Scientific American: Coronavirus Responses Highlight How Humans Have Evolved to Dismiss Facts That Don’t Fit Their Worldview

“Motivated reasoning” is what social scientists call the process of deciding what evidence to accept based on the conclusion one prefers. As I explain in my book, “The Truth About Denial,” this very human tendency applies to all kinds of facts about the physical world, economic history and current events.

The interdisciplinary study of this phenomenon has made one thing clear: The failure of various groups to acknowledge the truth about, say, climate change, is not explained by a lack of information about the scientific consensus on the subject. [...]

A 2015 metastudy showed that ideological polarization over the reality of climate change actually increases with respondents’ knowledge of politics, science and/or energy policy. The chances that a conservative is a climate science denier is significantly higher if he or she is college educated. Conservatives scoring highest on tests for cognitive sophistication or quantitative reasoning skills are most susceptible to motivated reasoning about climate science. [...]

Unwelcome information can also threaten in other ways. “System justification” theorists like psychologist John Jost have shown how situations that represent a perceived threat to established systems trigger inflexible thinking. For example, populations experiencing economic distress or an external threat have often turned to authoritarian leaders who promise security and stability.

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Scientific American: How Does the New Coronavirus Compare with the Flu?

So far, the new coronavirus, dubbed 2019-nCoV, has led to more than 20,000 illnesses and 427 deaths in China, as well as more than 200 illnesses and two deaths outside of mainland China. But that’s nothing compared with the flu, also called influenza. In the U.S. alone, the flu has already caused an estimated 19 million illnesses, 180,000 hospitalizations and 10,000 deaths this season, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). [...]

“Despite the morbidity and mortality with influenza, there’s a certainty … of seasonal flu," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a White House press conference on Jan. 31. “I can tell you all, guaranteed, that as we get into March and April, the flu cases are going to go down. You could predict pretty accurately what the range of the mortality is and the hospitalizations [will be],” Fauci said. “The issue now with [2019-nCoV] is that there’s a lot of unknowns.” [...]

The death rate for 2019-nCoV is still unclear, but it appears to be higher than that of the flu. Throughout the outbreak, the death rate for 2019-nCoV has been about 2%. Still, officials note that in the beginning of an outbreak, the initial cases that are identified “skew to the severe,” which may make the mortality rate seem higher than it is, Alex Azar, U.S. secretary of the Health and Human Services, said during a news briefing on Jan. 28. The mortality rate may drop as more mild cases are identified, Azar said.

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Scientific American: The Downside of Solar Energy

The Downside of Solar Energy Credit: Gerard Julien Getty Images The solar economy continues its dramatic growth, with over a half-terawatt already installed around the world generating clean electricity. But what happens to photovoltaic (PV) modules at the end of their useful life? With lifespans measured in decades, PV-waste disposal may seem to be an issue for the distant future. Yet, the industry ships millions of tons every year, and that number will continue to rise as the industry grows. Total e-waste—including computers, televisions, and mobile phones—is around 45 million metric tons annually. [...]

At the same time, demand for everything from sand to rare and precious metals continues to rise. While supplying only about 1 percent of global electricity, photovoltaics already relies on 40 percent of the global tellurium supply, 15 percent of the silver supply, a large portion of semiconductor quality quartz supply, and smaller but important segments of the indium, zinc, tin, and gallium supplies. Closing the loop on these metals and embracing circular economy concepts will be critical to the industry’s future. [...]

The primary challenge to recycling PV today is finding value in the recovered materials compared to the costs of collection and recovery. The International Renewable Energy Agency reported that recovered materials could exceed $15 billion dollars (U.S.) by 2050. But a cost-effective PV-waste collection and recovery system capable of high-value material recovery remains elusive. Most of the value in PV-waste is in the aluminum frame and the silver in the metallization paste. Getting higher-value PV recycling will require expertise in managing glass. 80–90 percent of a module by weight is made from glass.

