all while conveying these emotions through a distinctive visual style.

For fans of true crime stories, Erasedis a must-watch psychological thriller. Erasedmasterfully blends crime/mystery and time-travel elements, thus creating a suspenseful and emotionally engaging storyline. The shows protagonist, Satoru Fujinuma, is a well-developed character who is taken on a psychological journey from the future to the past as he attempts to prevent a series of tragic events from happening, including his mothers murder. The series skillfully navigates themes of trauma, regret, and the power of personal growth, offering viewers a thrilling and heartfelt exploration of the human psyche. Its clever use of time-travel and compelling plot twists keeps audiences on the edge of their seats, making Erased a standout in the psychological anime genre.

Death Note is considered a masterpiece in the psychological anime subgenre due to its riveting exploration of the consequences of absolute power and moral ambiguity. The series centers on the intellectual and psychological battle between the brilliant yet morally conflicted protagonist, Light Yagami, and the enigmatic detective, L. It delves deep into complex themes of justice, morality, and the human psyche, engaging viewers in examining the fine line between good and evil. With its intricate plot, well-developed characters, and intense cat-and-mouse dynamics, Death Note is a quintessential psychological thriller in anime.

Death Parade is a unique premise centered on the afterlife and reincarnation. The series explores deceased individuals moral complexities and emotions as they face judgment in a mysterious bar. Each episode features a new story that delves into the deceased characters pasts, inner conflicts, and the choices that lead them to their fates. The series raises questions about the human condition, morality, and the consequences of ones actions while maintaining an air of suspense and mystery. With its well-crafted characters and intricate storytelling, Death Parade offers a captivating and introspective viewing experience in the psychological anime genre.

Psycho-Pass presents a dystopian world where advanced technology can assess an individuals mental state and predict if they have any criminal tendencies. This premise allows for a deep exploration of complex psychological and ethical themes. The series engages viewers in a gripping narrative filled with moral dilemmas, societal critique, and a cast of well-developed characters. As the plot unfolds, it questions the limits of surveillance, the nature of justice, and the impact of such a system on human psychology, making Psycho-Pass a compelling addition to the psychological anime genre.

Tomodachi Game is a great anime series due to its intense focus on psychological manipulation, betrayal, and complex interpersonal dynamics. The story revolves around a group of friends forced into a series of sinister games that test their loyalties, trust, and morality of one another. These high-stakes games create a suspenseful narrative where each characters true nature is revealed and put on display as viewers are kept on the edge of their seats. The series delves into themes of human behavior, morality, and the consequences of choices. It is a thought-provoking addition to the psychological anime genre, with its gripping storyline and character development.

Wonder Egg Priority is a great psychological anime series to watch because it navigates complex themes such as trauma, grief, depression, and the struggles of adolescence with remarkable depth and sensitivity. While also utilizing and exploring elements of Magical Girl anime with various characters. The show features a captivating and emotionally charged storyline where characters confront their inner demons within a dreamlike world, blurring the lines between reality and the subconscious. Its intricate character development, breathtaking animation, and thought-provoking narrative make it a standout in the psychological anime genre, offering a unique and profoundly engaging exploration of the psychological and emotional challenges its diverse cast of characters faces.

Promised Neverland is a tremendous psychological anime series due to its gripping and suspenseful narrative that places a group of intelligent and resourceful orphans in a nightmarish world. The show excels at creating a constant atmosphere of tension and paranoia as the children try to outwit their caretaker to break free. The series explores survival, deception, and the human will to overcome impossible odds while delving into the psychological toll such a situation takes on the young protagonists and the supposed antagonists. The animes ability to keep viewers on the edge of their seats with plot twists and well-developed characters makes it a must-watch psychological anime.

Monster stands out as another masterpiece in the psychological anime subgenre due to its intricate storytelling and exploration of its character. The series follows Dr. Kenzou Tenma, who is faced with moral dilemmas and complex ethical choices as he deals with a brilliant yet sociopathic patient. The narrative delves deep into themes of morality, responsibility, and the darkest aspects of the human psyche. Its methodical pacing and character development create a suspenseful and thought-provoking experience, captivating viewers by exploring the fine line between good and evil.

B: The Beginning combines mystery, crime, and supernatural elements. The series unfolds in a fictional world where an enigmatic killer, Killer B, challenges the brilliant investigator, Keith Flick. The plot intricately weaves together character development, a compelling narrative, and a multi-layered mystery that keeps viewers engaged. It explores themes of identity, morality, and the blurred lines between good and evil, all while maintaining a suspenseful atmosphere that draws the audience into the psychological complexities of the characters.

