-
Shielding Students From Stereotypes Helps Way More Than We Thought
The Huffington Post: We all know that negative stereotypes exist and that as a result, people may be discriminated against or denied access to resources without justification. But there's another disturbing effect that often goes unnoticed. It turns out that "stereotype threat," or simply knowing that others view you as a negative stereotype, may impair your academic performance. Scientists have long known about psychological exercises that can reduce the effects of "stereotype threat," but now it seems that such exercises not only benefit those experiencing this, but also the people around them. Read the whole story: The Huffington Post
-
How to Speed Read Without Skimming
The Wall Street Journal: Speed reading has been around for decades, thanks in large part to a Utah schoolteacher named Evelyn Wood, who launched her Reading Dynamics training program in 1959. Today, with so many of us feeling inundated by reading material, apps that teach speed reading on mobile devices have proliferated. Some try to speed things up by showing only a word at a time in rapid succession; others offer exercises or fast-moving text highlights. But do they work? Psychologists have done some reading of their own, and their message is: not so fast.
-
The Countries Where People Are the Most Emotionally Complex
The Atlantic: Think of the last piece of big news you got. How did you feel about it? Happy? Sad? Angry? Worried? Excited? Grateful? A little bit of all of the above? Experiencing multiple emotions at once may make it seem like you don’t actually know just how you feel about something—that you’re ambivalent, or indecisive, or wishy-washy. Psychologists would say it just means you’re emotionally complex. And according to a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, emotional complexity varies a lot between countries. ...
-
Middle school: The new high school for moms
CNN: If you had to guess what are the most difficult years for a mother, what might you say? Infancy? Sure, dealing with a newborn is beyond stressful, as you try to figure out how to care for an infant and adjust to a new role all on zero sleep. It would be no surprise if those years were the most taxing. But I -- and probably many of you reading this -- would guess adolescence, namely the high school years, which I might add I am already dreading. ...
-
The Knicks Won. Let’s Gamble!
Pacific Standard: The lottery, it's been said, is a tax for people who are bad at math, yet quite a lot of presumably intelligent people take the risk buying lottery tickets at least once in a while. Maybe they think it's fun, maybe it's an addiction, or maybe some people really are just that bad at math. Or, a new study argues, maybe it's just a sunny day, the Knicks won, and people are feeling good. "People in a good mood are more willing to gamble—or, more broadly, to accept risky bets," write neuroscientists Ross Otto, Stephen Fleming, and Paul Glimcher in Psychological Science.
-
The Power of Daily Writing in a Journal
The Wall Street Journal: Charley Kempthorne wakes each morning before sunrise, pours a cup of black coffee, opens his computer and writes in a private journal that he began in 1964. These days, he logs between 1,000 and 3,000 words a day. By his rough calculations, his journal is about 10 million words long. ... “Most of my journal has been and continues to be an end in itself,” says Mr. Kempthorne, who quit a university teaching job in his 30s to run a farm and small house-painting business. “It helps me understand my life better.