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Scientific American: Be careful with Occam's razor, you might cut yourself

However, analyzing natural selection at the level of the genes explains these situations. Those individuals share their alleles (forms of genes) with their family members; and what Hamilton showed is that natural selection favors traits that maximize the passage of underlying alleles to the next generation, whether or not those alleles are in the individual with that trait. [...]

So, are we comprised of selfish genes? Well, genes can’t literally be selfish, but yes, in a poetic sense that has some biological basis, we are. But this fact in and of itself has limited metaphysical implications. The term “selfish gene” is mainly a rhetorical device to explain the evolutionary process as I have described it above. [...]

What I’ve described here is called reductive elimination, whether fans of evolution are getting rid of meaning and purpose, or fans of neuroscience are getting rid of consciousness and the self. This strategy is often sold by an appeal to Occam’s razor, the principle that one should cut away any unnecessary assumptions to produce the simplest possible solution to any problem (often called parsimony). Although practically helpful within science in order to identify effective hypotheses and test them against alternatives, the principle loses its footing outside of science, and does not warrant or justify being radically minimalistic about reality as a whole. In fact its originator, William of Occam, was a man of faith and would have been horrified at his principle being wielded to slice off parts of his worldview (like God) that he held most dear.

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Scientific American: Why Don’t We Forget How to Ride a Bike?

As it turns out, different types of memories are stored in distinct regions of our brains. Long-term memory is divided into two types: declarative and procedural.

There are two types of declarative memory: Recollections of experiences such as the day we started school and our first kiss are called episodic memory. This type of recall is our interpretation of an episode or event that occurred. Factual knowledge, on the other hand, such as the capital of France, is part of semantic memory. These two types of declarative memory content have one thing in common—you are aware of the knowledge and can communicate the memories to others. [...]

One of the most famous studies showing the separate memory systems was that of an epileptic named Henry Gustav Molaison (aka H. M.). In the 1950s he underwent the removal of portions of his brain, including large parts of his hippocampus. After the operation doctors found that although the number of seizures had decreased, H. M. was unable to form new memories. Many of his memories of the time before the operation were also erased. [...]

Even with traumatic brain injury the procedural memory system is hardly ever compromised. That’s because the basal ganglia, structures responsible for processing nondeclarative memory, are relatively protected in the brain’s center, below the cerebral cortex. However, it’s not clear, beyond brain damage, why procedural memory contents are not as easily forgotten as declarative ones are. According to one idea, in the regions where movement patterns are anchored fewer new nerve cells may be formed in adults. Without this neurogenesis, or continuous remodeling in those regions, it’s less likely for those memories to get erased.

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Scientific American: Abortion Is a Problem to Be Solved, Not a Moral Issue (September 1, 2018)

Abstinence would obviate abortions just as starvation would forestall obesity. There is a reason no one has proposed chastity as a solution to overpopulation. Sexual asceticism doesn't work, because physical desire is nearly as fundamental as food to our survival and flourishing. A 2008 study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health entitled “Abstinence-Only and Comprehensive Sex Education and the Initiation of Sexual Activity and Teen Pregnancy” found that among American adolescents ages 15 to 19, “abstinence-only education did not reduce the likelihood of engaging in vaginal intercourse” and that “adolescents who received comprehensive sex education had a lower risk of pregnancy than adolescents who received abstinence-only or no sex education.” A 2011 PLOS ONE paper analyzing “Abstinence-Only Education and Teen Pregnancy Rates” in 48 U.S. states concluded that “increasing emphasis on abstinence education is positively correlated with teenage pregnancy and birth rates,” controlling for socioeconomic status, educational attainment and ethnicity.

Most telling, a 2013 paper entitled “Like a Virgin (Mother): Analysis of Data from a Longitudinal, US Population Representative Sample Survey,” published in BMJ reported that 45 of the 7,870 American women studied between 1995 and 2009 said they become pregnant without sex. Who were these immaculately conceiving parthenogenetic Marys? They were twice as likely as other pregnant women to have signed a chastity pledge, and they were significantly more likely to report that their parents had difficulties discussing sex or birth control with them.

