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Diversity Makes You Smarter
New York Magazine: There are lots of good, bleeding-heart reasons to value diversity, to see it as a noble end in and of itself. But there are some very practical reasons to seek it out, too, as a new article in Perspective on Psychological Science points out. The evidence on group diversity has been mixed overall, the researchers point out.
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Why Desserts Are Irresistible
Forbes: It all comes down to willpower, right? Strength of purpose. Muster the resolve to skip dessert, and you have a shot at losing that spare tire hanging off your belly. Succumb to your temptations, however, and you are simply being weak. But is it just weakness that causes us to overeat? A study in Psychological Science suggests that our inability to resist that mouthwatering looking chocolate cake doesn’t arise simply because our willpower is weak but also because, after exhausting our willpower, the cake looks even more mouthwatering to us than it did before. Our ability to overcome temptation is reduced at the same time that the power of the temptation increases.
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Learning a New Language at Any Age Helps the Brain
LiveScience: Learning a second language may help improve brain function regardless of when you start, according to a new study. Researchers found that young adults proficient in two languages performed better on attention tests and had better concentration than those who spoke only one language, irrespective of whether they had learned that second language during infancy, childhood or their teen years. The study appears in the current edition of the journal Frontiers in Psychology, led by Dr. Thomas Bak, a lecturer at Edinburgh's School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences. Read the whole story: LiveScience
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Surnames Not Linked to Career Status After All
Last fall, we reported on a study indicating that people with noble-sounding last names had a slightly heightened chance of working in management positions. But after conducting further analysis, the researchers behind that study have changed their conclusions. In the original study, published in November in the journal Psychological Science, Raphael Silberzahn of the University of Cambridge and Eric Luis Uhlmann of HEC Paris analyzed 84 different surnames among nearly 223,000 private-sector employees and managers in Germany.
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Nine Scientists Are Awarded Kavli Prizes
The New York Times: Beaming in from Oslo via the web, officials of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters invaded the World Science Festival in New York on Thursday to announce that nine scientists had won this year’s Kavli prizes. The winners will split million-dollar prizes awarded in three categories: astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience. The prize is named for Fred Kavli, the Norwegian-born inventor, businessman and philanthropist, who died last year. He spent the last decade of his life handing out money to establish Kavli research institutes at universities around the world and the prizes, which are awarded every two years and which he hoped would someday rival the Nobels.
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Why We Feel Others’ Pain — or Don’t
The Huffington Post: When the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped nearly 300 teenage girls from a schoolhouse last month, the world responded with an outpouring of undiluted emotion -- shock, outrage, fear, and most of all deep sympathy for the victims and their families. It was impossible not to feel the suffering of these innocent, helpless girls in the hands of their cruel jihadist captors. Well, maybe not impossible. Right-wing commentator Ann Coulter showed not a trace of empathy, as she chose instead to poke fun at a Twitter campaign to raise awareness of the victims' plight.
