As a rule, you can predict the behavioral effects of chronic stress by imagining what would help Wanda stay alive in an unpredictable, brutal Mad Max world. She becomes less generous. She gets extra jumpy and paranoid, and is easily distracted. She’s more impulsive. Her temper has a lower threshold. She’s more afraid of and hostile toward people outside her “tribe,” that circle of empathy that encompasses “people like me,” and that circle shrinks as things get worse. She’s less likely to care about nuance. She’s more likely to see patterns in static and conspiracies in unrelated events. And
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