-
Why Do People Lie When They Can Easily Get Caught?
TIME: On Wednesday, Steve Rannazzisi—a comedian who found fame on MTV’s Punk’d and has stars in the popular FXX show The League—admitted he had fabricated a story that he said was the basis for his success: barely escaping the tumbling south tower on September 11, 2001, while working a desk job at Merrill Lynch. ... Why would someone who was high-profile and easily traceable in this digital age, with no obvious reason to lie about where he was on 9/11, lie? There’s no clear answer, and one can only speculate as to what motivated Rannazzisi. But to the question of why people lie when they can get caught, researchers have some theories.
-
Is Modern Dating the Worst?
Science Friday: In 1967, 76 percent of women said they would marry someone they didn’t romantically love. This is a figure that shocked comedian Aziz Ansari while working on his book, Modern Romance. He teamed up with sociologist Eric Klinenberg to understand how romantic expectations and dating have evolved over the years, especially with the advent of mobile technology and online dating. (According to the Pew Research Center, for example, one in five adults in the United States between the ages of 25 and 34 have given online dating a try.) To understand the state of dating today, the two talked with a number of scientists. Read the whole story: Science Friday
-
The Downside of Mindfulness
Pacific Standard: Close your eyes. Focus on your breath. Watch, without judgment, as thoughts and feelings arise in your mind, and gradually dissipate. If those instructions sound familiar to you, you are one of the many people—including myself—who have taken up mindfulness meditation. And for good reason: Recent research has found the practice produces a variety of benefits beyond simple stress reduction, including improved test scores, reduced reflexive racial bias, and even helping dieters avoid temptation. But it turns out that even this highly positive practice is not immune from producing unintended consequences.
-
The Unexpected Influence of Stories Told at Work
Harvard Business Review: Growing up on a Missouri farm, Walt Disney developed a love for drawing after his neighbor, a retired doctor known as “Doc” Sherwood, paid him to draw pictures of his horse. Disney later became a newspaper cartoonist and commercial artist, where he learned how to make commercials from cutout animations. His fascination with animation inspired him to establish his own cartoon studio and eventually become the face of the golden age of animation. I heard this story during my onboarding process when I worked as a research consultant at Disney Imagineering a few years ago.
-
Obama Administration Elevates Role of Behavioral Science in Government Services
Behavioral science will have an increasingly integral role in the way the US government operates and provides services under a new set of actions by the White House. President Obama signed an executive order September 15 directing federal agencies to inject more behavioral science into their activities and services. That order also formally establishes a federal Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST), a group of experts in behavioral science tasked with translating scientific findings into improvements in federal programs.
-
Do Babies Know When They’re Skyping?
The Atlantic: Long before most babies toddle or talk, they begin to make sophisticated inferences about the world around them. By as young as 3 months old, newborns can form expectations based on physical principles like gravity, speed, and momentum. Scientists at several universities told me they now have evidence, to the likely delight of far-flung grandparents everywhere, that infants can also tell the difference between, say, a broadcast of Mister Rogers and a video call with their actual grandfather.
