Records of Pompeii’s survivors have been found – and archaeologists are starting to understand how they rebuilt their lives

 

In popular culture, the eruption is usually depicted as an apocalyptic event. Photo 12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

On Aug. 24, in A.D. 79, Mount Vesuvius erupted, shooting over 3 cubic miles of debris up to 20 miles (32.1 kilometers) in the air. As the ash and rock fell to Earth, it buried the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

According to most modern accounts, the story pretty much ends there: Both cities were wiped out, their people frozen in time.

It only picks up with the rediscovery of the cities and the excavations that started in earnest in the 1740s.

But recent research has shifted the narrative. The story of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius is no longer one about annihilation; it also includes the stories of those who survived the eruption and went on to rebuild their lives.

The search for survivors and their stories has dominated the past decade of my archaeological fieldwork, as I’ve tried to figure out who might have escaped the eruption. Some of my findings are featured in an episode of the new PBS documentary, “Pompeii: The New Dig.”

‘Pompeii: The New Dig’ highlights recent discoveries that have helped historians better understand life before and after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

Making it out alive

Pompeii and Herculaneum were two wealthy cities on the coast of Italy just south of Naples. Pompeii was a community of about 30,000 people that hosted thriving industry and active political and financial networks. Herculaneum, with a population of about 5,000, had an active fishing fleet and a number of marble workshops. Both economies supported the villas of wealthy Romans in the surrounding countryside.

In popular culture, the eruption is usually depicted as an apocalyptic event with no survivors: In episodes of the TV series “Doctor Who” and “Loki,” everyone in Pompeii and Herculaneum dies.

But the evidence that people could have escaped was always there.

The eruption itself continued for over 18 hours. The human remains found in each city account for only a fraction of their populations, and many objects you might have expected to have remained and be preserved in ash are missing: Carts and horses are gone from stables, ships missing from docks, and strongboxes cleaned out of money and jewelry.

All of this suggests that many – if not most – of the people in the cities could have escaped if they fled early enough.

Some archaeologists have always assumed that some people escaped. But searching for them has never been a priority.

So I created a methodology to determine if survivors could be found. I took Roman names unique to Pompeii or Herculaneum – such as Numerius Popidius and Aulus Umbricius – and searched for people with those names who lived in surrounding communities in the period after the eruption. I also looked for additional evidence, such as improved infrastructure in neighboring communities to accommodate migrants.

After eight years of scouring databases of tens of thousands of Roman inscriptions on places ranging from walls to tombstones, I found evidence of over 200 survivors in 12 cities. These municipalities are primarily in the general area of Pompeii. But they tended to be north of Mount Vesuvius, outside the zone of the greatest destruction.

It seems as though most survivors stayed as close as they could to Pompeii. They preferred to settle with other survivors, and they relied on social and economic networks from their original cities as they resettled.

Some migrants prosper

Some of the families that escaped apparently went on to thrive in their new communities.

The Caltilius family resettled in Ostia – what was then a major port city to the north of Pompeii, 18 miles from Rome. There, they founded a temple to the Egyptian deity Serapis. Serapis, who wore a basket of grain on his head to symbolize the bounty of the earth, was popular in harbor cities like Ostia dominated by the grain trade. Those cities also built a grand, expensive tomb complex decorated with inscriptions and large portraits of family members.

Members of the Caltilius family married into another family of escapees, the Munatiuses. Together, they created a wealthy, successful extended family.

Some of the survivors resettled in Ostia, a port city north of Pompeii. DEA Picture Library/Getty Images

The second-busiest port city in Roman Italy, Puteoli – what’s known as Pozzuoli today – also welcomed survivors from Pompeii. The family of Aulus Umbricius, who was a merchant of garum, a popular fermented fish sauce, resettled there. After reviving the family garum business, Aulus and his wife named their first child born in their adopted city Puteolanus, or “the Puteolanean.”

Others fall on hard times

Not all the survivors of the eruption were wealthy or went on to find success in their new communities. Some had already been poor to begin with. Others seemed to have lost their family fortunes, perhaps in the eruption itself.

Fabia Secundina from Pompeii – apparently named for her grandfather, a wealthy wine merchant – also ended up in Puteoli. There, she married a gladiator, Aquarius the retiarius, who died at the age of 25, leaving her in dire financial straits.

