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Brief But Spectacular: Creating Cultures of Growth
Mary C. Murphy is a social psychologist and professor specializing in improving equity, diversity, and inclusion in educational and organizational settings. Her new book, "Cultures of Growth," explores the traits of individual and team success. Mary shares her Brief But Spectacular take on how we create cultures of growth.
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OPINION: It’s not just about tech and anxiety. What are kids learning?
Clouds of doom continue to hover over the debate about teens’ mental health and the role of technology. This spring, the warnings come from the bestselling book “The Anxious Generation” by sociologist Jonathan Haidt. Some parents and educators are calling for a ban on smartphones and laptops in schools. Others are trying to press pause on the panic by pointing to research that needs a longer look. People feel forced into binary camps of “ban tech” and “don’t ban tech.”
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Think AI Can Perceive Emotion? Think Again.
Imagine that you are interviewing for a job. The interviewer asks a question that makes you think. While concentrating, you furrow your brow and your face forms a scowl. A camera in the room feeds your scowling face to an AI model, which determines that you’ve become angry. The interview team decides not to hire you because, in their view, you are too quick to anger. Well, if you weren’t angry during the interview, you probably would be now. ...
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Improve your sense of direction
AUTOMATED VOICE: Continue on North Calvert Street for half a mile. LIMBONG: Because without it, not only would I be lost, I'd also feel lost, and I know I'm not the only one. MARY HEGARTY: One of the things we measure in our lab is whether people feel anxious if they suddenly find themselves lost or realize they've lost track of where they are. LIMBONG: That's Mary Hegarty, a cognitive psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She leads the spatial thinking lab there, where they study how we see and interpret ourselves and other objects in space. And one of the things they study there is this thing called spatial anxiety.
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Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning
The laborious process of tracing out our thoughts, letter by letter, on the page is becoming a relic of the past in our screen-dominated world, where text messages and thumb-typed grocery lists have replaced handwritten letters and sticky notes. Electronic keyboards offer obvious efficiency benefits that have undoubtedly boosted our productivity — imagine having to write all your emails longhand. To keep up, many schools are introducing computers as early as preschool, meaning some kids may learn the basics of typing before writing by hand. ...
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Can scientists ‘solve’ stress? They’re trying.
As modern-day stress ratchets up to what feels like unbearable levels, researchers are striving to learn more about the precise mechanisms through which it affects our body and mind. The hope is that by unlocking more about how stress works physiologically, we can find ways to prevent it from permanently harming people. ... Katie McLaughlin, a psychologist at the University of Oregon, is investigating how mental health problems arise in adolescents as they’re going through a particularly vulnerable time in their lives, transitioning to adulthood.
