Word: contagion
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Virtues, like viruses, have their seasons of contagion. When catastrophe strikes, generosity spikes like a fever. Courage spreads in the face of tyranny. But some virtues go dormant for generations, as we've seen with thrift, making its comeback after 40 years in cold storage. I'm hoping for a sudden outbreak of modesty, a virtue whose time has surely come...
...explain in the book that empathy really starts with our bodies: running together, laughing together, yawning together. So yawning really is contagious? Yeah. Dogs catch yawns from their owners. Chimpanzees yawn [in response to those] that we show them. Yawn contagion is very interesting because it's a very deep bodily connection between humans or between animals. Humans who have problems with empathy, such as autistic children, don't have yawn contagion. It's either because they don't pay attention to the yawns of others or they're not affected by them. (Read about the secrets inside your...
...reptilian thing. Empathy is a mammalian thing. Psychopaths are capable of taking the perspective of somebody else, but only to take better advantage of you. They're able to play the empathy game, but without the feelings involved. It's like an empty shell. The core of empathy - emotional contagion and being in tune with the feelings of somebody else - seems to be completely lacking. They are like aliens among...
...passed to humans only from birds and is not transmissible between humans. But if it were to swap genes with another influenza virus, possibly H1N1 (through, for example, a patient who contracts the two illnesses simultaneously), a new, more lethal pandemic strain could emerge with a high rate of contagion. "I would say that is an unlikely scenario," Hay says. "But the point is you don't know what's going to happen. You have to remain alert to all possibilities...
...counseling - or any intervention that doesn't aggregate troubled teens - is safer and more likely to be effective than group activities. But if groups must be used, experts say that high supervision and low child-to-staff ratios are essential to minimize the risk of behavior contagion...