Three other very poor families from Pompeii – the Avianii, Atilii and Masuri families – survived and settled in a small, poorer community called Nuceria, which goes by Nocera today and is about 10 miles (16.1 kilometers) east of Pompeii.

According to a tombstone that still exists, the Masuri family took in a boy named Avianius Felicio as a foster son. Notably, in the 160 years of Roman Pompeii, there was no evidence of any foster children, and extended families usually took in orphaned children. For this reason, it’s likely that Felicio didn’t have any surviving family members.

This small example illustrates the larger pattern of the generosity of migrants – even impoverished ones – toward other survivors and their new communities. They didn’t just take care of each other; they also donated to the religious and civic institutions of their new homes.

For example, the Vibidia family had lived in Herculaneum. Before it was destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius, they had given lavishly to help fund various institutions, including a new temple of Venus, the Roman goddess of love, beauty and fertility.

One female family member who survived the eruption appears to have continued the family’s tradition: Once settled in her new community, Beneventum, she donated a very small, poorly made altar to Venus on public land given by the local city council.

How would survivors be treated today?

While the survivors resettled and built lives in their new communities, government played a role as well.

The emperors in Rome invested heavily in the region, rebuilding properties damaged by the eruption and building new infrastructure for displaced populations, including roads, water systems, amphitheaters and temples.

This model for post-disaster recovery can be a lesson for today. The costs of funding the recovery never seems to have been debated. Survivors were not isolated into camps, nor were they forced to live indefinitely in tent cities. There’s no evidence that they encountered discrimination in their new communities.

Instead, all signs indicate that communities welcomed the survivors. Many of them went on to open their own businesses and hold positions in local governments. And the government responded by ensuring that the new populations and their communities had the resources and infrastructure to rebuild their lives.

Steven L. Tuck, Professor of Classics, Miami University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Sunzi, ‘shì’ and strategy: How to read ‘Art of War’ the way its author intended

 

A copy of the ‘Art of War’ from a collection at the University of California, Riverside. vlasta2/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

In the mid-1990s, I picked up the military classic “Art of War” hoping to find insight into my new career as an officer in the United States Marine Corps.

I was not the only one looking for insights from the sage Sunzi, also known as Sun Tzu, who died over 2,500 years ago. “Art of War” has long been mined for an understanding of China’s strategic tradition and universal military truths. The book’s maxims, such as “know the enemy and know yourself,” are routinely quoted in military texts, as well as business and management books.

Initially, I was disappointed. It seemed Sunzi’s advice was either common sense or in agreement with Western military classics. However, a few years later the Marine Corps trained me as a China scholar, and I spent much of my career working on U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific region. This deepened my desire to understand how leaders in the People’s Republic of China see the world and choose strategies. Looking for insight, I turned to classical Chinese philosophy and finally encountered concepts that helped illuminate the unique perspective of Sunzi’s “Art of War.”

Today, I am an academic researching how Chinese philosophy and foreign policy intersect. To comprehend “Art of War,” it helps readers to approach the text from the worldview of its author. That means reading Sunzi’s advice through the prism of classical Chinese metaphysics, which is deeply shaped by the philosophy of Daoism.

Daoist roots

China’s intellectual tradition is rooted in the Warring States period from the 5th to 3rd century B.C.E., the era during which Sunzi is thought to have lived. Though a time of conflict, it was also a time of cultural and intellectual development that led to the rise of Daoism and Confucianism.

Sunzi’s writing has had a significant impact on both Chinese and foreign politics. Pictures From History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Confucian philosophy focuses on maintaining proper social relationships as the key to moral behavior and and social harmony. Daoism, on the other hand, is more concerned with metaphysics: trying to understand the workings of the natural world and drawing analogies about how humans should act.

Daoism views existence as composed of constant cycles of change, in which power ebbs and flows. Meanwhile, the “Dào,” or “the way,” directs all things in nature toward fulfilling their inherent potential, like water flowing downhill.

Helping nature take its course

The Chinese word for this concept of “situational potential” is 勢, or “shì” – the name of Chapter Five in “Art of War.” Almost every Western version translates it differently, but it is key to the military concepts Sunzi employs.

For example, Chapter Five explains how those who are “expert at war” are not overly concerned with individual soldiers. Instead, effective leaders are able to determine the potential in the situation and put themselves in position to take advantage of it.