Of course, as a huge One Piece fan, I had to work this recommendation into this list. One Piece: Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island slightly departs from the series typical shonen action-adventure format. Instead, this film is more of a psychological thriller exploring power, betrayal, and redemption. The film involves a dark and twisted storyline that boldly departs from the typical wacky and action-packed adventures that Straw Hat Pirates face. The movie effectively conveys a profound sense of despair, exemplified when Luffy believes that for each minute he wastes, one of his crewmates is enduring brutal harm or worse. Thus pushing Luffy to the brink of his psyche.

Whether it is the complex characters, mind-bending twists, or thought-provoking concepts, it is clear that psychological anime has a unique way of gripping the audience from start to finish. If you are curious to know more about these series, I highly recommend watching them for yourself and enjoy the suspenseful psychological ride each has in store.

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Human Behavior

Roosters May Recognize Their Reflections in Mirrors, Study Suggests – Smithsonian Magazine

In the new experiment, roosters made fewer alarm calls, meant to warn peers of predators, when placed in front a mirror versus when standing near another rooster. Stefano Spaziani / picture alliance via Getty Images

In a variation of a classic experiment, scientists showed that roosters may recognize their own reflections in a mirror.

This ability is considered a sign of self-awareness in animals. The traditional experiment, which involves placing a mark on an animal and seeing whether they touch it when put in front of a mirror, had only detected self-recognition in a limited number of species. But the new findings suggest more species may be able to discern their reflections than previously thought, per a new paper published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.

This is exciting, as it moves away from the rigid dogma that the mark test is the only valid test for self-recognition in animals, Nathan Emery, who researches animal intelligence at Queen Mary University of London and did not contribute to the findings, tells New Scientists Jake Buehler.

For the classic mirror test, the mark is placed on a part of an animals face or body that it can only see when in front of a mirror. If the animal then investigates or touches the mark, thats considered an indication that it recognizes the reflection as its own, a sign of self-awareness.

Only a few non-human animals have passed the mirror test, including great apes, bottlenose dolphins, elephants, magpies and crows. But the test could have some limitationsin previous experiments, only some individuals of a species have passed, which could mean the test has a high rate of false negatives, according to the new study. Additionally, training animals with mirrors can improve their test results.

The mirror test also might be less accurate for animals that have different abilities from apes, writes the New York Times Darren Incorvaia. To test other animals, the researchers thought they should incorporate behaviors connected to the creatures day-to-day activities, as they might not all be motivated to touch marks on their bodies, Sonja Hillemacher, a co-author of the study and animal behavior researcher at the University of Bonn in Germany, tells New Scientist.

To adapt the mirror test for roosters, the team decided to measure their alarm calls. When predators are nearby, roosters typically make calls to warn others, but theyll remain silent if theyre alone. The researchers placed one of the birds in front of a mirror and projected a silhouette of a hawk flying above it. If the rooster remained silent, that could indicate it recognized itself and didnt feel the need to vocalize a warning, whereas a call might mean the rooster confused its reflection for a companion.

For comparisons sake, the hawk silhouette was also projected above roosters under some different conditions: when they were alone with no mirror, accompanied by another rooster visible to them in an adjacent compartment and accompanied by another rooster in an adjacent compartment that was blocked from sight by a mirror. They tested 68 roosters in total, and all the birds were tested in multiple setups.

In the experiments, the roosters made significantly fewer warning calls when placed next to a mirror versus next to a rooster they could see, suggesting they recognized the reflection was not another bird. They also made a similar number of calls in the mirror setup as they did when they were alone. In tests with another rooster hidden behind a mirror, the animals also made a low number of calls, suggesting they recognize the presence of other roosters visually, not by their smells or sounds.

The roosters also failed the classic mark version of the mirror test.

Potentially, this study shows strong evidence for self-awareness, Masanori Kohda, a biologist at Osaka Metropolitan University in Japan who did not contribute to the findings, tells the New York Times. However, these results will not be enough to persuade all scientists.

Despite observing the roosters actions, scientists dont know exactly what went through the animals heads. Its equally feasible that they regarded their reflection as an odd [member of their species] mimicking their every move, leading them not to emit an alarm call out of irritation, Hillemacher says to the Guardians Nicola Davis.

Still, the findings suggest self-recognition might not be as exclusive as previously thought.

If ecologically relevant behavior like the alarm call in chicken will be used in the studies on self-awareness in animals, the animals self-awareness will be more correctly judged, Kohda tells the New York Times.

