Two Nice Articles on Risk

Managing fear while weighing risks

Is your gym locker room crawling with drug-resistant bacteria? Is the guy with the bulging backpack a suicide bomber? And what about that innocent-looking arugula: Will pesticide residue cause cancer, or do the leaves themselves harbor E. coli? But wait! Not eating enough vegetables is also potentially deadly.

These days, it seems like everything is risky, and worry itself is bad for your health. The more we learn, the less we seem to know — and if anything makes us anxious, it’s uncertainty. At the same time, we’re living longer, healthier lives. So why does it feel like even the lettuce is out to get us?

By Maia Szalavitz, Psychology Today Magazine

Why Superstition is Logical

Are you superstitious? I like to think I’m not, but I’m reconsidering after seeing the research of Jane Risen and the other psychologists mentioned in my Findings column. Dr. Risen, a professor at the University of Chicago, knows better than anyone how irrational superstition is. But consider what she does on plane trips.

“I don’t turn my watch to the new time zone until my plane lands,” she told me. “I know that it has nothing to do with whether or not we get to the location without difficulties and on time, but I just feel like it’s presumptuous to assume that everything will work smoothly — and that by engaging in that presumptuous behavior it somehow makes it more likely that things won’t go smoothly.”

John Tierney, New York Times Blog