Death toll reaches 16 as ‘dramatic’ flooding in central Europe continues

The Czech Republic, Poland and Austria fear worst may yet be to come as thousands are evacuated to higher ground

The #Czech police chief, Martin Vondrášek, told local radio on Monday that a woman had 🔸drowned in a stream that overflowed its banks near Bruntál, a town of about 15,000 people in the north-east of the country, while 🔸seven more people were still unaccounted for.

In #Austria, local media reported that 🔸two men aged 70 and 80 drowned after being trapped by rising flood water in their homes in the towns of Böheimkirchen and Sierndorf, both in the hard-hit north-eastern state of Lower Austria.

The number of victims in #Poland rose to six after a surgeon returning from hospital duty drowned in the south-western town of Nysa and four people 🔸died in the southern towns of Bielsko-Biała and Lądek-Zdrój, firefighters said.

⚠️Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes across a swathe of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia as #Storm #Boris unleashed what one mayor described as a “catastrophe of epic proportions”.

Flooding has burst #dams, flooded #streets, knocked out #electricity and in some places submerged whole neighbourhoods.

“I have lived here for 16 years and I have never seen such flooding,” one Austrian woman, Judith Dickson, told public radio.

Six people died in #Romania over the weekend, as well as one in #Poland and a firefighter in #Austria.

The rain was expected to ease on Monday but, with ♦️some rivers unlikely to reach peak water levels for days, ♦️several major cities were preparing for potentially disastrous flooding.

theguardian.com/world/2024/sep…

More bomb threats hit Springfield, Ohio, after Trump elevates false claims about Haitians

Hospitals were sent into lockdown, government buildings shut down and local schools evacuated

Two hospitals in #Springfield, Ohio, were sent into #lockdown after #bomb #threats, police said on Saturday,
marking ♦️the fourth such case in as many days that appears ♦️linked to false claims circulating among the far right that Haitian #immigrants there are #eating domestic #pets and wildlife.

Saturday’s threats came 🔸even after the woman who started the rumors acknowledged to NBC News that they were #unfounded and publicly apologized.🔸

#Kettering Health Springfield was one of the medical facilities targeted, with officials later saying they found nothing suspicious during a search. Another hospital, #Mercy Health’s Springfield regional medical center, received a similar threat.

A spokesperson with Mercy Health said the hospital had continued to operate and thanked Springfield police as well as hospital staff “for their swift, efficient and caring response”.

The bomb threats on Saturday came after others had been called in to #government #buildings Thursday, forcing their closure and causing local #schools to be #evacuated.
“We recognize that the past few days have been particularly challenging for everyone in our community,” Springfield police said in a statement. Police added “we remain fully committed to ensuring the safety and wellbeing of each and every person”.

On Friday, a Springfield woman,
👉#Erika #Lee, #apologized for rumors about Haitian immigrants eating pets that resulted from a post she wrote on Facebook claiming that the friend of a neighbor’s daughter lost her cat – and then found the animal strung up outside the home of a Haitian family.

🔸Lee now says she had no firsthand knowledge of the claim. The neighbor referenced in the post, Kimberly Newton, revealed that she also had heard the story from an acquaintance and not her daughter.
Lee said she was filled with regret and insists she never intended to put a target on the backs of the Haitian community.

“It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Lee told NBC News on Friday.
❇️Local authorities in Springfield had already debunked the lies even 🔸before #Donald #Trump made the allegation that Haitian immigrants were eating pets during the debate with Kamala Harris on Tuesday.
Lee told the outlet she never imagined her social media post would become fodder for #conspiracy #theories and #hate aimed at the Haitian community in Springfield.

theguardian.com/us-news/2024/s…

DATE: September 16, 2024 at 10:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG

** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
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TITLE: Attractive faces influence fairness decisions, reducing negative reactions to unfair proposals

URL: psypost.org/attractive-faces-i…

According to a new study published in Biological Psychology, facial attractiveness and positive personality traits independently reduce negative responses to unfair offers in economic decision-making.

In social interactions, both facial attractiveness and perceived personality traits can significantly influence decision-making. Previous research suggests that attractive individuals are often judged more favorably and perceived as more trustworthy and competent. Similarly, individuals with positive personality traits are generally perceived more favorably in social and economic contexts. However, the combined effects of facial attractiveness and personality traits on decision-making, particularly in economic games like the Ultimatum Game (UG), have not been thoroughly examined.

The Ultimatum Game is a standard method used in psychology to study fairness and decision-making, where one player (the proposer) suggests a division of money and the other player (the responder) chooses to accept or reject the offer. Tongjie Li and colleagues examined how facial attractiveness and alleged personality traits of proposers affect the acceptance of fair and unfair offers in the UG. Fair offers involve equal or near-equal splits (e.g., 5/5 or 4/6), while unfair offers are heavily skewed in favor of the proposer (e.g., 2/8 or 1/9).

The study involved 30 female students from Liaoning Normal University in China. Participants were informed that they would receive compensation based on their decisions, with actual payments standardized across participants to ensure consistent motivation. The experiment presented participants with 80 male face images (rated previously for attractiveness) and 80 personality trait words (previously rated for valence).

Each trial began with a fixation cross, followed by a composite image of a face paired with a personality trait word, and then a proposed allocation of money. Participants decided whether to accept or reject the offer, with combinations of high or low facial attractiveness, positive or negative personality traits, and fair or unfair monetary splits.

Electroencephalography (EEG), which measures electrical activity in the brain, was used to capture event-related potentials (ERPs), which are specific brain responses linked to cognitive and emotional processing during decision-making. The researchers focused on key ERPs like the P2, feedback-related negativity (FRN), and P300 components.

Consistent with established norms of fairness in decision-making, the results showed that participants were more likely to accept fair offers than unfair ones. However, acceptance rates were also significantly higher for offers from proposers with high facial attractiveness or positive personality traits, suggesting that these factors biased decision-making in favor of more favorable outcomes, even when offers were objectively unfair.

EEG data revealed that negative personality traits elicited larger P2 components, indicating heightened attentional processing of negative information. High-attractive faces triggered larger late positive components (LPC), reflecting greater cognitive processing associated with the perceived reward value of attractive faces.

Additionally, unfair offers generally produced larger FRN amplitudes, a neural marker of negative emotional response to perceived unfairness. However, this FRN response was attenuated when the proposer was either highly attractive or associated with positive personality traits, suggesting these attributes can mitigate negative reactions to unfair offers. The P300 component, associated with attentional and motivational significance, was larger for fair offers and for proposers with positive personality traits.

Overall, this study demonstrates that facial attractiveness and personality traits independently influence both the behavioral and neural responses to fairness in economic decision-making.

One limitation noted by the authors is the exclusive use of female participants and male face stimuli, which may limit the generalizability of the findings across genders and sexual orientations.

The research, “The impact of facial attractiveness and alleged personality traits on fairness decisions in the ultimatum game: Evidence from ERPs,” was authored by Tongjie Li, Zhiyong Liang, Yan Yuan, Werner Sommer, and Weijun Li.

URL: psypost.org/attractive-faces-i…

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