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Human Behavior

June 30 Zodiac: Sign, Traits, Compatibility and More – AZ Animals

Were you born on June 30th? Then your sun sign is Cancer in Western astrology. A sun sign is only one small part of your natal astrological chart, but it has become the most popular part of astrology because it is easiest to determine. Sun signs are based on the dates the sun moves through certain constellations each year. These dates are relatively the same year after year, so anyone born between June 21 and July 20 is also a Cancer.

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The other aspects of astrology, such as your Moon sign, Mercury sign, or Venus sign, are determined by the exact time and place of your birth. The planets closest to the sun are known are your personal planets because they are different for each person.

The outer planets like Pluto and Saturn, are the same for every person in a generation. Because of their longer orbits, they can sometimes take years to move through signs. However, each person has these planets placed in a different house in the astrological chart, which still gives them differing meanings for their life and personality even if they have the same sign as their peers.

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The zodiac sign Cancer is represented by the crab. This is a great symbol for Cancers for many reasons.

June 30 birthdays are in the first decan of Cancer. A decan is a smaller section of an astrological sign that takes up about 10 days. The first decan of Cancer is from June 21-July 1. Those born during this time are classic Cancers. They are quite romantic, love their families, and can be quite creative.

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Cancer is the only sign to be ruled by The Moon, and only one of two zodiac signs to be ruled by a luminary instead of a planet. The other one is Leo, which is ruled by The Sun. Cancers relationship to the moon is somewhat different from other signs relationships to their planets, simply because the moon is so much closer and we are deeply connected to it here on Earth.

The Moon has a direct effect on our Earths tides. Humans have used the phases of the moon to help us tell time for thousands of years. In the English language, several words that relate to periods of about a month are derived from words relating to the moon. For example, the words month and menstrual are related to The Moon. Throughout history, people have also thought The Moon has different effects on human behavior leading to words like lunacy and lunatic.

Cancers emotional nature may be related to The Moon. Cancers can seem, to others, to have random mood shifts that dont make much sense to others. However, they can be related to the changing phases of The Moon and the other astrological aspects of The Moon as it orbits our planet.

The Moon also deals with empathy and intuition. Because of this, Cancers are strong in both of these traits. A healthy Cancer can empathize with other people but still maintain their own identity. An unbalanced Cancer may become overly identified with other peoples feelings and get confused about what feelings belong to other people and what belongs to themselves.

Because of their connection to the moon, Cancers are also so intuitive that they can seem to be psychic. Never try to lie to a Cancer because they will probably simply sense that youre lying. However, as previously mentioned, this can lead them to get upset when their friends and family dont read their mind.

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All water signs are deeply emotional and intuitive, but in different ways. The other two water signs are Scorpio and Pisces. People tend to think water signs are total emotional softies. However, you only have to think of the element water to know that is not true. Water can trickle pleasantly through a stream, or stall in a river to create the perfect swimming hole. However, it can also rage and cause great destruction. Additionally, water is so powerful that over thousands of years it carves canyons and creates shorelines. All this is to say: dont underestimate a water sign.

Water signs also love stability. For Cancers, this can result in long-term partnerships, loyal friendships, living in the same home for a while, and having the same job in a traditional setting for quite some time. However, this can also mean that when things are not stable they can become more fragile than other people who deal with change more easily.

Every sign of the zodiac is either fixed, mutable, or cardinal. Each of the four elements, water, air, fire, and earth, represents three signs. Each of the three aspects fixed, mutable, and cardinal, represents four signs. So, each element has one fixed sign, one mutable sign, and one cardinal sign.

Cardinal signs like Cancer come at the start of each season. Because of this, they are considered the leaders of the zodiac. They are trendsetters and love to come up with innovative ideas. Cancers cardinal nature may be more under-the-radar than the others because of their watery nature. However, its simply that their leadership qualities may not appear in the things that we value most in our current societys structure. They are more likely to take the lead in spiritual, emotional, and home pursuits.

People born on June 30th have both the number 3 and the number 9 as part of their important numbers. The number 3 comes from the day of the 30th. So, they share this number with people born on the 30th of any month. Number 3s can be funny and social. To others they can appear to be irresponsible, but they always handle their affairs. Its just that they never think anything is so serious to get super worried about it.

The number 9 comes from the month (6) and the day (30th). The number 9 encompasses a bit of the qualities from all of the other numbers in numerology. It is the last number because in numerology you always simplify any double or triple digits down to a single number. So, people with this number in their life are often flexible and adaptable. They can learn multiple strategies for how to deal with a problem and use the one that works best for the situation.

