James' World 2

Click the link below the picture

.

A skilled card player—eyes hidden by dark shades and features kept as still as possible—looks at their hand. Any small giveaway that they’re bluffing or holding great cards could lose them a painfully large sum of money. Sometimes it helps to have a “poker face.”

Yet in day-to-day life—when socializing with family, friends, and new acquaintances, for example—you might be better served letting your features fly free. Our research shows that moving your face in some way, whether you’re smiling, raising an eyebrow, or wrinkling your nose, may help people warm to you more.

In a recent study, we found that people who were more facially expressive were more liked by a new social partner, which could explain why humans have evolved to have such expressive faces. Indeed, our species is likely more facially expressive than any other. People produce, on average, 101 facial movements per minute in a typical social interaction.

To understand why facial expressivity is so beneficial, we first need to emphasize just how crucial social bonding is to human survival. Throughout most of our evolutionary history, our species has relied on tight-knit communities to keep ourselves fed, sheltered, and protected from predators and dangerous outsiders. Managing social relationships was literally a matter of life or death. Otherwise, you might have faced the tiger in the bushes alone. Any skill or behavior that improved someone’s ability to create and keep lifesaving bonds was likely to persist in our gene pool and cultural repertoires over the generations. And our research suggests that facial expressivity may fall in this category.

In our study, 52 people were filmed in an online social interaction with a researcher who posed as another participant. These dialogues played out over a video platform, so people could see one another’s face. Unbeknownst to the real participants, the researcher orchestrated various challenging social scenarios, such as telling an awful joke or demanding 80 percent of a reward in a negotiation. These situations mimicked everyday experiences, such as social conflict, embarrassment or an attempt to make a good impression.

Throughout, we observed how people’s face moved. We also obtained recordings of more than 1,300 participants in free-flowing conversations with other (real) participants online. Automated software then coded the small facial muscle movements they made during these interactions.

Interestingly, more agreeable, extraverted or neurotic people, as measured by a questionnaire, were more facially expressive. People with these personality traits may devote more time and energy to social interactions—whether because they enjoy socializing or have greater-than-average concerns about how they come across to others. And that added effort could be worthwhile, we found. After these interactions, the participants and their social partners rated how much they liked each other—as did 176 other participants who viewed video clips of these people. The pattern was clear: people who were more facially expressive were more liked by others.

But why would facial expressivity improve someone’s ability to build social bonds? Imagine meeting someone new and trying to figure out if they’re a good fit as a friend, colleague, or romantic partner. You might wonder if you can trust them, if they will help you or harm you—and whether you can even understand one another. Someone who is easier to read may seem to be a more appealing prospect than someone who is more guarded.

.

Master1305/Getty Images

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Narcissism has been something of a mystery to psychologists. With narcissists, things tend to be extreme: the good is really good, and

the bad is really bad. Narcissism expert W. Keith Campbell compares interacting with narcissists to eating chococate cake: “When I eat chococlate cake, 20 minutes later I’m under my desk wanting to die. When I eat broccoli, in 20 minutes I feel good. But given the choice I always eat the cake.”

On the one hand, the narcissist’s charisma and self-confidence can be highly alluring. Psychologists Mitja Back and colleagues found that narcissists are indeed more popular at first acquaintance, and its due to four particular cues that make up their “charismatic air”*:

• Attractiveness (flashy, neat attire)
• Competence (self-assured behavior)
• Interpersonal Warmth (charming glances at strangers)
• Humor (witty verbal expressions)

On the other hand, research shows that the initial popularity of narcissists at the early stages of interpersonal interactions depends on the behavioral pathway that is triggered: expressive and dominant behaviors are associated with a positive evaluation, whereas arrogant and combative behaviors are associated with a negative evaluation. According to this research, narcissists may be more popular at first acquaintance because they are more likely to display behaviors that trigger a positive pathway, perhaps because they are trying to make a good first impression.