When women are educated and have access to birth-control technologies, pregnancies and, eventually, abortions decrease. A 2003 study on the “Relationships between Contraception and Abortion,” published in International Family Planning Perspectives, concluded that abortion rates declined as contraceptive use increased in seven countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Bulgaria, Turkey, Tunisia and Switzerland). In six other nations (Cuba, Denmark, the Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea and the U.S.), contraceptive use and abortion rates rose simultaneously, but overall levels of fertility were falling during the period studied. After fertility levels stabilized, contraceptive use continued to increase, and abortion rates fell.

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Scientific American: How Identity, Not Issues, Explains the Partisan Divide (June 19, 2018)

U.S. liberals and conservatives not only disagree on policy issues: they are also increasingly unwilling to live near each other, be friends, or get married to members of the other group. This rejection based on group membership is called affective polarization, meaning that our feelings (affect) are different towards members of our own group compared to outsiders. Growing intolerance in the U.S. is a puzzle because disagreeing about policies need not cause rampant mistrust and legislative gridlock. For example, countries with proportional electoral representation like Germany create functional coalitions across different ideologies.

Now, surprising new research suggests that what divides us may not just be the issues. In two national surveys, political psychologist Lilliana Mason of the University of Maryland measured American’s preferences on six issues such as abortion and gun control, how strongly they identified as liberals and conservatives, and how much they preferred social contact with members of their own ideological groups. Identifying as liberal or conservative only explained a small part of their issue positions. (This is consistent with findings that Americans overestimate the differences in policy preferences between Republicans and Democrats.) Next, Mason analyzed whether the substantial intolerance between liberals and conservatives was due to their political identities (how much they labelled themselves as “liberal” or “conservative”) or to their policy opinions. For example, who would be more opposed to marrying a conservative: a moderate liberal who is pro-choice, or a strong liberal who is pro-life? Across all six issues, identifying as liberal or conservative was a stronger predictor of affective polarization than issue positions. Conservatives appear particularly likely to feel cold towards liberals, even conservatives who hold very liberal issue positions.

At the same time, the research has several important limitations. First, the study did not use an experimental design—it’s based on surveys—so the results cannot speak to whether affective polarization causes partisan conflict. Moreover, the set of included policy issues was not comprehensive and may therefore underestimate the links between issue positions and identity or with outgroup dislike. Furthermore, expecting a strong link between ideology and issue positions ignores the fact that many individuals respond to political surveys by repeating what they’ve recently heard from media and political elites rather than reflecting on personal values. These observations can explain why American’s issue positions often appear contradictory and unstable over time.

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Scientific American: Rising Ethnic Diversity Increases Whites’ Fears

Evidence from social science seems to both refute and support the idea that greater ethnic diversity leads to increased feelings of threat amongst Whites. Proponents of “contact theory” claim that increasing levels of diversity within a community actually reduces prejudice. When Whites are able to build personal relationships with people belonging to a particular ethnic group, and get to know them as close friends or neighbors, contact theory predicts that they will develop a more positive view of members of that ethnic group. However, other studies, such as a famous paper by Harvard’s Robert Putnam, seem to support “threat theory”: as Whites have increasing contact with members of other ethnic groups, they tend to withdraw from their communities and become less trusting of people belonging to other ethnicities.

Until now, these two theories have competed with each other, leaving a lack of clarity about the degree to which ethnic diversity truly leads Whites to feel more threatened. A recently published paper by political scientists Eric Kaufmann and Matthew Goodwin attempts to reconcile these two theories and determine conclusively which one is actually correct. They found that the relationship between ethnic diversity and feelings of threats amongst native-born Whites is mixed: for small communities, contact seems to reduce threat, while in larger communities, more diversity seems to increase it. This suggests that increasing diversity by itself does not necessarily lead to greater wariness amongst Whites; diversity interacts with the size of a community in producing threatened feelings. [...]