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Each of the birthstones for the month of June fit well into Cancers ethos. There are three choices:

Pearl and moonstone both look like the moon, which Cancer has such a deep connection with. Alexandrite is a mystical rare gem that changes color depending on what type of light shines on it.

Each sign in the zodiac has stereotypical personality traits. However, its important not to pre-judge people based on these ideas. You can use them to explain someones behavior, but they show up quite differently in different people. When unbalanced, any sun signs more challenging traits can come out. When they have worked on themselves, any signs more easeful traits can be present. Also, what is a challenging trait for one person, may be a desirable one for someone else. For example, Cancers love of staying at home could be challenging for an adventure oriented sign like Aries or Gemini, but a dream for another comfort loving sign like Taurus. All this is to say, these traits are just stereotypes. Let a Cancer show you who they are before you assume anything about them!

Like all water signs, Cancers feel deeply. They are also quite sensitive. They may not take kindly to good-natured teasing or constructive criticism. Because of this, Cancers need to learn that things arent always personal. Learning to take criticism, especially in work and school, can help Cancers become happier and more well-adjusted people.

For all their emotions, Cancers tend to retreat into their shells when they are in their feels, rather than expressing them. Part of this is a desire to avoid confrontation, and part of this is that Cancers forget that people arent as psychic and intuitive as they are. They expect their people to read their minds. This can lead to passive-aggressive behaviors where Cancers drop hints that they are upset, but never really say what is bothering them. Additionally, as the emotional world is the realm in which Cancers feel most comfortable, they can forget that there is a conflict or issue to deal with. They can focus on their feelings and dig into them, even wallowing, rather than sorting things out.

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Cancer, especially those in the first decan, has a special interest in family. In our modern world, this doesnt have to mean their family of origin. It can be a family of choice. They love to nurture and care for their family members. June 30th Cancers may have a special interest in fertility or having their own children because the first decan is ruled by Venus. This also ties into their love of home, which is often where their family is located.

Cancers are loyal friends, family members, and romantic partners. It is hard to get into their inner circle, but once youre there, a Cancer will have a hard time letting you go. Their home can become a center for the friend group, and they love hosting for those who are important to them. However, there are some challenging aspects to this loyalty that can develop. Cancers are so nurturing and loyal that they can forget about their own needs in a relationship. This can lead them to overextend themselves, leading to resentment in the long-term, especially if their nurturing is not reciprocated.

Cancers also have a tendency to hold onto objects, in addition to people. This can lead to a comfortable but cluttered home.

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Cancers love stability so they may prefer traditional employment versus being self-employed. They do well in jobs where they can nurture others such as childcare, nursing, mental healthcare, and teaching. However, there are also some unconventional ways that they can show their nurturing nature through their work such as becoming a financial planner, interior designer, or office manager. Cancers can also put their amazing intuition to work as an esoteric practitioner such as a tarot reader or astrologer.

If youre looking for a committed relationship, then something with a Cancer is right up your alley. However, if you want something casual, then Cancers desire for loyalty, stability, and commitment will probably send you running for the hills. Cancers are super romantic and prefer to be in long-term relationships. They make great partners, and can build an amazing home and family with someone who wants the same thing.

Because of their loyalty to their partners and friends, Cancers can easily overlook problematic aspects of their partners. On the one hand, this can be a good thing. They are not likely to break up with someone over small behaviors that annoy them. On the other hand, when it comes to more serious topics like disrespect or even abuse, a Cancer can stay in a relationship for way too long.

Additionally, because they value loyalty and longevity so much, they are likely to stay friends with their exes. New partners may feel jealous of these friendships.

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Cancers are possibly most compatible with Scorpios and Tauruses. Scorpios feel just as deeply as Cancers, and may even feel more deeply. They also love commitment and are looking for a true soul connection in their relationships. Tauruses are equally stable and huge fans of comfort. A home built by a Cancer/Taurus relationship is going to be very cushy and inviting!

Fire signs might be least compatible with Cancers. Aries, Sagittarius, and Leo love adventure and might not stay in the same place long enough for a Cancers liking.

The symbol of the crab comes from an ancient Greek myth. The star of the myth is Heracles, the Greek version of Hercules. The Greek goddess Hera hated Heracles because he is the result of an affair between her husband, Zeus, and the mortal princess Alcmene. His existence reminded her of Zeus constant wandering from their relationship. So, when Heracles was fighting a nine-headed hydra, she sent a giant crab to mess with him. Unfortunately for Hera and luckily for Heracles, he easily killed the beast. So, Hera immortalized the crab in the stars as a constellation.