This is why later chapters spend so much time discussing geography and deployment of forces, rather than fighting techniques. One does more to damage an opponent’s potential by undermining their scheme than by merely killing their soldiers. Sunzi is concerned about long supply lines, because they lower an army’s potential by making it harder to move and vulnerable to disruption. A general who understands potential can evaluate troops, terrain and scheme, then arrange the battlefield to “subdue the enemy without fighting.”

Painting of a battle between Chinese and Vietnamese forces during the Qing invasion of Vietnam in 1788. Pictures From History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

In Daoist thought, the correct way to manage each situation’s potential is to act with 無為, “wúwéi,” which literally translates as “nonaction.” However, the key idea is to disturb the natural order as little as possible, taking the minimum action needed to allow the situation’s potential to be fulfilled. The term does not appear in “Art of War,” but a contemporary reader of Sunzi’s would have been familiar with the connection between nurturing “shì” and acting with “wúwéi.”

The importance of acting with “wúwéi” is illustrated by the Confucian philosopher Mengzi’s story about a farmer who pulled on his corn stalks in an attempt to help them grow tall, but killed the crop instead. One does not help corn grow by forcing it but by understanding its natural potential and acting accordingly: ensuring the soil is good, weeds are removed and water is sufficient. Actions are most effective when they nurture potential, not when they try to force it.

From the battlefield to the UN

In a Daoist understanding, leaders hoping to chart an effective strategy must read the situation, discover its potential, and position their armies or states in the best position to take advantage of “shì.” They act with “wúwéi” to nurture situations, rather than force, which could disturb the situation and cause chaos.

Therefore, in foreign policy, a decision-maker should attempt to make small policy adjustments as early as possible to slowly manage the development of the international environment. This approach is evident in Beijing’s use of “guānxì.” Meaning “relationships,” the Chinese term carries a strong sense of mutual obligation.

For example, the PRC waged a decadeslong effort to take over the United Nations “China seat” from Taiwan, where the Republic of China government had fled after Communists’ victory in the civil war. Beijing accomplished that by slowly building friendships, identifying shared strategic interests and accruing owed favors with many small states around the world, until in 1971 it had enough votes in the General Assembly.

Trend-watching today

The concept of “shì” also provides a lens for understanding the PRC’s increasing pressure on Taiwan, a self-ruled island that Beijing claims is its own territory.

A Taiwanese tank used in previous conflicts and on display for tourists in Kinmen, Taiwan, is seen silhouetted against the skyline of the mainland city of Xiamen. Chris McGrath/Getty Images

Sunzi might say that discerning the current trend in the Taiwan Strait is more essential than conventional questions about comparative military strength. Several factors could push Taiwan closer to Beijing, including the island’s loss of diplomatic allies and the pull of the PRC’s massive economy – not to mention Beijing’s growing global clout vis-à-vis the U.S. If so, shì is in Beijing’s favor, and a nudge to persuade the U.S. to stay out is all that is needed to keep the situation developing to the PRC’s advantage.

Or is the potential developing in the other direction? Such factors as a growing sense of a unique Taiwanese identity and the PRC’s troubled economic model may make closer ties with the mainland less and less appealing in Taiwan. In that case, Beijing may see a need to appear strong and dominant so Taiwan will not be lulled into counting on support from Washington, D.C.

A surface reading of Sunzi can easily support an emphasis on troop deployments, intelligence and logistics. However, an understanding of “shì” highlights Sunzi’s emphasis on evaluating and nurturing situational potential. It is not that the former are unimportant, but a decision-maker will use them differently if the goal is to manage situational trends rather than seek decisive battle.

That “Art of War” continues to top sales lists demonstrates its lasting appeal. However, to be useful as a guide to understanding security policy and strategy, my experience in the Indo-Pacific region suggests one must dig into the principles that shaped Sunzi’s view of the world and continue to shape the view of leaders in Beijing.

Scott D. McDonald, Non-resident Fellow, Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies; PhD Candidate, The Fletcher School, Tufts University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Are older adults more vulnerable to scams? What psychologists have learned about who’s most susceptible, and when

 

Financial exploitation takes many forms, and it often comes from people within an older person’s social circle. prpicturesproduction/iStock via Getty Images Plus

About 1 in 6 Americans are age 65 or older, and that percentage is projected to grow. Older adults often hold positions of power, have retirement savings accumulated over the course of their lifetimes, and make important financial and health-related decisions – all of which makes them attractive targets for financial exploitation.