Perhaps contact theory is only true in smaller sized neighborhoods because that is where people are most likely to develop close, personal relationships with people who have different backgrounds than themselves. In larger cities, people may be more likely to segregate themselves into their own racial groups. Or perhaps the largeness of a community inherently reduces people’s ability to trust strangers who appear different than themselves. However, this is all speculation, as the study cannot offer a definitive explanation as to what is causing the findings. To answer that question, the researchers plan to undertake additional research that looks more deeply at the conditions under which diversity either does or does not produce a sense of threat amongst Whites.

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Scientific American: Trump Wants Offshore Drilling, but States Are Choosing Wind Energy

States bordering the outer continental shelf are looking for carbon-free electricity, even as the Trump administration rolls back rules requiring it. Last week, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) announced that his state will aim for 3,500 megawatts of installed offshore wind by 2030, enough to power 1 million homes. Massachusetts has a goal to build 1,600 MW of offshore wind power by 2027, and New York has committed to 2,400 MW by 2030.

At the same time, wind technology is quickly advancing, thanks to its popularity in Europe. Ten countries across Europe had deployed 12,600 MW of offshore wind power by the end of 2016. In the United States, the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has issued 13 wind energy leases off the Atlantic coast. In late 2016, the first offshore wind farm in the United States came online about 4 miles off the coast of Block Island, R.I. [...]

It's possible that the wind and oil industries may compete for the same blocks of ocean seabed. That could create strife. Generally, when BOEM grants renewable energy rights on the outer continental shelf, they are exclusive rights to the seafloor. [...]

"Offshore wind has been in the media long enough that coastal residents have heard about it and thought through what it's going to mean," she said. "Certainly, communities differ in how they view these installations, but overall, people may be more supportive if the choice is wind or oil and gas."

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Scientific American: Cleaning Up Air Pollution May Strengthen Global Warming

New research is helping to quantify just how big that effect might be. A study published this month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters suggests that eliminating the human emission of aerosols—tiny, air-polluting particles often released by industrial activities—could result in additional global warming of anywhere from half a degree to 1 degree Celsius.

This would virtually ensure that the planet will warm beyond the most stringent climate targets outlined in the Paris climate agreement. World leaders have set an ambitious goal of keeping global temperatures within 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius of their preindustrial levels. But research suggests the world has already warmed by about 1 degree—meaning even another half a degree of warming could push the planet into dangerous territory. [...]

The research also suggests that removing aerosols could have striking regional consequences by causing major changes in precipitation and other weather patterns in certain parts of the world. Aerosols don't linger in the atmosphere for very long, meaning they don't have time to spread around the world the way carbon dioxide and some other greenhouse gases do. Their effects tend to be strongest in the regions where they were emitted in the first place. [...]

Many nations, including the United States, have made significant strides in cutting down on air pollution—often for health-related reasons—over the last few decades, and other countries are stepping up their efforts now, as well. Additionally, global efforts to cut down on greenhouse gases are likely to have a spillover effect on aerosols, because air pollution is often a byproduct of the same industrial sources that produce carbon emissions. Reducing one type of emission can help cut down on the other.

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Scientific American: Germany’s Transition from Coal to Renewables Offers Lessons for the World

Today, only two hard coal mines remain, and in 2018 they’ll both be shut down. Germany continues to import hard coal from other countries for a substantial portion of its energy production—another habit it’s trying to kick, in line with its 2050 renewable energy target. The country also still extracts soft brown coal called lignite from hundreds of open-pit mines across the country. However, with the federal elections coming up in September, the phaseout of lignite is on the political agenda. Such a move would cost another several thousand jobs in the Ruhr alone—forcing the government to consider how to achieve a fair and final phaseout, and the role of renewable energy in that.

