Word: selfing
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...into the wider world, all for the fun of proving what fools these mortals be. That includes the mortals called Ali G, Borat and Brüno - Baron Cohen's comic characters are as dumb and deplorable as the people they mock. Ali G is a self-deluding white guy who yearns to be a black rapper. Borat is a rube and an anti-Semite. This is why the inevitable debate over whether the new film is a critique of homophobia or an incitement to more of it misses the point. Brüno sees everybody in the pejorative, including...
...past 50 years, people with mental problems have spent untold millions of hours in therapists' offices, and millions more reading self-help books, trying to turn negative thoughts like "I never do anything right" into positive ones like "I can succeed." For many people - including well-educated, highly trained therapists, for whom "cognitive restructuring" is a central goal - the very definition of psychotherapy is the process of changing self-defeating attitudes into constructive ones...
...constantly argue with ourselves. Many of us are reluctant to revise our self-judgment, especially for the better. In 1994, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published a paper showing that when people get feedback that they believe is overly positive, they actually feel worse, not better. If you try to tell your dim friend that he has the potential of an Einstein, he won't think he's any smarter; he will probably just disbelieve your contradictory theory, hew more closely to his own self-assessment and, in the end, feel even dumber. In one fascinating 1990s experiment...
...paper, Wood, Lee and Perunovic measured 68 students on their self-esteem. The students were then asked to write down their thoughts and feelings for four minutes. Every 15 seconds during those four minutes, one randomly assigned group of the students heard a bell. When they heard it, they were supposed to tell themselves, "I am a lovable person...
...control over the press in recent years. As the U.S. State Department reported earlier this year, the Russian government has "restricted media freedom through direct ownership of media outlets, pressuring the owners of major media outlets to abstain from critical coverage and harassing and intimidating journalists into practicing self-censorship." Though Medvedev, who was handpicked by Putin, won the election last year with a reported 70% of the vote, he was aided by the state-owned media, which gave him disproportionate coverage during the campaign. (Read about Russians' reactions to a black U.S. President...