In line with this idea, W. Keith Campbell and Stacy Campbell proposed a new model of narcissism in which they argue that two particular time points are important. The “emerging zone” includes situations involving unacquainted individuals, early-stage relationships, and short-term contexts. In contrast, the “enduring zone” involves situations involving acquainted individuals, continuing relationships, and long-term consequences.

The costs of narcissism are seen primarily in the “enduring zone.” As the relationship develops, narcissists start displaying behaviors that are evaluated negatively, such as arrogance and aggression. Narcissists cyclically return to the emerging zone because they are addicted to the positive social feedback and emotional rush they get from this zone. They live in this zone. As a result, they are good at being popular, making new friends, and acquiring social status, but are really quite terrible at sustaining anything meaningful and intimate.

This handy chart shows the benefits and costs (for self and others) in both the emerging zone and the enduring zone. A landmark study by Delroy Paulhus (an expert on dark personalities) supports that model. Paulhus brought strangers together to engage in weekly 20-minute group discussion over a period of seven weeks.

They had people rate how they perceived others in the group after week one and then again at the last session (after seven weeks). He found that narcissism was initially related to positive evaluations, such as “assertive”, “confident”, “entertaining”, “exciting”, and “intelligent”. Seven weeks later, however, the same narcissists were evaluated much more negatively, receiving much higher ratings on characteristics such as “arrogant”, “tendency to brag”, and “hostile”. These findings provided some of the first evidence for narcissists’ declining popularity in social groups. But the question still remained: why the loss in popularity?

To get to the bottom of this mystery, Mitja Back and colleagues conducted a study in which they tracked changes in popularity over several time points. They drew on their new theory of narcissism, called the “Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Concept”. According to their theory, narcissists’ overarching goal of maintaining a grandiose self is pursued by 2 separate pathways: narcissistic admiration (assertive self-enhancement) and narcissistic rivalry (antagonistic self-protection). Despite being positively related to each other, these two different components of narcissism differentially predict interpersonal orientations,

reactions to transgressions in friendships and romantic relationships, interpersonal perceptions during group interactions, and observed behaviors in experimental observations.

Adopting this framework, the researchers had 311 college students engage in tasks with increasing levels of intimacy and self-disclosure. Participants first introduced themselves and later engaged in tasks requiring them to work together as a team and, finally, played a game in which they discussed each other’s personalities. Over a period of just three weeks, the researchers found that the association of narcissism with popularity among peers became more and more negative.

But they didn’t stop there. They were also able to pinpoint the cause of this loss in popularity. Narcissistic admiration explained initial popularity, while a decrease in narcissistic admiration and an increase in narcissistic rivalry over time was responsible for the decline in popularity. By the end of a three week period and several social interactions, narcissists were regarded as untrustworthy by their peers.

.

Narcissists are really quite terrible at sustaining anything meaningful and intimate. Photo by francescoch/Getty Images

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Nicotine pouches—small, flavored packets placed between the gums and lips—have recently become an increasingly appealing option for people trying to avoid cigarettes and traditional “smokeless” oral tobacco products. Since the pouches were introduced to the U.S. market in 2014, they’ve found a steady following, particularly among people between the ages of 25 and 44. This month 20 products from the popular ZYN brand became the first such pouches to be “authorized” by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. While this falls short of the FDA’s designation of being “approved” as generally safe, it allows ZYN to continue selling its three- and six-milligram nicotine pouches in 10 different flavors, including spearmint, citrus, coffee, cinnamon, and menthol.

The FDA’s decision on ZYN, whose manufacturer, Swedish Match, had applied for authorization in 2020, was “long overdue,” says Jasjit Singh Ahluwalia, a physician and public health scientist at Brown University, who

has studied nicotine addiction for more than 30 years. The agency’s ruling drew from a study facilitated by Swedish Match that suggests the pouches got people to switch from other tobacco products such as cigarettes—which can contain dozens of compounds linked to cancer or other diseases. Pouches such as ZYN contain substantially fewer harmful chemicals than cigarettes.

