Author: TheConversation

By Jonathan Kanter, Director of the Center for the Science of Social Connection, University of Washington; and Adam Kuczynski, PhD Student, Department of Psychology, University of Washington To fight the spread of coronavirus, government officials have asked Americans to swallow a hard pill: Stay away from each other. In times of societal stress, such a demand runs counter to what evolution has hard-wired people to do: Seek out and support each other as families, friends and communities. We yearn to huddle together. The warmth of our breath and bodies, of holding hands and hugging, of talking and listening, is...

By Jacek Debiec, Assistant Professor / Department of Psychiatry; Assistant Research Professor / Molecular & Behavioral Neuroscience Institute, University of Michigan As cases of COVID-19 proliferate, there is a pandemic of fear unfolding alongside the pandemic of the coronavirus. Media announce mass cancellations of public events “over coronavirus fears.” TV stations show images of “coronavirus panic shopping.” Magazines discuss attacks against Asians sparked by “racist coronavirus fears.” Due to the global reach and instantaneous nature of modern media, fear contagion spreads faster than the dangerous yet invisible virus. Watching or hearing someone else who’s scared causes you to be...

By Joel Christensen, Associate Professor of Classical Studies, Brandeis University In the fifth century B.C., the playwright Sophocles begins “Oedipus Tyrannos” with the title character struggling to identify the cause of a plague striking his city, Thebes. Spoiler alert: It is his own bad leadership. As someone who writes about early Greek poetry, I spend a lot of time thinking about why its performance was so crucial to ancient life. One answer is that epic and tragedy helped ancient storytellers and audiences try to make sense of human suffering. From this perspective, plagues functioned as a setup for an...

By Vanessa Dennen, Professor of of Instructional Systems & Learning Technologies, Florida State University Rising concerns about the spread of the new coronavirus have led a growing number of colleges and universities to cancel in-person classes and move them online. 1. How hard will it be? Moving classes online in the midst of an emergency isn’t unprecedented. It has been done before with local disasters, such as hurricanes and earthquakes. But contending with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, is a different situation. This is a global problem. A sudden shift to temporary or long-term online learning...

By Thurston Domina, Professor, Educational Policy and Organizational Leadership, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Schools aren’t only places where kids learn. They are also places where kids eat. Thanks to the National School Lunch Program, 30 million U.S. children – some 60% of all school-aged kids – regularly eat some combination of breakfast, lunch and afternoon snacks at school. Federal subsidies ensure that school meals are affordable for all children to stave off hunger and malnutrition. But what is happening to meals provided by the nation’s largest child nutrition program as public schools shut their doors to...