The Moon was also an important symbol in Greek mythology. Selene, the goddess of The Moon, was a romantic deity who was also very family oriented, just like Cancer. She had more than 50 children! She was also associated with intuition and psychic visions.

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June 30 Zodiac: Sign, Traits, Compatibility and More - AZ Animals

Human Behavior

Indiana’s Funding Ban for Kinsey Sex-Research Institute Threatens … – The Chronicle of Higher Education

The decision to ban state funding for Indiana University at Bloomingtons famed sex-research institute threatens academic freedom and sets a troubling precedent for legislative interference in research nationwide, the universitys president, Pamela Whitten, said in a recent public statement. The ban, included in the state budget after a heated debate, was inspired by a conservative lawmakers unproven claims, based on decades of circulated rumors, that the Kinsey Institutes founder had promoted pedophilia and that the institute endangered children.

The state doesnt allocate any money directly for the institute, which receives the vast majority of its funding from grants and outside philanthropy, so the impact of this specific prohibition will be mostly administrative and symbolic. The state simply gives money to the university, which until now, it could spend on the institute.

The institute was founded in 1947 at the Bloomington campus as the Institute for Sex Research. Its founder, Alfred C. Kinsey, was an American biologist and professor of entomology and zoology who had been teaching a college course on marriage and was surprised by how little his students knew about sexuality. After founding the institute, he and his team collected and studied thousands of sexual histories. Kinsey, who died in 1956, rose to national prominence after the publication of his books Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in 1948 and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953.

In the former, he argued that human sexuality existed on a continuum from heterosexual to homosexual, and that people didnt neatly fit one or the other. Because Kinseys research included extensive interviews with at least one pedophile, his fiercest critics accused him of encouraging sexual deviancy. Others questioned his research methods and data.

In the second book, Kinsey examined the sex life of American women, which outraged many 1950s readers with its findings about the frequency of premarital sex and masturbation. Congressional critics accused the Rockefeller Foundation of contributing to the nations moral decay by funding the research. It stopped doing so in 1954, two years before Kinseys death.

Among the contemporary topics the institute studies are issues related to reproductive health, sexually transmitted disease, teen pregnancy, and sexual abuse. It also delves into relationships and dating. Researchers should be protected from interference with such work, the universitys president wrote in a prepared statement last month.

As a premier research institution with a 200-year legacy of impact within our state and around the world, IU is firmly committed to academic freedom, Whitten wrote. The university is concerned that a provision singling out a specific research institute sets a troubling precedent with implications that could limit the ability of public colleges and universities to pursue research and scholarship that benefits people and improves lives.

She went on to say that the university will conduct a thorough legal review to ensure it follows state law and added that its committed to the ongoing crucial research and robust scholarship conducted by IU faculty and the Kinsey Institute. In a letter to faculty and staff members, Whitten and other top campus administrators said the university will continue to support the institutes faculty in finding and securing the research grants and private philanthropic support that already make up the vast majority of its funding.

The budget signed by Eric J. Holcolm, Indianas Republican governor, specifically prohibits state money from being used to cover the institutes on-campus facilities, research work, utilities, office supplies, and maintenance of research photographs or films.

The stipulation banning state spending on the Kinsey Institutes work was introduced by Rep. Lorissa Sweet, a Republican from Wabash. She introduced it as an amendment to the proposed budget because of her objections to the institutes founder, whom she accused on the House floor of exploiting children through interviews with adults talking about how children experience orgasm. Sweet, who did not respond to requests for comment, also suggested that the institute continues to support sexual abusers, a claim that has never been proved.

On its website, the institute urged its supporters to take to social media and other channels to defend the right to conduct sex research. The budget restriction takes aim at the very foundation of academic freedom and stifles critical research on sexuality, gender, relationships, and reproduction, it said.

Since 1947, the Kinsey Institute has been an international thought leader in providing an unbiased and apolitical scientific approach to human sexuality, the website post said. In this time of divisive politics and the rise of disinformation, Kinsey Institute research, education, and historical preservation are more important than ever.

The university did not make the president or the institutes executive director, Justin R. Garcia, available for interviews, but it referred The Chronicle to an opinion piece published this week in The Washington Post thats also posted on the institutes website.

