Behavior

Researchers from MIT have found that since the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a decrease in the number of interactions between people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, reports Danny Westneat for The Seattle Times. “It’s creating an urban fabric that is actually more brittle, in the sense that we are less exposed to other people,” says research scientist Esteban Moro. “We don’t get to know other people in the city … to know other people’s needs. If we don’t see them around the city, that will be impossible.”

Researchers from MIT have found that, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, people are less likely to explore economically different parts of their home cities, reports Immanual John Milton for Bloomberg. “Fewer people are visiting attractions like museums, restaurants or parks that are outside their immediate mobility radius, and they’re spending less time among residents at different socioeconomic levels,” writes Milton.

MIT researchers have found that interactions between people from different economic backgrounds have dropped significantly since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, reports David Scharfenberg for The Boston Globe. Scharfenberg notes the “the phenomenon could hurt low-income people in direct ways – they’ll lose connections to better-off people – and indirect ways.”

A study by Prof. Amy Finkelstein finds that physicians and their families are less likely to comply with medication guidelines, reports Dennis Thompson for HealthDay. The researchers found that “people tend to adhere to medication guidelines about 54% of the time, while doctors and their families lag about 4 percentage points behind that.”

Financial Times reporter Jonathan Derbyshire spotlights “Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way” by Prof. Kieran Setiya. “But that doesn’t mean either that ‘Life Is Hard’ is a self-help book, and it’s all the better and more interesting for it,” writes Derbyshire. “Setiya warns readers at the outset that they are not going to find in it ‘five tips for overcoming grief’ or ‘how to succeed without even trying.’”

Prof. Kieran Setiya’s book “Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way,” has been named one of The Economist’s best books of 2022. In the book, Setiya makes the case that “suffering need not dimmish or spoil a good life,” writes The Economist.

Researchers at MIT have found “the brain is not wired to transmit a sharp ‘stop’ command in the most direct or intuitive way,” reports Kevin Hartnett for Quanta Magazine. The brain “employs a more complicated signaling system based on principles of calculus,” writes Hartnett.

University of South Carolina Prof. Jennifer A. Frey reviews Prof. Kiernan Setiya’s new book “Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way” for The Wall Street Journal. Frey writes that Setiya's analysis "combines philosophical arguments and personal reflections on his own experience. He offers this in the hope that it will help readers better understand their own suffering and perhaps ease the weight of it." 

Writing for The Guardian, Prof. Kieran Setiya explores the pursuit of happiness. “What, then, should we strive for? Not happiness or an ideal life, but to find sufficient meaning in the world that we are glad to be alive, and to cope with grace when life is hard,” writes Setiya. “We won’t achieve perfection, but our lives may be good enough.”

Forbes contributor Anuradha Varanasi spotlights a new study co-authored by MIT researchers that finds that in China, “masks might function as a ‘moral symbol’ and decrease the likelihood of an individual engaging in any form of deviant behavior.”
 

Scientists at MIT have found that specific neurons in the human brain light up whenever we see images of food, reports Dr. Mallika Marshall for CBS Boston. “The researchers now want to explore how people’s responses to certain foods might differ depending on their personal preferences, likes and dislikes and past experiences,” Marshall.

Researchers from MIT and Harvard Medical School are investigating how exercise and high-fat diets can alter cells, genes and cellular pathways, reports Abby Patkin for Boston.com. “Their research could eventually help develop drugs that would mimic the effects of exercise and combat obesity,” explains Patkin.

Researchers from MIT and the University of Southern California are “using large-scale mobility data to follow people's eating behaviors throughout the day, to understand how food choice is influenced by what’s accessible, available, and affordable,” reports Mike Branom for Daily Beast.

Researchers from MIT and Harvard Medical School have conducted a study to see how exercise and high-fat diets can impact cells, reports WCVB. The researchers “say the data could eventually be used to develop drugs that could help enhance or mimic the benefits of exercise,” writes WCVB.

A new study by researchers from MIT and Harvard Medical School has helped identify the impact of exercise and high-fat diets on cells, reports Darren Botelho for NBC Boston 10. “Years from now, those researchers say the data could lead to a pill that would help not only with weight loss, but with the overall effect from exercise – a better wellbeing,” explains Botelho.