The move away from hard coal has left a lingering legacy in some cities, where unemployment can exceed 10 percent. Still, overall it “was really a soft and just transition,” says Stefanie Groll, head of Environmental Policy and Sustainability at the Heinrich Boll Foundation in Berlin. “In the Ruhr area, union representatives and local politicians worked out a plan to compensate and requalify people who worked in the coal industry,” she says. For families like Spahn’s, it was a success: under pressure from the labor unions, the mines where his sons worked launched a proactive campaign in 1994 to train employees for different careers. “My one son is now a professional security guard and the other is a landscaper,” he says. [...]

Some see the shutdown of lignite mining as an opportunity to correct some of the wrongs that were committed during the transition from hard coal. While aspects of the decades-long hard coal phaseout have been well managed, according to Dobertin, in the past the “political hesitation” to rapidly roll out a structured recovery plan for the Ruhr has today contributed to a legacy of unemployment in some cities, and urban areas that are still saddled with poor, outdated infrastructure.

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Scientific American: Visualizing Sex as a Spectrum

Much of the public discourse in this arena centers on gender rather than sex, presumably because gender is understood to be somewhat subjective; it is a social construct that can be complex, fluid, multifaceted. Biological sex, on the other hand, appears to leave less room for debate. You either have two X chromosomes or an X and a Y; ovaries or testes; a vagina or a penis. Regardless of how an individual ends up identifying, they are assigned to one sex or the other at birth based on these binary sets of characteristics. [...]

The project abruptly transformed into an exercise in visualizing complexity. First, it seemed imperative to define a few terms. Sex, gender, and sexuality are all distinct from one another (although they are often related), and each exists on its own spectrum. Moreover, sex cannot be depicted as a simple, one-dimensional scale. In the world of DSDs, an individual may shift along the spectrum as development brings new biological factors into play. The density of science underlying this phenomenon compelled a shift towards intersex as the primary focus of the visualization. [...]

DSDs—which, broadly defined, may affect about one percent of the population—represent a robust, evidence-based argument to reject rigid assignations of sex and gender. Certain recent developments, such as the Swedish adoption of a gender-neutral singular pronoun, and the growing call to stop medically unnecessary surgeries on intersex babies, indicate a shift in the right direction. I am hopeful that raising public awareness of intersex, along with transgender and non-binary identities, will help align policies more closely with scientific reality, and by extension, social justice.

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Scientific American: People Furthest Apart on Climate Views Are Often the Most Educated

Looking at a nationally representative survey of views on stem cell research, the Big Bang, human evolution, nanotechnology, genetically modified views and climate change, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that respondents with the most education and the highest scores on scientific literacy tests had the most polarized beliefs.

On climate change, the researchers found that political identity was a more important signal of where respondents stood than their academic acumen or scientific sophistication. [...]

This is a manifestation of what researchers call motivated reasoning: a phenomenon where people evaluate facts and figures with a goal in mind, often signaling allegiance to a political group. [...]

To bridge the divide on climate change, he explained, disentangling the issue from its political trappings and focusing on tangible economic concerns—like dealing with sea-level rise—would give public officials a means to tackle the issue without jeopardizing their bona fides among their constituents.

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Scientific American: You Do Not Think Alone

People overestimate how well they understand how things work. Direct evidence for this comes from the psychological laboratory. The great Yale psychologist Frank Keil and his students first demonstrated the illusion of explanatory depth, what we call the knowledge illusion. He asked people how well they understand how everyday objects (zippers, toilets, ballpoint pens) work. On average, people felt they had a reasonable understanding (at the middle of a 7-point scale). Then Keil asked them to explain how they work. People failed miserably. For the most part, people just can’t articulate the mechanisms that drive even the simplest things. So when he again asked them to rate their understanding, their ratings were lower. By their own admission, the act of attempting to explain had pierced their illusion of understanding. We have replicated this basic finding many times, not only with everyday objects, but also with political policies. Matthew Fisher has shown that people overestimate their ability to construct logical justifications for their beliefs. [...]

Human reasoning takes a couple of forms. Most of the conclusions we come to are the products of intuition. Intuitive processes can be identified because we have no introspective access to how they work; we are only conscious of their output. For instance, intuitive processes deliver stored conclusions from memory. We can’t introspect to see how memory retrieves information; it just serves it up to consciousness. [...]