For generations, the Kinsey Institute has shone a light on diverse aspects of sex and sexuality, in pursuit of answers that bring us closer to understanding fundamental questions of human existence, Garcia, who is a senior scientist at the institute and also a professor of gender studies, wrote. Sweet, the lawmaker who introduced the budget amendment, had parroted false allegations of sexual predation in the institutes historical research and ongoing work, which the institute, the university, and outside experts have repeatedly refuted.

Rep. Matt Pierce, a Democrat whose Bloomington district includes the flagship campus, said, These same unproven allegations about Kinsey were circulating about 20 years ago. Really crazy stuff about Kinsey experimenting with children and babies that were circulating in these conservative culture-war stories. The reports were being recirculated because of a 1998 book by a conservative author, Judith A. Reisman, that accused Kinsey of shaking the nations moral foundation with dangerous research and exploitive experiments on children.

Pierce, who is also a senior lecturer in the universitys Media School, was among a group of state legislators who visited the institute to investigate and found that there was no evidence to back up their fellow lawmakers concerns that children were being exploited.

Because the author requested a roll call vote, that locked it in, Pierce said in an interview on Friday. The amendment passed 53 to 34. Hard-core Republicans who actually believed this stuff voted for it, but others who were fearful of being taken out in a Republican primary went along with it, figuring, Im not going to lose my seat over this. Sweet, the bills author, is a freshman who toppled a longtime moderate Republican incumbent, Pierce pointed out.

When Kinseys report on womens sexuality came out in the 1950s, Pierce said, it showed that women were more sexually active than people believed, and there was an explosion of moral panic Youre lying. This cant be true.

The same moral panic, he said, has been happening in Indiana around transgender people. The governor last month signed into law a ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Kinseys research about the fluidity of gender may have alarmed many of those same lawmakers who approved the ban, Pierce said.

He told his colleagues during a heated floor debate that, even if they believed what was being said about Kinsey, it was 50 to 70 years ago, and that today, federal laws and university policies protect research subjects.

While the ban on using state funds will force the university to go through time-consuming checks to be sure public money isnt going toward institute costs, To me, the greater concern is the precedent that the legislator is attempting to stamp out a whole area of academic inquiry, Pierce said. What will be next?

In his opinion piece in The Washington Post, Garcia described the institute as the leading sex-research institute in the world, staffed by internationally renowned biologists, psychologists, anthropologists, health scientists, and demographers. The institute, he wrote, publishes dozens of scientific and academic articles each year across a variety of disciplines. Its critics, over the decades, have painted a far different picture, blaming the research center for promoting homosexuality and pornography, inciting the sexual revolution, and tearing away at the nations moral fabric.

Garcia warned that Indiana isnt alone in seeing debates over gender and sexuality become politicized. Legislators elsewhere, he wrote, are ignoring scientific evidence in passing laws that restrict reproductive health care, discussions of gender identity, and basic sex education. Despite the latest setback, he wrote, I am optimistic that this latest culture war will pass. And the Kinsey Institute will carry on.

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Indiana's Funding Ban for Kinsey Sex-Research Institute Threatens ... - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Human Behavior

Have AI Chatbots Developed Theory of Mind? What We Do and Do … – The New York Times

Mind reading is common among us humans. Not in the ways that psychics claim to do it, by gaining access to the warm streams of consciousness that fill every individuals experience, or in the ways that mentalists claim to do it, by pulling a thought out of your head at will. Everyday mind reading is more subtle: We take in peoples faces and movements, listen to their words and then decide or intuit what might be going on in their heads.

Among psychologists, such intuitive psychology the ability to attribute to other people mental states different from our own is called theory of mind, and its absence or impairment has been linked to autism, schizophrenia and other developmental disorders. Theory of mind helps us communicate with and understand one another; it allows us to enjoy literature and movies, play games and make sense of our social surroundings. In many ways, the capacity is an essential part of being human.

What if a machine could read minds, too?

Recently, Michal Kosinski, a psychologist at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, made just that argument: that large language models like OpenAIs ChatGPT and GPT-4 next-word prediction machines trained on vast amounts of text from the internet have developed theory of mind. His studies have not been peer reviewed, but they prompted scrutiny and conversation among cognitive scientists, who have been trying to take the often asked question these days Can ChatGPT do this? and move it into the realm of more robust scientific inquiry. What capacities do these models have, and how might they change our understanding of our own minds?

Psychologists wouldnt accept any claim about the capacities of young children just based on anecdotes about your interactions with them, which is what seems to be happening with ChatGPT, said Alison Gopnik, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley and one of the first researchers to look into theory of mind in the 1980s. You have to do quite careful and rigorous tests.

