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The Stanford professor who pioneered praising kids for effort says we’ve totally missed the point
Quartz: It is well known that telling a kid she is smart is wading into seriously dangerous territory. Reams of research show that kids who are praised for being smart fixate on performance, shying away from taking risks and meeting potential failure. Kids who are praised for their efforts try harder and persist with tasks longer. These “effort” kids have a “growth mindset” marked by resilience and a thirst for mastery; the “smart” ones have a “fixed mindset” believing intelligence to be innate and not malleable. But now, Carol Dweck, the Stanford professor of psychology who spent 40 years researching, introducing and explaining the growth mindset, is calling a big timeout.
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Can You Spot a Liar?
The Atlantic: In November, I came across a story that made absolutely no sense to me. A 33-year-old consultant named Niall Rice gave $718,000, little by little, to two Manhattan psychics who promised to reunite him with an old flame. How could someone be so gullible? Rice himself didn’t even seem to know: “I just got sucked in,” he told The New York Times later. As it turns out, it’s much easier to fall for these types of cons than many people think.
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How Our Brains Respond to Race
The Wall Street Journal: When Barack Obama was elected president, there was talk of how America was becoming a post-racial society. Yet the news suggests abundantly that this is not the case. Why is progress on this issue so difficult? Recent research suggests that part of it has do with learning that occurs remarkably early in life. Scientists have used neuroimaging to study the responses of our brains to faces of different races and have uncovered a disquieting result called the “other-race effect,” or ORE. ...
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Can mass trauma actually promote psychological adjustment?
The Hill: The terror attacks in San Bernardino and Paris have ratcheted upward—once again—our collective anxieties. And for the survivors of these tragedies, they have raised the specter of collateral psychological damage, such as posttraumatic stress disorder. Although the risks to survivors are indeed real, the psychological impact of these tragedies is more complicated than we realize. Most survivors of traumatic events will suffer no enduring psychological harm. More startlingly, some may actually experience direct psychological benefits from it. How do we know this?
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Narcissist in Chief? How Trump’s Ego Reflects US Culture
Live Science: With less than a month to go before Iowa's Republican primary caucus, Donald Trump remains atop the presidential candidate polls. His popularity appears unblemished despite brash statements, personal insults thrown at his opponents and rampant speculation over his perceived narcissistic tendencies. Trump surely displays enormous self-regard; in June, for example, he boasted that he'd be "the greatest jobs president that God has ever created." In September, he promised, "We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with winning." Egoism is a trait Trump seems proud of, in fact.
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People take more risks when wearing helmets, potentially negating safety benefits
Science: Helmets can reduce the risk of traumatic brain injury by almost 20%. But what if we take so many risks when wearing them that we lose the protective edge they provide? This could be the case, according to a study published this week. Researchers observed 80 cyclists under the guise of an “eye-tracking experiment,” pretending to track their eye-motion via a head-mounted camera as the participants inflated a virtual balloon. For some of the participants, the “eye-tracking devices” were mounted on helmets, while others just wore baseball caps, as can be seen in the picture of the equipment above.