In 2021, there were more than 90,000 older victims of fraud, according to the FBI. These cases resulted in US$1.7 billion in losses, a 74% increase compared with 2020. Even so, that may be a significant undercount, since embarrassment or lack of awareness keeps some victims from reporting.

Financial exploitation represents one of the most common forms of elder abuse. Perpetrators are often individuals in the victims’ inner social circles – family members, caregivers or friends – but can also be strangers.

When older adults experience financial fraud, they typically lose more money than younger victims. Those losses can have devastating consequences, especially since older adults have limited time to recoup – dramatically reducing their independence, health and well-being.

But older adults have been largely neglected in research on this burgeoning type of crime. We are psychologists who study social cognition and decision-making, and our research lab at the University of Florida is aimed at understanding the factors that shape vulnerability to deception in adulthood and aging.

Defining vulnerability

Financial exploitation involves a variety of exploitative tactics, such as coercion, manipulation, undue influence and, frequently, some sort of deception.

The majority of current research focuses on people’s ability to distinguish between truth and lies during interpersonal communication. However, deception occurs in many contexts – increasingly, over the internet.

Our lab conducts laboratory experiments and real-world studies to measure susceptibility under various conditions: investment games, lie/truth scenarios, phishing emails, text messages, fake news and deepfakes – fabricated videos or images that are created by artificial intelligence technology.

To study how people respond to deception, we use measures like surveys, brain imaging, behavior, eye movement and heart rate. We also collect health-related biomarkers, such as being a carrier of gene variants that increase risk for Alzheimer’s disease, to identify individuals with particular vulnerability.

And our work shows that an older adult’s ability to detect deception is not just about their individual characteristics. It also depends on how they are being targeted.

Vulnerability depends not only on the person, but also the type of fraud being used. Natalie Ebner and Didem Pehlivanoglu

Individual risk factors

Better cognition, social and emotional capacities, and brain health are all associated with less susceptibility to deception.

Cognitive functions, such as how quickly our brain processes information and how well we remember it, decline with age and impact decision-making. For example, among people around 70 years of age or older, declines in analytical thinking are associated with reduced ability to detect false news stories.

Additionally, low memory function in aging is associated with greater susceptibility to email phishing. Further, according to recent research, this correlation is specifically pronounced among older adults who carry a gene variant that is a genetic risk factor for developing Alzheimer’s disease later in life. Indeed, some research suggests that greater financial exploitability may serve as an early marker of disease-related cognitive decline.

Social and emotional influences are also crucial. Negative mood can enhance somebody’s ability to detect lies, while positive mood in very old age can impair a person’s ability to detect fake news.

Lack of support and loneliness exacerbate susceptibility to deception. Social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic has led to increased reliance on online platforms, and older adults with lower digital literacy are more vulnerable to fraudulent emails and robocalls.

Isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic has increased aging individuals’ vulnerability to online scams. ilkercelik/E+ via Getty Images

Finally, an individual’s brain and body responses play a critical role in susceptibility to deception. One important factor is interoceptive awareness: the ability to accurately read our own body’s signals, like a “gut feeling.” This awareness is correlated with better lie detection in older adults.

According to a first study, financially exploited older adults had a significantly smaller size of insula – a brain region key to integrating bodily signals with environmental cues – than older adults who had been exposed to the same threat but avoided it. Reduced insula activity is also related to greater difficulty picking up on cues that make someone appear less trustworthy.

Types of effective fraud

Not all deception is equally effective on everyone.

Our findings show that email phishing that relies on reciprocation – people’s tendency to repay what another person has provided them – was more effective on older adults. Younger adults, on the other hand, were more likely to fall for phishing emails that employed scarcity: people’s tendency to perceive an opportunity as more valuable if they are told its availability is limited. For example, an email might alert you that a coin collection from the 1950s has become available for a special reduced price if purchased within the next 24 hours.

There is also evidence that as we age, we have greater difficulty detecting the “wolf in sheep’s clothing”: someone who appears trustworthy, but is not acting in a trustworthy way. In a card-based gambling game, we found that compared with their younger counterparts, older adults are more likely to select decks presented with trustworthy-looking faces, even though those decks consistently resulted in negative payouts. Even after learning about untrustworthy behavior, older adults showed greater difficulty overcoming their initial impressions.

Reducing vulnerability

Identifying who is especially at risk for financial exploitation in aging is crucial for preventing victimization.