Dr. Kosinskis previous research showed that neural networks trained to analyze facial features like nose shape, head angle and emotional expression could predict peoples political views and sexual orientation with a startling degree of accuracy (about 72 percent in the first case and about 80 percent in the second case). His recent work on large language models uses classic theory of mind tests that measure the ability of children to attribute false beliefs to other people.

A brave new world. A new crop of chatbotspowered by artificial intelligence has ignited a scramble to determine whether the technology could upend the economics of the internet, turning todays powerhouses into has-beens and creating the industrys next giants. Here are the bots to know:

ChatGPT. ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence language model from a research lab, OpenAI, has been making headlines since November for its ability to respond to complex questions, write poetry, generate code, plan vacationsand translate languages. GPT-4, the latest version introduced in mid-March, can even respond to images(and ace the Uniform Bar Exam).

Bing. Two months after ChatGPTs debut, Microsoft, OpenAIs primary investor and partner, added a similar chatbot, capable of having open-ended text conversations on virtually any topic, to its Bing internet search engine. But it was the bots occasionally inaccurate, misleading and weird responsesthat drew much of the attention after its release.

Ernie. The search giant Baidu unveiled Chinas first major rival to ChatGPT in March. The debut of Ernie, short for Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration, turned out to be a flopafter a promised live demonstration of the bot was revealed to have been recorded.

A famous example is the Sally-Anne test, in which a girl, Anne, moves a marble from a basket to a box when another girl, Sally, isnt looking. To know where Sally will look for the marble, researchers claimed, a viewer would have to exercise theory of mind, reasoning about Sallys perceptual evidence and belief formation: Sally didnt see Anne move the marble to the box, so she still believes it is where she last left it, in the basket.

Dr. Kosinski presented 10 large language models with 40 unique variations of these theory of mind tests descriptions of situations like the Sally-Anne test, in which a person (Sally) forms a false belief. Then he asked the models questions about those situations, prodding them to see whether they would attribute false beliefs to the characters involved and accurately predict their behavior. He found that GPT-3.5, released in November 2022, did so 90 percent of the time, and GPT-4, released in March 2023, did so 95 percent of the time.

The conclusion? Machines have theory of mind.

But soon after these results were released, Tomer Ullman, a psychologist at Harvard University, responded with a set of his own experiments, showing that small adjustments in the prompts could completely change the answers generated by even the most sophisticated large language models. If a container was described as transparent, the machines would fail to infer that someone could see into it. The machines had difficulty taking into account the testimony of people in these situations, and sometimes couldnt distinguish between an object being inside a container and being on top of it.

Maarten Sap, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, fed more than 1,000 theory of mind tests into large language models and found that the most advanced transformers, like ChatGPT and GPT-4, passed only about 70 percent of the time. (In other words, they were 70 percent successful at attributing false beliefs to the people described in the test situations.) The discrepancy between his data and Dr. Kosinskis could come down to differences in the testing, but Dr. Sap said that even passing 95 percent of the time would not be evidence of real theory of mind. Machines usually fail in a patterned way, unable to engage in abstract reasoning and often making spurious correlations, he said.

Dr. Ullman noted that machine learning researchers have struggled over the past couple of decades to capture the flexibility of human knowledge in computer models. This difficulty has been a shadow finding, he said, hanging behind every exciting innovation. Researchers have shown that language models will often give wrong or irrelevant answers when primed with unnecessary information before a question is posed; some chatbots were so thrown off by hypothetical discussions about talking birds that they eventually claimed that birds could speak. Because their reasoning is sensitive to small changes in their inputs, scientists have called the knowledge of these machines brittle.

Dr. Gopnik compared the theory of mind of large language models to her own understanding of general relativity. I have read enough to know what the words are, she said. But if you asked me to make a new prediction or to say what Einsteins theory tells us about a new phenomenon, Id be stumped because I dont really have the theory in my head. By contrast, she said, human theory of mind is linked with other common-sense reasoning mechanisms; it stands strong in the face of scrutiny.

In general, Dr. Kosinskis work and the responses to it fit into the debate about whether the capacities of these machines can be compared to the capacities of humans a debate that divides researchers who work on natural language processing. Are these machines stochastic parrots, or alien intelligences, or fraudulent tricksters? A 2022 survey of the field found that, of the 480 researchers who responded, 51 percent believed that large language models could eventually understand natural language in some nontrivial sense, and 49 percent believed that they could not.