People fail to distinguish the knowledge that’s in their own heads from knowledge elsewhere (in their bodies, in the world, and—especially—in others’ heads). And we fail because whether or not knowledge is in our heads usually doesn’t matter. What matters is that we have access to the knowledge. In other words, the knowledge we use resides in the community. We participate in a community of knowledge. Thinking isn’t done by individuals; it is done by communities. This is true at macro levels: Fundamental values and beliefs that define our social, political, and spiritual identities are determined by our cultural communities. It is also true at the micro-level: We are natural collaborators, cognitive team-players. We think in tandem with others using our unique ability to share intentionality.

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Scientific American: The Other Reason to Shift away from Coal: Air Pollution that Kills Thousands Every Year

But there is another, equally important argument for transitioning to clean fuels. Tens of thousands of Americans die every year from old-fashioned air pollution, generated by electric power plants that burn fossil fuels. Estimates vary, but between 7,500 and 52,000 people in the United States meet early deaths because of small particles resulting from power plant emissions. That’s huge. It is roughly comparable to the 40,000 people that died in car crashes in 2016.

In a recent research study with colleagues at Carnegie Mellon, I analyzed how human health and the environment would be affected if all coal-fired power plants in the United States switched to natural gas—an extension of a trend that is already underway. We found that such a shift would have tremendous positive effects on human health in America. We estimate that low natural gas prices and state policies that move utilities away from coal are savings tens of thousands of lives and tens of billions of dollars each year. [...]

The researchers measured pollution in detail. After adjusting for factors like smoking, they found that the death rate was 26 percent higher in the most polluted cities than in the cleanest ones. They wrote, “Air pollution was positively associated with death from lung cancer and cardiopulmonary disease …. Mortality was most strongly associated with air pollution with fine particulates, including sulfates.” Fine particulate pollution is a mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets, many times smaller than a human hair.

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Scientific American: Pets Improve Human Health—But We Improve Theirs Too

On any given day at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, specially selected individual patients from ages one to 18 make their way to a quiet second-floor wing to spend time with their precious companions, their own pets. At the Purina Family Pet Center—one of just four facilities in the world to permit in-hospital own pet visits—patients sit on chairs or floor mats with their four-legged guests. For patients in a wheelchair or a bed, pets climb up ramps to sit or lie perched atop adjustable and non-slip tables so that they can get as close as possible to their recumbent owners. [...]

The benefits of pet therapy are well-documented. The presence and tactile nature of being with pets lowers blood pressure, heart rate and anxiety in owners, and it can also elevate levels of “feel-good” hormones such as oxytocin. But recent studies suggest that the benefits could be even more profound. [...]

She points to one Tufts study (subscription required) in which two groups of elementary school-aged children were asked to read aloud to separate groups of dogs or humans at their local library. Those that read to dogs showed a greater improvement in reading skills and in attitudes toward reading. Pets have also been shown to reduce anxiety among nursing home residents and the children coping with a parent’s military deployment.

Experts at Purina also recognize that human interaction can have a positive effect on pets. The company recently examined the impact (subscription required) of a single, 15-minute petting session on 55 dogs at a local shelter. Researchers detected positive changes in the dogs after just one session, with lower heart rates, higher heart rate variability (associated with positive emotions) and an improvement in behavior among those canines involved in the study.

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Scientific American: Special Report: The Psychology of Terrorism

The experts writing in this special report share some valuable insights from recent studies, classical research and professional experience. Social psychologists Stephen D. Reicher and S. Alexander Haslam make the case that most terrorists are not psychopaths or sadists, much as we would like to believe. Instead the majority are ordinary people, shaped by group dynamics to do harm in the name of a cause they find noble and just. Critically, those group dynamics involve all of us: our overreaction and fear, Reicher and Haslam explain, can beget greater extremism, thereby fueling a cycle other scholars have termed “co-radicalization.”