We believe interventions should be tailored, instead of a one-size-fits-all approach. For example, perhaps machine learning algorithms could someday determine the most dangerous types of deceptive messages that certain groups encounter – such as in text messages, emails or social media platforms – and provide on-the-spot warnings. Black and Hispanic consumers are more likely to be victimized, so there is also a dire need for interventions that resonate with their communities.

Prevention efforts would benefit from taking a holistic approach to help older adults reduce their vulnerability to scams. Training in financial, health and digital literacy are important, but so are programs to address loneliness.

People of all ages need to keep these lessons in mind when interacting with online content or strangers – but not only then. Unfortunately, financial exploitation often comes from individuals close to the victim.

Natalie C. Ebner, Professor of Psychology, University of Florida and Didem Pehlivanoglu, Postdoctoral Researcher, Psychology, University of Florida

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

An American flag, a pencil sharpener − and the 10 Commandments: Louisiana’s new bill to mandate biblical displays in classrooms is the latest to push limits of religion in public schools

 

Controversy over displays of the Ten Commandments on government property is nothing new, but only one case about schools has reached the Supreme Court. AP Photo/Dave Martin

Louisiana is not a stranger to controversy over religion in schools. In 2023, it joined almost 20 states that require or allow officials in public schools to post the national motto, “In God We Trust.”

Now, the Bayou State could become the first in the nation to require the posting of the Ten Commandments in classrooms in public schools, colleges and universities.

Lawmakers approved House Bill 71 on May 28, 2024, though Gov. Jeff Landry has not yet signed it into law. The bill would require officials in public schools, including colleges and universities, to post a specific version of the Ten Commandments. The text is similar to the King James translation of the Bible used in many Protestant churches.

Officials must post a context statement highlighting the role of the Ten Commandments in American history and may also display the Pilgrims’ Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, a federal enactment to settle the frontier – and the earliest congressional document encouraging the creation of schools.

One of the bill’s supporters, state Sen. J. Adam Bass, defended it on the grounds that its “purpose is not solely religious.” He told fellow lawmakers that the Ten Commandments are important because of their “historical significance, which is simply one of many documents that display the history of our country and foundation of our legal system.”

As someone who teaches and researches law around religion and education, I believe the bill is problematic. It is likely to invite litigation at a time when the Supreme Court’s thinking on religion and state is shifting.

How SCOTUS has ruled before

Litigation over the Ten Commandments is not new. More than 40 years ago, in Stone v. Graham, the Supreme Court rejected a Kentucky statute that mandated displays of the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

The court reasoned that the underlying law violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause – “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” – because the mandate lacked a secular purpose.

The justices were not persuaded by a small notation on posters that described the Ten Commandments as the “fundamental legal code of Western Civilization and the Common Law of the United States.”

Twenty-five years later, the Supreme Court again took up cases challenging public displays of the Ten Commandments, although not in schools. This time, the justices reached mixed results.

The first arose in Kentucky, where officials had erected a county courthouse display about texts including the Ten Commandments, the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence and a biblical citation. In a 2005 ruling in McCreary County, Kentucky v. American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, the five-person majority agreed that display of the Ten Commandments violated the establishment clause, largely because it lacked a secular legislative purpose.

On the same day, however, the Supreme Court reached the opposite result in Van Orden v. Perry, a case from Texas. The court upheld the constitutionality of a display of the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the state capitol as one of 17 monuments and 21 historical markers commemorating Texas’ history.

Unlike the fairly new display in Kentucky, the one in Texas, which had existed since the early 1960s, was erected using private funds. The court permitted the Ten Commandments to remain because, despite their religious significance, the monument was a more passive display than in Stone: spread out across 22 acres, rather than posted on the courthouse door.

The 5-foot-tall stone slab bearing the Ten Commandments near the Texas State Capitol. A challenge to the display reached the Supreme Court. AP Photo/Harry Cabluck

Louisiana’s law

Louisiana’s bill would require public school officials to display framed copies of the Ten Commandments in all public school classrooms. Posters must be at least 11-by-14 inches and be printed with a large, easily readable font. The proposal allows, but does not require, officials to use state funds to purchase these posters. Displays can also be received as donations or purchased with gifted funds.

The bill’s author, state Rep. Dodie Horton, previously sponsored Louisiana’s law mandating that “In God We Trust” be posted in public school classrooms.

In defending the Ten Commandments proposal, she said it honors the country’s religious origins.

