For
an explanation of why we watch reality TV or why toddlers play vigorously with
their nonsolid food, take a look at the December 23rd Science Times.
You will also find in these stories the names of several current and former PBS
students: Katie Boucher, a current postdoctoral student of Mary Murphy and
former grad student of B. J. Rydell; Lynn Perry, a former PBS undergraduate
major who completed her honors thesis with Linda Smith; and Larissa Samuelson, former
graduate student of Smith. Perry is now a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Samuelson is an associate professor at the University of Iowa.
Boucher
is featured in a book review of "The Joy of Pain: Schadenfreude and the Dark Side of Human Nature" by University of Kentucky psychology professor Richard Smith. Boucher
worked with Smith as an undergraduate on the topic of “schadenfreude,” the
pleasure taken in others’ pain.
Schadenfreude, the reviewer explains,
is an antidote to the envy we feel when we measure ourselves against others and
come up short. The urge to make social comparisons may be hard-wired—studies show
that even monkeys and dogs measure themselves against their peers. Yet schadenfreude,
somewhat perversely perhaps, enables us to undo the envy we may feel as a result of negative comparisons.
It also may explain the satisfaction we get from watching reality TV or reading
the National Enquirer, two topics of Boucher’s research as an undergraduate.
Seeing others’ downfall, especially if they have more fame and fortune than ourselves, makes us feel better about
our own un-filmed or un-prosperous lives.
In
"To Smoosh Peas is to Learn," Perry and Samuelson provide the fodder (so to
speak) for science writer Perri Klass in her musings on toddlers' table manners.
Children are generally much better at learning about solid objects than
nonsolid objects, which require a bit more exploration. The
highchair provides an effective context for learning about nonsolid substances
because it is where children are accustomed to encountering them, and the more
they interact with those substances, the more they learn.
