Anxiety and Ambiguity

Why does that person look so angry? You don’t have to have any sort of chronic anxiety to understand how easy it is to misunderstand other people’s facial expressions. We often interact with strangers, or even friends, and find ourselves unable to read their emotions, fearing that they are unhappy or angry. In fact, newly…

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Distractions from the Standing Desk

The idea of standing desks is certainly in vogue in the workplace, but is it the best choice? Proponents point out that sitting for too long can have serious health problems, and many people even argue that standing at one’s desk can help boost productivity. While there may be some truth in this trendy approach,…

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Emotion in an Artificial Intelligence World

It is an almost omnipresent fear these days that technology is degrading human connections, but could we leverage that same technology to foster closer emotional ties? We already have enough trouble reading each other’s emotions, and this becomes even harder when we communicate over long-distances, whether through email, phone calls, or even video chat. We…

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Why Do We Smile?

You’ve probably heard that when you’re smiling, the whole world smiles with you. In reality, that’s not exactly the case. According to researchers, Americans smile more than residents of other countries, and those other countries don’t seem eager to follow our grins. For some, persistent American smiling can be disconcerting. To learn more, we talked…

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