All posts tagged: assumptions

The hidden assumptions that leave nurses exposed to sexual harassment

The hidden assumptions that leave nurses exposed to sexual harassment

Published by Sam Flores

Three in five nursing staff and students who responded to a 2021 survey by Nursing Times and Unison said they had experienced sexual harassment at work. For many, it had come to be treated as part of the job. More recent figures suggest the problem persists. In the 2025 NHS staff survey for England, 11.36% of registered nurses and midwives said they had experienced at least one incident of unwanted sexual behaviour from patients, service users, visitors, relatives or members of the public in the previous year. The problem is not confined to one country or type of healthcare setting. Around the world, nurses report sexual comments, intrusive questions, non-consensual touching, intimidation and abuse from colleagues, patients and visitors. Yet sexual harassment remains under-researched and often absent from public conversations about healthcare. A problem hidden in plain sight Sexual harassment in healthcare can take many forms: a comment about a nurse’s body, repeated advances, sexual jokes or unwanted contact during personal care. Such behaviour is often minimised. Nurses may be told that a patient “didn’t …

New findings challenge assumptions about men’s reading habits

New findings challenge assumptions about men’s reading habits

Published by José Betancourt

A longstanding belief in the publishing world suggests that men avoid reading fiction that centers on the lives of women. However, new research indicates that a protagonist’s gender has almost no impact on whether a man wants to continue reading a story. These findings appear in the Anthology of Computers and the Humanities. The literary marketplace has historically skewed heavily toward men. For roughly two centuries, men wrote the majority of published novels. These books focused their narrative attention primarily on male characters. That dynamic has shifted in recent years. Women now constitute the majority of published authors. In addition, women are now more likely to purchase and read books than men are. This demographic change has sparked concern among some cultural commentators. There is an anxiety that literary fiction is becoming a pursuit exclusive to women. This worry often centers on the idea that boys and men are losing interest in reading as the representation of women increases. Data from the industry shows a strong division between authors and readers based on gender. Men …

New research challenges Western assumptions about autistic social cognition

New research challenges Western assumptions about autistic social cognition

Published by José Betancourt

A new study found that non-autistic U.K. adults are less able to understand animations (representing specific words) generated by autistic individuals compared to animations generated by non-autistic individuals. In contrast, in the Japanese group, there were no differences between autistic and non-autistic individuals in their understanding of animations generated by autistic individuals. The research was published in Molecular Autism. Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by differences in social communication, sensory processing, and patterns of interests and behavior. Autistic people tend to perceive, process, and respond to information in ways that differ from how non-autistic individuals do. Their brains process and interpret information in a different way than non-autistic individuals. This often creates problems in communication between autistic and non-autistic individuals. An important aspect of these communication problems is that non-autistic people tend to assume their own social intuitions are universal. This leads them to misinterpret autistic communication styles, such as direct speech, reduced eye contact, or atypical prosody (rhythm, stress, pitch, intonation patterns, and the overall way one speaks). As a result, non-autistic individuals …