“The Ten Commandments are the basis of all laws in Louisiana,” she told fellow lawmakers, “and given all the junk our children are exposed to in classrooms today, it’s imperative that we put the Ten Commandments back in a prominent position.”

Justifying the bill, Horton pointed to Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, a 2022 Supreme Court decision. Here, the justices held that educational officials could not prevent a football coach from praying on the field at the end of games, because he engaged in personal religious observance protected by the First Amendment.

“The landscape has changed,” she said.

New frontier

Indeed it has.

For decades, the Supreme Court used a set of criteria often called the Lemon v. Kurtzman test to assess whether a government action violated the establishment clause. Under this test, when a government action or policy intersects with religion, it had to meet three criteria. A policy had to have a secular legislative purpose; its principal or primary effect could not advance religion; and it could not result in excessive entanglement between state and religious officials.

Another test the Supreme Court sometimes applied, stemming from Lynch v. Donnelly in 1984, invalidated governmental actions appearing to endorse religion.

The majority of the current court, though, abandoned both the Lemon and endorsement tests. In the majority opinion in Kennedy v. Bremerton, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that “the Establishment Clause must be interpreted by ‘reference to historical practices and understandings.’” He added that the court “long ago abandoned Lemon and its endorsement test offshoot.”

What that new standard means remains to be seen.

In my view, the bill’s supporters’ reliance on Kennedy is mistaken. That decision upheld voluntary, private prayer, not mandated postings of religious statements, overlooking many students’ beliefs.

More than 80 years ago, in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette the Supreme Court decided in a 6-3 opinion that students cannot be compelled to participate in saluting the American flag, including the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, if doing so goes against their religious beliefs.

Under Louisiana’s new bill, students need not recite the Ten Commandments. Yet, given their distinctly religious message, I believe House Bill 71 faces a dubious future if signed into law.

Charles J. Russo, Joseph Panzer Chair in Education and Research Professor of Law, University of Dayton

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Pets give companionship, cuddles and joy – and also unavoidable stresses

 

Pets can bring joy and companionship, as well as financial worries, loss and logistical challenges. Dann Tardif/Stone via Getty Images

Owning a pet can be a roller coaster. There are the highs, like when your dog greets you with a full-body wiggle when you return home, or when your cat purrs loudly as you cuddle next to one another. Then there are the lows, like stressful trips to urgent care, waking up to that unpleasant vomiting noise, or making the difficult choice to say goodbye because of medical problems or even intractable behavioral issues.

For those pet-owners who are struggling, it’s beneficial to their mental health to acknowledge that pets can create stress and that some animals are more work than others.

Research has shown that both cats and dogs can have equally positive impacts on mental health.

Pets may be helpful at reducing stress, anxiety and feelings of being overwhelmed, including in children. Pet ownership has also been shown to improve well-being by instilling people with a sense of purpose and responsibility.

As a licensed clinical social worker, animal lover and proud dog mom, I have both professionally and personally seen the mental health impacts of having animal companions.

Media stories commonly cover the positives of pet ownership. But the hardships and downsides of owning a pet are not discussed as often. For instance, while there are many positive aspects to pet ownership, some research is showing that pets may lead to exacerbated mental health concerns or even sleep issues.

Whether you’re adopting or shopping, pets can bring a full range of emotions into our lives. Research has even shown that pets may benefit non-pet owners around them as well.

How pets can enrich our lives

A pet owner may easily be able to tick off an infinite number of positive effects their fuzzy companion has had on their life. Research backs them up.

Pets can provide constant companionship for individuals and families. This is particularly true for older adults. There was an uptick in adoptions of pets during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many people benefited from pets during periods of stay-at-home mandates and quarantines.

Pet adoptions soared during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. But many owners then found themselves struggling with the rising costs of care.

Research shows that dogs can reduce loneliness in their owners. In fact, being accompanied by a dog may even make you seem more approachable.

Pets, especially dogs, may help improve one’s ability to socialize and feel connected with others, as well as increasing the prospects for social interactions. People may bond over the experience of having pets, socialize at the dog park, or even meet up at the local cat café.

Animals and pets have also been used to assist in detecting the onset symptoms of medical episodes, including seizures. Animal-assisted therapy and pet therapy have shown promise in improving symptom management and overall quality of life in a number of conditions, including trauma and stressor-related disorders, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, autism, traumatic brain injuries, neurological disorders and more.