French anthropologist Dounia Bouzar describes what she has learned from deprogramming hundreds of young people caught up in this cycle. She notes that only the tug of emotion, not reason, can pull teens back from the call to jihad. Bouzar emphasizes that parents should talk to their children about the shadow world on the Internet—a major recruitment arena in both Western Europe and the U.S.

Last but not least, social psychologists Kevin Dutton and Dominic Abrams consider how we can all help break the cycle of co-radicalization, drawing on seven key studies for concrete suggestions. Among those ideas: bridging the toxic divide of mutual distrust by celebrating broader social identities—much as President Barack Obama did so powerfully in his address to Muslim Americans at a Baltimore mosque this past February. Instead of listening to “polemical pundits and belligerent blowhards,” Dutton and Abrams write, we all need a brain check: keep calm and “tune in to the quieter, more discerning notes emanating from some of our laboratories.”

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Scientific American: The American Obsession with Lawns

The goal—as confirmed by the efforts of Abraham Levitt in his sweeping exercise in conformity (although it had been established well before that)—is to attain a patch of green grass of a singular type with no weeds that is attached to your home. It should be no more than an inch and a half tall, and neatly edged. This means you must be willing to care for it. It must be watered, mowed, repaired, and cultivated. Lawns are expensive—and some regard them as boring in their uniformity—but they are a hallmark of homeownership. Why do Americans place so much importance on lawn maintenance? [...]

This concern is not limited to fiction. The state of a homeowner’s lawn is important in relation to their status within the community and to the status of the community at large. Lawns connect neighbors and neighborhoods; they’re viewed as an indicator of socio-economic character, which translates into property- and resale values. Lawns are indicative of success; they are a physical manifestation of the American Dream of home ownership. To have a well maintained lawn is a sign to others that you have the time and/or the money to support this attraction. It signifies that you care about belonging and want others to see that you are like them. A properly maintained lawn tells others you are a good neighbor. Many homeowner associations have regulations to the effect of how often a lawn must be maintained. So important is this physical representative of a desired status that fines can be levied if the lawn is not maintained. It’s no wonder that Gatsby wanted Carraway’s lawn addressed: it would reflect on him in a variety of ways if it were not. [...]

This created a rather stark landscape which was not conducive to raising animals, a chief concern for survival at the time. So as a part of their supply lists, settlers in the 17th-century requested grass and clover seeds. The supply ships brought more than “good” grasses, however. At the ports, the dump site for ships introduced weeds, like dandelions and plantains, from bedding, fodder, and manure. By 1672 twenty-two European species of weeds had taken up residence around Massachusetts Bay. [...]

Following the Civil War and toward the end of the 19th-century, however, the Northern states entered into a period of growth following the Civil War. Railroad tycoons and factory owners saw their investments and businesses grow, and as such, they looked to accumulate material symbols to signify their prosperity. The front lawn became an exhibitive space. The rise of printed gardening advice enforced this position. It became a part of regular news circulation—newspapers covered lawn care and flower cultivation in an effort to boost circulation—and consequently, everyday conversations. The awareness of lawns and their significance was made into an everyday occurrence.

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Scientific American: The Rising Trend of Pets at Work

It's growing increasingly common to see pets at work, especially at smaller companies settings in New York City. LinkedIn has 178 results for "dog friendly" jobs in NY, which presumably means they either have a designated "office dog" or multiple employees may bring their dogs in. And dogs do seem to be the winner in this category over, say, a pet hamster. Big names like Google, Mashable, and Amazon have pet-friendly policies that welcome non-assistive companions into the office on a daily basis. Google, for instance, makes plain its preference for dogs and even allegedly has caregivers on staff for those lucky pooches. Amazon’s canines are featured on a dedicated page where visitors are informed that they get dog biscuits at reception desks and have access to doggie-sized water fountains. Smaller companies are following suit by allowing dogs into the workplace (albeit with fewer of those fancy additional perks) seeing the allowance as a non-financial perk that helps generate a perception of work/life friendliness and an acknowledgement of the life commitments of the incoming workforce. The benefits are touted widely: pets help reduce stress and may increase communication and socialization and there is no shortage of research to this effect. But in our rush to welcome pets into the workplace, we may be overlooking the full experience for everyone involved—including our furry friends.

