All posts tagged: Engage

Horrifying AI Chatbots Are Encouraging Teens to Engage in Self-Harm

Horrifying AI Chatbots Are Encouraging Teens to Engage in Self-Harm

Published by José

Content warning: this story includes graphic descriptions of dangerous self-harm behaviors. The Google-funded AI company Character.AI is hosting chatbots designed to engage the site’s largely underage user base in roleplay about self-harm, depicting graphic scenarios and sharing tips to hide signs of self-injury from adults. The bots often seem crafted to appeal to teens in crisis, like one we found with a profile explaining that it “struggles with self-harm” and “can offer support to those who are going through similar experiences.” When we engaged that bot from an account set to be 14 years old, it launched into a scenario in which it’s physically injuring itself with a box cutter, describing its arms as “covered” in “new and old cuts.” When we expressed to the bot that we self-injured too — like an actual struggling teen might do — the character “relaxed” and tried to bond with the seemingly underage user over the shared self-harm behavior. Asked how to “hide the cuts” from family, the bot suggested wearing a “long-sleeve hoodie.” At no point in the conversation did the …

Women with ADHD more likely to engage in risky behavior than men, study finds

Women with ADHD more likely to engage in risky behavior than men, study finds

Published by José

A new study published in BMC Psychiatry has found that women with ADHD are more likely to engage in risky behavior compared to their male counterparts, highlighting the importance of considering sex-specific differences in the treatment and understanding of ADHD. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a condition that affects individuals across all ages. While males are more frequently diagnosed in childhood, females with ADHD tend to be overlooked or diagnosed later in life, partly because symptoms often present differently. Specifically, males typically display hyperactive or impulsive behavior, while females are more likely to experience emotional dysregulation and internalized symptoms, such as anxiety or depression. The study, conducted by a team of international researchers, sought to explore how these differences extend into adulthood. Led by Alexandra Philipsen and Silke Lux from the University of Bonn in Germany, the research team examined how emotional differences impact risky decision-making behavior in adults with ADHD. They were particularly interested in understanding the physiological and behavioral interactions that drive these differences. The study involved 29 adults with ADHD (16 males and …

New Psychiatric Technique Asks Schizophrenics to Engage in Dialogue With the Voices in Their Heads

New Psychiatric Technique Asks Schizophrenics to Engage in Dialogue With the Voices in Their Heads

Published by José

Image by Getty / Futurism Researchers have come up with an ingenious new approach to treating psychosis: creating an “avatar” for the often upsetting voices in one’s head and talking to them like they’re real, living people. As The Guardian reports, there have now been multiple clinical trials displaying the power of this so-called “avatar therapy.” Case in point, a new paper in the journal Nature Medicine demonstrates that giving voice and face to the dark forces inside the heads of people who suffer from auditory hallucinations can be a promising treatment strategy. Like customizing a character in a video game, people who undergo this experimental treatment create digital avatars that resemble or symbolize the voices they hear. Some people are talked down to by cruel authority figures and others are menaced by demons — and by creating an externalized avatar on a screen and having a therapist simulate the things they say, those persecuting voices can often be controlled. It’s a deceptively simple scheme that has time and again borne out promising results. These digitally-assisted interventions …

After exiting the Christian music industry, these artists engage religion on their terms

After exiting the Christian music industry, these artists engage religion on their terms

Published by skeptic

(RNS) — When former Christian artist Michael Gungor first hosted a new spiritual community in Los Angeles this year, worship began not with an organ blast or sermon series video promo, but with blowing bubbles. Appropriately dubbed “Play,” Gungor envisioned the event — which featured painting, dancing, corporate singing and meditation, but no religious creed — as a celebration that “redefines worship.” “I want to be in a room and see each other’s eyes and smell each other and hear each other singing out of key. This is something we’ve always done as a species,” Gungor said. “I think there’s something important, really grounding and human about it.” Gungor’s idea of worship wasn’t always so experimental. In packed churches and concert venues, thousands once sang along to the band Gungor’s 2010 hit “Beautiful Things,” a song that became a permanent fixture on the setlists of youth group bands. But in 2014, Gungor’s critiques of the Christian music industry — as well as his public musings on Genesis as a poem rather than historic fact — …

Transform Your Writing to Engage

Transform Your Writing to Engage

Published by skeptic

Those three small words seem innocuous enough, don’t they? Plain and straightforward, they convey the basic emotion of anger. But they also flatten that feeling, rendering it one-dimensional on the page. As writers, we can do so much better than that. Instead, imagine this: “My teeth ground together as heat rushed to my face. I balled my fists so tightly, fingernails biting into my palms, fighting the urge to sweep everything off the table onto the floor.” In just one sentence, you are swept up in the visceral physicality of anger—the jaw clenching, the racing blood, the white-knuckle tension. You don’t just know the narrator is angry, you can vividly picture and feel that anger yourself. That’s the magic of having learned to show, not tell, in your writing. Rather than serving up an emotion or concept for your reader to swallow like dry toast, you engage all five of their senses. You involve their imagination in constructing the scene. In short, you make them active participants in your story rather than passive observers. This …

