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The Limits of Practice
The New York Times: I started playing the French horn in sixth grade. I was a rule follower, and so I practiced regularly, in addition to performing at concerts and parades and all the other glamorous events to which a teenage French horn player is routinely invited. And yet, six years later, I was only marginally less terrible than when I began. Those who, like me, have failed to become proficient at something despite working at it for a long time can take heart from a new paper in the journal Psychological Science. Brooke N. Macnamara and her co-authors analyzed 88 studies of the impact of practice on people’s prowess in such areas as music, sports and professional jobs.
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We dislike being alone with our thoughts
Nature: Which would you prefer: pain or boredom? Given the choice, many people would rather give themselves mild electric shocks than sit idly in a room for 15 minutes, according to a study published today in Science. The results are a testament to our discomfort with our own thoughts, say psychologists, and to the challenge we face when we try to rein them in. “We lack a comfort in just being alone with our thoughts,” says Malia Mason, a psychologist at Columbia University in New York, who was not involved in the study.
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You Look More Powerful When You Avoid Talking Details, Study Shows
People may see you as powerful based not only on your job title or your income, but on the very words you use in conversation and speeches. That’s the conclusion from a new study on how power is signaled in interpersonal communications. Building on studies showing that people in positions of power use more abstract language (such as interpretive or visionary descriptions) than those with less clout, a trio of psychological researchers explored how people who use abstract language are perceived by others. Over seven experiments, Cheryl J. Wakslak and Albert Han of University of Southern California and Pamela K.
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DID FACEBOOK HURT PEOPLE’S FEELINGS?
The New Yorker: It’s no secret that social media can affect your mood, making you experience certain feelings based on the information you see and the people you interact with. Those feelings are one of the reasons that people use sites like Facebook or Twitter to begin with. But what if you found out that what you felt was the result of a deliberate manipulation by the social network itself?
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Lean Out: The Dangers For Women Who Negotiate
The New Yorker: This spring, an aspiring professor—W, as she’s chosen to call herself in a blog post about the experience—attempted to negotiate her tenure-track job offer with the Nazareth College philosophy department. She wanted a slightly higher salary than the starting offer, paid maternity leave for one semester, a pre-tenure sabbatical, a cap on the number of new classes that she would teach each semester, and a deferred starting date. “I know that some of these might be easier to grant than others,” she acknowledged in her e-mail. “Let me know what you think.” Nazareth didn’t hesitate to do just that: W wrote that the college promptly let her know that she was no longer welcome.
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Highlighting Isn’t Helping You Remember Anything, and Four More Surprising Facts About Learning
New York Magazine: In the recent book Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, Washington University in St. Louis psychologists Henry L. Roediger and Mark A. McDaniel reveal some surprising things we get wrong about the smartest ways to learn. We invite you to educate yourself about educating yourself. Read the whole story: New York Magazine