There are ample benefits to pet ownership.

The inherent stressors

Despite the many positive impacts of pet ownership, it also can have negative impacts. For example, one survey found that 47% of Americans felt separation anxiety when leaving their dogs at home.

The survey also found that 41% of pet owners declined social invitations because they did not want to leave their dog at home, and that 70% of pet owners would prefer to work remotely so they could stay at home with their pet. Pet owners have also identified feeling anxious about their pet getting sick or running away, or the risk that they might harm the animal unintentionally.

Stress from pet ownership is common. There’s the stress of house-training and making sure the pet is getting enough enrichment – both physically and mentally. Then there are the challenges associated with vet appointments and navigating illness, as well as financial stressors and finding pet sitters.

Another element of pet ownership that people often don’t talk about is the stress, and often shame, that owners with reactive dogs experience from walking their dog, having people over to the house or having their dog around children.

Finally, there’s the reality that our pet companions live shorter lives than we do, leading to end-of-life planning, expensive treatments for older-age ailments, and, of course, the grief that will be felt from the loss of a pet. For some people, the loss of a pet may feel worse than human loss.

People may judge or criticize pet owners for an “overblown” grief reaction. The common experience of invalidation and lack of acknowledgment related to grief around pet loss – similar to the grief felt from divorce and miscarriage – is categorized as disenfranchised grief. This term refers to grief that is not acknowledged, validated or accepted socially.

Society often fails to recognize the significance of pets in people’s lives. Thomas Northcut/DigitalVision via Getty Images

Strings attached

Pet owners, especially post-pandemic, have reported high levels of guilt related to leaving their pets at home while at work or social events. Some of this guilt may be related to concerns about providing insufficient attention to the pet or about the pet’s health. This guilt has even been shown to be similar to the feeling human parents have concerning their human children.

As someone who adores their dog, I can relate to the guilt of leaving him alone. To complicate things, my dog has joint issues, anxiety and discoid lupus, a type of lupus that affects the skin on his nose. He can also be reactive. All of these aspects require me to provide extra care. When friends invalidate my worries and guilt, it can feel isolating and shaming.

And I’m not alone in these feelings. Overall, when there is a lack of consideration for the complex feelings pet owners experience, the invalidation and disenfranchised feelings can lead to depression, anxiety, feelings of being isolated and worsened quality of life.

Many pet owners report feeling unsupported and invalidated when it comes to the grief around illness, loss and other complicated issues that come with pet ownership. LWA/DigitalVision via Getty Images

Finding support

The human-animal bond is unique, with humans receiving unconditional love and full acceptance from their animal companion. When society can honor and respect this bond through validation, patience and compassion, it not only helps pet owners but also the clinicians who treat the animals.

Employers can be supportive by continuing to provide remote and hybrid work options, flexibility in scheduling and opportunities for employees to feel validated and receive support. If a loved one is experiencing guilt around leaving their dog at home or a friend is having anxiety about their cat’s health, instead of minimizing their experience, try talking to them and asking how best to support them through their distress.

Another support tool is encouraging pet owners to practice self-compassion and mindfulness, being present and focusing on the time they do have with their pet.

Pets can bring infinite joy and companionship to our lives, whether that’s through pet ownership, fostering, volunteering or engaging in animal-assisted therapy.

It remains important, however, to acknowledge the stressors and difficulties pet owners face. After all, the ups and downs of pet ownership, just like the ups and downs of the human experience, are what make life and relationships that much more meaningful.

Emily Hemendinger, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

AI search answers are the fast food of your information diet – convenient and tasty, but no substitute for good nutrition

 

Fast and yummy is often less than healthy. Zinkevych/iStock via Getty Images

If you have used Google lately and been lucky – or unlucky – enough to encounter an answer to your query rather than a bunch of links, you have been subjected to something called AI Overviews. This is a new core feature that Google has been rolling out, a move widely anticipated since the company’s experiments with its LaMDA large language model in 2021, and since OpenAI’s ChatGPT artificial intelligence chatbot rocketed to prominence in 2023.

Google’s knowledge panels summarize information from search results, in contrast to AI Overview, which generates answers based on its training data. Screen capture by The Conversation, CC BY-ND

This feature is yet another addition to the increasing number of add-ons and tools being integrated into search engines like Google. Some of the notable examples include knowledge graph-driven knowledge panels, which are used to populate relevant factual information in an infobox next to search results, and featured snippets, which are blurbs excerpted from a search result and provided before the link to that page.