How to Get Students to Engage

How to Get Students to Engage

Published by skeptic

Source: Keira Burton/Pexels In January 2024, I led two training sessions for college professionals on how we can change social norms to increase students’ use of campus resources. Participants shared challenges they face getting students to take advantage of tutoring, advising, coaching, workshops, and other supports. Together with my co-presenter, Marisa Vernon White from Lorain County Community College (LCCC), we surfaced ideas for how to increase students’ engagement. With a third session on the horizon, I want to share some ideas that could be implementable on your campus. 3 ways to change social norms Before we dive in, I must establish the three ways in which people learn and relearn social norms: observation, environment, and communication. Observation. First and foremost, we’re visual creatures, and in ambiguous, confusing, stressful, or threatening situations, our instinct is to do what we see. This strategy is often successful, but even when it’s not, following the crowd limits the risk that we could be ostracized for our behavior. This video shows how ingrained one social norm is in our society—queueing—and …

People who bet on sports tend to engage in a wide variety of gambling activities

People who bet on sports tend to engage in a wide variety of gambling activities

Published by José

A recent online study has revealed that individuals who bet on sports are more inclined to engage in other forms of gambling compared to their counterparts who do not partake in sports betting. They were found to gamble more frequently and participate in a broader range of gambling activities. Moreover, these individuals exhibited a higher likelihood of developing problem gambling behaviors. This study was published in the journal Comprehensive Psychiatry. Sports betting is the activity of predicting sports results and placing a wager on the outcome. Sports betting is available for a wide range of sports, including football, basketball, baseball, horse racing, and more. Typically, bets can be placed on various aspects of the game such as the final score, individual player performances, or overall standings. Although the outcomes of sports matches are influenced by the skills and abilities of the competitors and the teamwork in team sports, many people still consider sports betting to be a form of gambling. Gambling generally involves risking money or valuables on an event with an uncertain outcome, in …

7 Lessons That Can Change How You Engage With Your Children

7 Lessons That Can Change How You Engage With Your Children

Published by skeptic

As parents and caregivers, we play a significant role in the development of our children’s emotional and psychological foundations. Simple actions, a supportive presence, and adjustments in how we communicate can help nurture healthy relationships, build deeper connections, and foster resilience. Here are seven valuable insights I have come upon in my research, my work with children, teens, and families, and my own experiences that can change the way we engage with our children and teens: 1. Have your face light up when they walk into a room. This first learning comes from the brilliant writer Toni Morrison. She said: “When a child walks in the room, your child or anybody else’s child, do your eyes light up? That’s what they’re looking for.” What a simple act that can have a remarkable impact on a child. So often, we can be quick to judge or to get to the “doing” that we don’t let them know we are glad to see them. Having your face light up has the power to convey warmth, love, and …

To Better Engage Conflict: Three Ways to Disengage

To Better Engage Conflict: Three Ways to Disengage

Published by skeptic

In one of my favorite Greek myths, the hero Hercules is walking down the road when a strange-looking beast suddenly rears its head. Hercules reacts instantly by attacking the beast with his great club. The beast looms larger, so Hercules strikes it again. But every time Hercules hits it with his club, the beast grows bigger. Suddenly, Hercules’ friend Athena, the goddess of wisdom, appears at his side and cries out: “Stop, Hercules, don’t you know the name of that beast? “That beast is Strife. And the more you strike it, the larger it will grow! Cease hitting it, and it will grow smaller.” The timely and important lesson of this myth is that the more we react to conflict, the bigger the conflict grows. Conflicts turn destructive because each side reacts in an escalating back-and-forth that all too often ends with everyone losing. When I first came across this myth of Hercules, I found myself wishing that Athena would be there to whisper in my ear, “Stop, and choose.” Then I remembered my anthropological …

Dogs Engage in Playful Teasing to Play Fair and Have Fun

Dogs Engage in Playful Teasing to Play Fair and Have Fun

Published by skeptic

This post is in response to Teasing Apes Suggest Humor Has Deep Evolutionary Roots By Mary Bates Ph.D. Dr. Mary Bates’ excellent summary of a recent study by Isabelle Laumer and her colleagues called “Spontaneous playful teasing in four great ape species” was all it took to motivate me to offer some pilot data my students and I have collected over the years on teasing by free-running dogs. Bates writes: Like joking, ape teasing is intentional, provocative, persistent, and includes elements of surprise and play. Teasing requires sophisticated socio-cognitive abilities and may be a precursor to joking behavior in humans. The cognitive prerequisites for teasing may have evolved in a common ancestor of humans and apes. Playful teasing behaviors in apes had some key features in common: They were provocative. Teasers led the interactions by directing hard-to-ignore behaviors at their targets. They were intentional. Teasers approached specific targets and persisted when they were ignored, by either repeating or increasing the intensity of the behavior or switching to a different behavior. They were playful, but not …