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To Remember a Lecture Better, Take Notes by Hand
The Atlantic: Psych 101 was about to start, and Pam Mueller had forgotten her laptop at home. This meant more than lost Facebook time. A psychology grad student at Princeton, Mueller was one of the class teaching assistants. It was important she have good notes on the lecture. Normally she used her laptop to take notes, but, without it, she’d have to rely on a more traditional approach. So she put pen to paper—and found something surprising. Class just seemed better. “I felt like I had gotten so much more out of the lecture that day,” she said. So she shared the story with Daniel Oppenheimer, the professor teaching the class.
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Study: Opportunities in Young Adulthood Linked to Later Narcissism
The Atlantic: There has been much debate over which generation, exactly, is the “Me” generation. Is it Millennials? Is it Baby Boomers? People have been taking selfies for pretty much as long as there have been cameras, after all. And painting them before that. There have always been and will always be narcissists, and, seemingly, we will always be horrified by their entitlement. But if there are generational differences in narcissism, a new study published in Psychological Science suggests that they might be attributable to the economy.
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Sense of purpose ‘adds years to life’
BBC: Having a sense of purpose may add years to your life, regardless of what the purpose is, research suggests. Not only does it contribute to healthy aging, but it may also stave off early death, according to a study of 7,000 Americans. The research, published in Psychological Science, applies across adult life, says a US-Canadian team. It may be because purposeful people look after their health better and are physically fitter, they believe. The study tracked the physical and mental health of more than 7,000 US adults aged 20 to 75 years. Read the whole story: BBC
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Local culture is in your genes
The Boston Globe: Previous research has shown that European-Americans have a more independent social orientation than people from East Asia. However, researchers at the University of Michigan have now qualified this relationship: Cultural differences are only observed among people with certain variants of a gene associated with dopamine function—and reward sensitivity—in the brain. Read the whole story: The Boston Globe
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Cold, Hard Truth: Most People Can’t Handle Multitasking
Inc.: You’ve probably heard by now that multitasking simply doesn’t work. One study out of University of London showed that multitasking lowers your IQ by around 10 points, while Harvard Medical School declared war on the practice after activity-juggling doctors nearly caused fatal errors in treatment. The case against switching tasks seems pretty open and shut. But it seems there may be a few exceptions. A very few.
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What You Farm Affects Your Thinking, Study Says
National Geographic: That is the result of a study published Thursday in Science comparing people from different parts of China. Researchers led by Thomas Talhelm of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, found that people from rice-growing regions think in more interdependent and holistic ways than do those from wheat-growing areas. Talhelm thinks these differences arose because it takes much more cooperation and overall effort to grow rice than wheat. To successfully plant and harvest rice, farmers must work together to build complex irrigation systems and set up labor exchanges. Over time, this need for teamwork fosters an interdependent and collectivist psychology.