But what’s different about AI Overviews is that they are not simply extracted from relevant sources but generated behind the scenes by Google’s generative AI technology. The company’s goal is to give you a personalized, on-demand answer instead of a standard set of documents or even an answer box matching your query.

This seems almost magical and potentially useful in many situations. After all, people use search engines primarily to find answers and not lists of documents. But there’s more to the picture.

My colleague Emily Bender and I have written about what search engine users need, want and have. We have shown that they want not only information but also the ability to discover, learn and question what they find. In other words, users have a wide range of situations and objectives, and compressing them down to a set of links or, worse, a single answer is problematic.

Bad advice

These AI features vacuum up information from the internet and other available sources and spit out an answer based on how they are trained to associate words. A core argument against them is that they mostly remove from the equation the user’s judgment, agency and opportunity to learn.

This may be OK for many searches. Want a description of how inflation has affected grocery prices in the past five years, or a summary of what the European Union AI Act includes? AI Overviews can be a good way to cut through a lot of documents and extract those specific answers.

But people’s searching needs don’t end with factual information. They look for ideas, opinions and advice. Looking for suggestions about how to keep the cheese from sliding off your pizza? Google will tell you that you should add some glue to the sauce. Or wondering if running with scissors has any health benefits? Sure, Google will say, “it can also improve your pores and give you strength”.

Computer scientist Paulo Shakarian explains why ‘hallucinations’ – incorrect and often weird answers – are likely to continue to plague large language models and therefore tools like Google’s AI Overviews.

While a reasonable user can understand that such outrageous answers are likely to be wrong, it’s hard to detect that for factual questions.

For example, while researching the faith of U.S. presidents, Google’s AI Overviews gave the incorrect answer that Barack Obama is a Muslim. This misinformation was widely circulated and debunked years ago, but Google regurgitated it with no good way for users to learn that it is misinformation.

What about a student using Google for homework and asking which countries in Africa start with the letter K? While Kenya does meet this criteria, Google’s AI Overviews incorrectly answered that there are no such countries.

Google has acknowledged issues with AI Overviews and said it has addressed them. But the concern remains: Can you really trust any answers you receive through this service?

How to avoid AI answers

There are alternatives. You can always go back to the traditional Google search with its 10 blue links. Click on “More” in the menu – All, News, Images, Maps, Videos and More – directly below the search field at the top of the Google search page and select “Web.”

You can then do what you have likely done for decades now – sift through some of the top results, visit a few of those sites and decide for yourself. It does take a little work, but it gives you back the ability to examine multiple sites and evidence to support or refute something. More importantly, you leave open the possibilities for learning, discovery and serendipity.

AI Overviews is like fast food that gets delivered through a drive-through window – it’s quick, hot and convenient, but not the healthiest choice. Going through Google’s traditional search results is like examining a menu in a sit-down restaurant and placing an order that will take awhile to make it to your table. You can ask your server questions about those items and even request some changes to the restaurant’s offerings. It’s prepared with more care, customization and control, but also takes longer and may cost more.

These aren’t the only methods of finding information, however. There are alternatives to Google’s search engine, including specialty search tools.

For scholarly needs, Google Scholar, Semantic Scholar and CORE are helpful places to look for research papers and citations. Looking for medical information? Try PubMed, ScienceDirect and OpenMD. For legal needs, some services include Fastcase, Caselaw Access Project and CourtListener.

Concerned about privacy? Check out DuckDuckGo, Startpage and Swisscows. If you still want AI-generated answers, some of the alternatives to Google’s AI Overviews and rival Bing’s Copilot are You.com and Komo, which provide more transparency about the data they collect about you, provide greater privacy and also offer ways to opt out of having your data collected for training their AI models.

A balanced information diet

Perhaps you can’t afford to eat out at a nice restaurant or prepare every meal from scratch every time, but it’s important to avoid ending up going through a drive-through for all your nourishment. After all, you are what you eat, and in a similar vein, you are how you search.

It’s easy to fall for sensational headlines and bite-size news that lack context. But you don’t have to let that define you. You can expand the scope of how you search. It’s OK to hit the drive-through every now and then and go for AI Overviews, but it’s important to also find other more wholesome ways to fulfill your needs – for food and for information.

Chirag Shah, Professor of Information Science, University of Washington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.