As if prepared for it all their lives, fans of horror fiction plunge now into a real pandemic. A new study looks at their psychological prospects. “Pandemic Practice: Horror Fans and Morbidly Curious Individuals Are More Psychologically Resilient During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Coltan Scrivner [pictured here, stylistically], John Johnson, Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, and Mathias Clasen, PsyArXiv, […]
Tag: pandemic
Your advice about anti-boredom Improbable episodes?
With so many people cycling between worry and boredom, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, maybe we can help, a little, to crack that boredom. We’re thinking about doing a series of quick Improbable Research podcast episodes about studies that make people laugh, then think. We have a goodly supply. Some of the first might even […]
Saying “FACE”, in gatherings in pandemic times
How to get people to pay more attention to NOT touching their eyes, nostrils, or mouth? We invited people, in a gathering, to say “FACE” whenever they saw a speaker touching a hand to their face. And most of those people said “FACE”, cheerily—appreciating that they were talking to themselves as much as to the […]
Article 15—“Débrouillez-vous”
A jaunty passage from Ed Yong’s essay “The Next Plague Is Coming. Is America Ready?” in The Atlantic magazine: If [the disease outbreak does return], is there any protective equipment at the hospital? “No,” she tells me. Mikolo laughs. “Article 15,” he says. Article 15 is something of a Congolese catchphrase, referring to a fictional but […]