Approximately 60% of Americans own a pet. It's not surprising therefore that there is a cultural shift toward permitting access for pets in spaces that have traditionally been more narrowly defined. There has been a lot of research on the impact that pets have on children, the elderly, the sick, and prisoners. For example, pets may help as an icebreaker for children in therapy; or help the emotional development of children by putting them in a situation where they learn how to care for others. Pets have been shown to help elderly Americans remain social and mobile, and may reduce depression in this population.  [...]

According to one study that surveyed 31 companies in Kentucky, pets in the workplace allow owners to express a bit of their personality. There are three types of organizational symbols that employees may use to personalize these collective spaces: authority symbols, reward symbols, and empathic symbols. These symbols influence how a person perceives the organization. Authority symbols are things like flags and banners, and they signify legitimacy. Reward symbols are things like plaques and they signify accomplishment. Empathic symbols—like plants and artwork—are suggestive overall of warmth and comfort. Pets fall into this last category. There may be fewer opportunities for symbology overall as employers strip down walls in favor of open work stations, so pets help fill this gap. Empathic symbols may encourage more social interaction by providing a neutral field where employees can connect with each other. Psychologically, they convey the perception that someone is approachable and friendly. 

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Scientific American: Why Don't People Return Their Shopping Carts?

Supermarkets can try and guide our behavior with receptacles or cart attendants, but they’re competing with our own self-serving goals, which in this case may be staying dry, keeping an eye on our children, or simply getting home as quickly as possible, and we’re being guided by the ways others behave on top of that. These goals can override the norm because the support provided by the supermarket—ironically—resets the situation before complete chaos is unleashed with carts running rampant in the parking lot. An attendant will most likely step in before that happens. So if we apply this definition of norms to our classification of cart returners, the injunctive norm applies the greatest pressure to Returners and Pressure Returners. These folks are concerned by what others will think of them on some level, and want to adhere to social rule mandating that the carts are returned. Descriptive norms are at play for Convenience Returners and Pressure Returners who are more inclined to act if there is precedent. These folks are more likely to return a cart if there are no carts parked haphazardly. The Never Returners and the Child-Driven Returners are two example of goal-driven actors, which means that they’re responding to a more individual need. These two are interesting as they’re on opposing ends of the spectrum but still demonstrate the ways an individual goal can work for or against a norm. [...]

They replicated these results in two additional tests. For example, they set up temporary fences along two parking lots and posted No Trespassing signs and No Bicycle signs. While the temporary fences did have a gap that a person could use to get to their vehicle, the No Trespassing signs were intended to make people walk to another entrance. The No Bicycles sign were intended to signify that people could not lock their bicycles to the fences. At one parking lot, bicycles were left nearby; they were not chained or locked to the fence. At the other parking lot, bicycles were chained to the fence. The results were significant: 82% of participants used the gap if the bicycles were chained to the fence compared with 27% when there were no bicycles chained to the fence.  [...]

While there are always outliers—people who behave contrary to the norm for the sake of doing so—these scenarios are fairly illustrative of the ebb and flow of the social order. There are norms that are intended to provide overall governance for the benefit of society at large but as individuals we have goals that intersect with these norms and can create conflicts. Yes, we want to generally behave like others of our choosing because we want to be accepted, but we also have goals that serve ourselves or provide us with immediate satisfaction. The data above suggests that as a situation broaches on deviance, more people will trend toward disorder; once we have permission to pursue an alternative action, we will do so if it suits us. Not returning our shopping carts opens the door to throwing our circulars on the ground to parking haphazardly or in reserved spaces to other items that impact the quality of our experience at that establishment.

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