Beingism: Rational Means to Emotional Ends, for the Benefit of All.

The Guardian -- Costa Rica is the greenest and happiest country in the world, according to a new list that ranks nations by combining measures of their ecological footprint with the happiness of their citizens.

Britain is only halfway up the Happy Planet Index (HPI), calculated by the New Economics Foundation (NEF), in 74th place of 143 nations surveyed. The United States features in the 114th slot in the table. The top 10 is dominated by countries from Latin America, while African countries bulk out the bottom of the table.

The HPI measures how much of the Earth's resources nations use and how long and happy a life their citizens enjoy as a result. First calculated in 2006, the second edition adds data on almost all the world's countries and now covers 99% of the world's population. ... Read more

The Equality Trust -- In Britain, 35% of people say they are worried about mugging, 33% are worried about being attacked, 24% of women are worried about rape, and 13% are worried that they might be the victim of racial violence. People also fear harassment. Although fear of crime doesn't always reflect actual trends in crime and violence, it is clear that some societies are much more violent than others. In the USA a child is killed by a gun every three hours and in the UK over a million violent crimes were recorded in 2005-2006.

The link between inequality and homicide rates has been shown in as many as 40 studies, and the differences are large: there are five-fold differences in murder rates between different countries related to inequality. The most important reason why violence is more common in more unequal societies is that it is often triggered by people feeling looked down, disrespected and loss of face.

We have also found that inequality is related to the Global Peace Index and to children's experiences of violence.

... Read more

Rob Stein, Washington Post Staff Writer -- Children raised in poverty suffer many ill effects: They often have health problems and tend to struggle in school, which can create a cycle of poverty across generations.

Now, research is providing what could be crucial clues to explain how childhood poverty translates into dimmer chances of success: Chronic stress from growing up poor appears to have a direct impact on the brain, leaving children with impairment in at least one key area -- working memory.

"There's been lots of evidence that low-income families are under tremendous amounts of stress, and we know that stress has many implications," said Gary W. Evans, a professor of human ecology at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., who led the research. "What this data raises is the possibility that it's also related to cognitive development."

With the economic crisis threatening to plunge more children into poverty, other researchers said the work offers insight into how poverty affects long-term achievement and underscores the potential ramifications of chronic stress early in life. ... Read more

ScienceDaily (Feb. 25, 2009) -- Why would women give more to the victims of Hurricane Katrina than to the victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami? A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research sheds light onto the way gender and moral identity affect donations.

Authors Karen Page Winterich (Texas A&M University), Vikas Mittal (Rice University), and William T. Ross, Jr. (Pennsylvania State University) focused their research on how people choose among charities. With so many worthy charities soliciting donations, the researchers wanted to understand how people make these critical decisions.

"We gave people in the United States $5 that they could allocate to Hurricane Katrina victims, Indian Ocean tsunami victims, or themselves," explain the authors. "On average, people kept $1.10 for themselves and donated the rest. However, the actual amount donated to each charity depended on people's gender and moral identity." ... Read more

ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2009) -- A new psychodynamic approach to bullying in schools has been successfully trialled by UCL (University College London) and US researchers. CAPSLE (Creating a Peaceful School Learning Environment) is a groundbreaking method focused more on the bystander, including the teacher, than on the bully or the victim.

The study, published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, shows that an easily implemented school-wide intervention focussing on empathy and power dynamics can reduce children’s experiences of aggression in school and improve classroom behaviour.

Professor Peter Fonagy, UCL Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, and lead author of the paper, says: “Bullying has an extensive impact on children’s mental health including disruptive and aggressive behaviour, school dropout, substance abuse, depressed mood, anxiety, and social withdrawal. It also undermines educational achievement and disrupts children’s abilities to develop social relationships. ... Read more

[Editor's Note: Is this an inconvenient truth? Should this point towards considerations for secular groups? Perhaps there are some aspects to community that we're lacking? Common coherent ethical standards? A congregation? Rituals?]
ScienceDaily (Jan. 1, 2009) -- Self-control is critical for success in life, and a new study by University of Miami professor of Psychology Michael McCullough finds that religious people have more self-control than do their less religious counterparts.

These findings imply that religious people may be better at pursuing and achieving long-term goals that are important to them and their religious groups. This, in turn, might help explain why religious people tend to have lower rates of substance abuse, better school achievement, less delinquency, better health behaviors, less depression, and longer lives. ... Read more

Greater Good Science Center Blog --Laugh and the whole world laughs with you. Yawn, and so will your dog.

A recent study published in the journal Biology Letters found dogs yawn when humans do, suggesting that canines may have the capacity for empathy.

In their experiment, researchers from the University of London yawned at 29 dogs. 72 percent yawned back—a higher frequency than humans, who typically mimic a yawn 45 to 60 percent of the time.

When the researchers simply opened their mouths wide, no dogs yawned.

Other animals capable of such “facial mimicry” — imitating facial expressions — include orangutans and chimps. Researchers believe that facial mimicry is a rudimentary form of empathy. Studies have found that humans who are more susceptible to contagious yawning score higher on tests that measure empathy.
Originally published on the Greater Good Science Center Blog