Dr. Ullman doesnt discount the possibility of machine understanding or machine theory of mind, but he is wary of attributing human capacities to nonhuman things. He noted a famous 1944 study by Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel, in which participants were shown an animated movie of two triangles and a circle interacting. When the subjects were asked to write down what transpired in the movie, nearly all described the shapes as people.

Lovers in the two-dimensional world, no doubt; little triangle number-two and sweet circle, one participant wrote. Triangle-one (hereafter known as the villain) spies the young love. Ah!

Its natural and often socially required to explain human behavior by talking about beliefs, desires, intentions and thoughts. This tendency is central to who we are so central that we sometimes try to read the minds of things that dont have minds, at least not minds like our own.

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Have AI Chatbots Developed Theory of Mind? What We Do and Do ... - The New York Times

Human Behavior

Scoop: Coming Up on a New Episode of HOUSEBROKEN on FOX … – Broadway World

Guest-Starring Melanie Lynsky ("Yellowjackets")

When Honey attempts to cure Diablo's irrational fear of basement monsters, she puts the whole group in jeopardy. Chico and The Gray One follow Kevin onto a plane to get to the bottom of why Kevin always abandons Chico. Chief faces off against the loud barking dog in the sky, more commonly known as thunder, in the all-new "Who's A Scaredy Cat?" episode of HOUSEBROKEN airing Sunday, April 2 (9:30-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX.

Featuring the voices of Lisa Kudrow, Will Forte, Clea DuVall, Nat Faxon, Sharon Horgan, Tony Hale, Sam Richardson and Jason Mantzoukas, animated comedy HOUSEBROKEN follows a group of neighborhood pets and stray animals as they work through their issues inside and outside their therapy group.

HONEY (Emmy Award winner Lisa Kudrow, "Friends," "The Comeback") opens her living room for the group to come and support each other through the misery, mayhem and majesty that is being a pet. Honey also struggles with her own problems, such as her arranged (by her human) marriage with CHIEF (Academy Award winner Nat Faxon, "The Descendants," "The Way Way Back"), a sloppy St. Bernard who enjoys eating socks and licking himself.

The group includes SHEL (Emmy Award nominee Will Forte, "The Last Man on Earth," "Nebraska"), a sex positive tortoise with intimacy issues and a knack for choosing unconventional partners; TABITHA (Emmy Award nominee Sharon Horgan, "Catastrophe"), an aging Persian cat beauty queen, trying to adjust to life off the cat show circuit; THE GRAY ONE (Jason Mantzoukas, "Brooklyn Nine-Nine," "The Good Place"), a street smart cat who lives with about 30 other cats and has his one eye on Tabitha; CHICO (Screen Actors Guild Award winner Sam Richardson, "Veep"), a chonky, co-dependent and very naive cat; and the group's newest member, DIABLO (Emmy Award winner Tony Hale, "Veep," "Arrested Development"), an anxious, sweater-wearing terrier whose OCD causes him to hump everything twice.

Among the group's other members are ELSA (Screen Actors Guild Award winner Clea DuVall, "The Handmaid's Tale," "Veep"), a power hungry, know-it-all Corgi and fake service dog, who drives Honey crazy; NIBBLES (guest voice Bresha Webb, "The Last O.G."), a psychopathic hamster who is mourning the loss of her mate (whose face she ate...and everyone knows it); MAX (Hale), George Clooney's pig, a former actor and current status-obsessed a-hole; BUBBLES (guest voice Greta Lee, "Russian Doll"), a horny, teenage goldfish who lives with Honey and Chief, and heckles the animals any chance she gets; TCHOTCHKE, a silent, and possibly magical, slow loris with a mysterious past, who uses a tiny cocktail umbrella to express his emotions; and JILL (guest voice Maria Bamford, "Big Mouth," "BoJack Horseman"), Honey and Chief's human owner. But who cares? This is about animals.

HOUSEBROKEN is an irreverent look at human behavior, but told through the filter of a quirky group of neighborhood pets. Throughout the series, the show centers on the pets' dysfunctional relationships and their skewed world view, while exploring relevant societal issues in fun and unique ways.

HOUSEBROKEN is produced by Kapital Entertainment and FOX Entertainment. It is created and executive-produced by Gabrielle Allan, Jennifer Crittenden and Clea DuVall. Sharon Horgan, Clelia Mountford, Aaron Kaplan and Dana Honor also serve as executive producers. The series is animated by Bento Box Entertainment.

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Scoop: Coming Up on a New Episode of HOUSEBROKEN on FOX ... - Broadway World