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A Simple Solution for Distracted Driving
The Wall Street Journal: Someday soon, cars may drive themselves, and perhaps we will be better off for it. Until then, driving remains a human task, subject to fundamental limits on our ability to pay attention. The National Safety Council estimates that in 2013 alone, 1.1 million crashes involved using a phone, and the Transportation Department counted more than 3,000 deaths and 400,000 injuries caused by distracted driving that same year. ... Driving Mode will be useful only if people use it, and various insights from the behavioral sciences can increase the chances that they will.
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Why Is Scaring People So Much Fun?
Pacific Standard: For some children, sleepovers are bonding experiences between friends where the night’s pajama-inducing tranquility and intimacy facilitates more meaningful connections. For other children, sleepovers are dystopian nightmares spent in the residential equivalent of that hotel in the Shining. These children find their daylight friends transformed into sadists under cover of night. In a mix of partial shame and partial pride, I must admit that sleepovers with me were like the latter. I loved (and still love) to scare the devil out of people (not infrequently by convincing them the devil was already inside them).
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Boys and Girls, Constrained by Toys and Costumes
The New York Times: A web search for Halloween costumes of scientists produces only boys wearing lab coats and goggles. A search for nursing costumes turns up girls in skirts with stethoscopes. Cats and cupcakes are also girls, while sharks and astronauts are boys. The same gender division exists not just in toys — blue toolboxes and trucks for boys, pink play kitchens and dolls for girls — but also in nearly every other children’s product, including baby blankets, diapers and toothbrushes. ... Lynn Liben of Penn State University and Lacey Hilliard of Tufts University studied preschool students. In some of the classrooms, teachers made no distinctions between boys and girls.
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Here’s the simple strategy extroverts use to win people over
Business Insider: Scientists as well as laypeople have long known that extroverts tend to do a better job of connecting with other people, especially when they first meet them. Yet until recently, no one's been able to pinpoint what exactly extroverts do that helps them build strong social ties. Now, new research from Duke University, cited by the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that the answer is surprisingly simple: It's a matter of mimicry, or copying the body language of your conversation partner. Read the whole story: Business Insider
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Three Words You Shouldn’t Say About Yourself
Medium: When we interact with other people, what do we want? As I started to study that question, I came across a wonderful quote. “There are two kinds of people in the world,” Robert Benchley wrote. “Those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t.” Psychologists have a bad habit of oversimplifying people. If I truly wanted to capture the richness of the human condition, I needed more than two categories. Imagine my delight, then, when I found evidence that around the world, there are not two… but three styles of interaction. Read the whole story: Medium
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Scaring People Can Make Them Healthier, But It Isn’t Always The Way To Go
NPR: The use of fear in public health campaigns has been controversial for decades. A campaign with gruesome photos of a person dying of lung cancer to combat smoking might make people think twice about lighting up. But opponents would argue that the photos are too visceral, along with being morally objectionable. Fear-based campaigns are indeed effective at changing both attitudes and behavior, according to a review of more than a half-century of research. But that effectiveness isn't the only thing to consider when deciding whether to use fear-based appeals, researchers say. Read the whole story: NPR