The FDA apparently “concluded that the public health benefits have outweighed the risks,” says Mary Hrywna, an associate professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health and a founding member of the university’s Institute for Nicotine and Tobacco Studies. “It doesn’t mean that the products are safe.”

ZYN pouches were the top-selling oral nicotine brand in the U.S. by the end of 2023; that same year Philip Morris International (PMI), the tobacco conglomerate that owns Swedish Match, reported shipping almost 385 million cans of the pouches to the U.S. More broadly, total U.S. nicotine pouch sales rose from 126 million units in the last five months of 2019 to 808 million in the first three months of 2022, according to a JAMA report. Hrywna says that the FDA’s authorization of ZYN is a good first step in cracking down on bad actors.

“The market has exploded, and some of those manufacturers are just opportunists exploiting the lack of enforcement,” Hrywna says. “Now there’s at least one authorized [pouch] product, and so at the very least, I would think that the FDA could now take more forcible action on products that have not submitted any type of application.”

Nicotine pouches’ rise in popularity—and their potentially enticing flavors and marketing—have driven up concern about underage use. In the U.S. people must be age 21 or older to legally purchase any nicotine product, but last April the FDA issued more than 100 warning letters to brick-and-mortar and online retailers that sold ZYN to people under age 21. The 2024 National Youth Tobacco Survey found that pouch use among middle and high school students was 1.8 percent, meaning approximately 480,000 students. The FDA notes this rate among youth to be relatively low—e-cigarette use was 5.9 percent (1.63 million students) in comparison—but groups are concerned about any level of use by kids. So-called ZYNfluencers on TikTok and other social media platforms have been criticized for promoting the pouches to young adults.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Catherine Garcia was the only one of four siblings raised by her grandmother, as opposed to her mother. Over the years, she and her abuela from Puerto Rico would often switch roles as caregivers. Ultimately, Garcia took on this role full-time until her grandmother passed away.

There is a remarkable story that transpired between the time Garcia first moved in with her grandmother and the day she laid her to rest and beyond. Not only is it inspiring and a profound example of beating the odds, but Garcia’s story echoes the journeys of many other first-generation Latines in the United States who have had to support parents and caregivers while creating a life all their own.

On average, the typical Latine caregiver in the U.S. is 43 years old — which is younger than caregivers of other races and ethnicities — and caring for parents, parents-in-law, or grandparents who average about 67 years old and have one long- or short-term physical condition.1 More often than not, these caregivers have children under the age of 18, who are also living in their home, along with a partner or spouse. While Latine caregivers take on a lot of responsibilities within their household, they have lower incomes and education than their peers.

Today, Garcia is the OB/GYN Administrative Director and Mt. Sinai Academic Coordinator for BronxCare Health System in the Bronx, NY. The road it took for her to get there was anything but a smooth ride. Still, she preserved, the strength behind her resilience from the start and still today has always been her abuela.

Multigenerational families living together is very true to Latine culture in the United States and beyond. Approximately one-third or around 32 percent of Latine households in the U.S. are considered multigenerational,

meaning they include multiple adult generations living together and translate to a significant portion of Latines likely caring for an elderly family member within their household.2 Among those caregivers in Latine familias, women are significantly more likely to take on that role.

At times, it isn’t so much about wanting to be the caregiver as much as it is about adhering to cultural influences that instill strong family values within Latine families, which often means caring for elderly family members at home. 

Abuela’s Girl

“I was raised by my grandmother since kindergarten. She had three boys and always wanted a girl,” Garcia fondly recalls being raised in the Spanish Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City by her Abuela Ana Celia Alvarez from Arecibo, Puerto Rico. “She came to New York from Arecibo after she got married, seeking a better life for her children.”  

.

Parents / Getty Images

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________