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Rich People Just Care Less
The New York Times: Turning a blind eye. Giving someone the cold shoulder. Looking down on people. Seeing right through them. These metaphors for condescending or dismissive behavior are more than just descriptive. They suggest, to a surprisingly accurate extent, the social distance between those with greater power and those with less — a distance that goes beyond the realm of interpersonal interactions and may exacerbate the soaring inequality in the United States. A growing body of recent research shows that people with the most social power pay scant attention to those with little such power.
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Does Diversity Undermine Community Trust?
The Huffington Post: One of the most conspicuous failures of the 113th Congress has been the Republican House's refusal to even discuss long-overdue immigration reform, despite the Senate's painstaking work in crafting a comprehensive bill. The Republican leadership knows that its hopelessly divided lawmakers will never come close to agreement on this contentious issue. It is a difficult issue to be sure. Our culture and our economy are based on immigration and diversity, yet newcomers have always been threatening for some.
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Five ways money can buy you happiness
The Washington Post: You have probably heard and maybe even embrace the idea that money can’t buy happiness. I’ve said so myself numerous times. But behavioral scientists and researchers Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton argue this is not exactly true. Money, if you spend it right, can buy happiness. So what’s the right way? “Shifting from buying stuff to buying experiences, and from spending on yourself to spending on others, can have a dramatic impact on happiness,” Dunn and Norton write in “Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending”. Dunn is an associate professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia.
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Debt ceiling debate: Preaching to the choir
CNN: The White House continues to issue dire warnings about the economic consequences should Congress fail to raise the debt ceiling this month. President Barack Obama told Wall Street to be "concerned" and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said Congress is "playing with fire." But despite all the drastic pronouncements, some Republicans in Congress aren't buying it. For one thing, they doubt that October 17 is the date when the Treasury will be unable to meet its obligations. Rep. Lee Terry, R-Nebraska, is one of those lawmakers. ... Which side is right? Before default is reached, it's hard to know.
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Studying The Science Behind Child Prodigies
NPR: Matt Haimovitz is 42 and a world-renowned cellist. He rushed into the classical music scene at age 10 after Itzhak Perlman, the famed violinist, heard him play. "By the time I was 12, 13 years old I was on the road playing with Israel Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic and some of the great orchestras. So it was pretty meteoric," Haimovitz says. "I grew up with a lot of classical music in the household. My mother is a pianist and took me to many concerts." But nothing in his family history explains where Haimovitz got his extraordinary talent. And that's typical, Ellen Winner, a psychology professor at Boston College who has studied prodigies, tells NPR's David Greene.
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How ‘impermanence’ can help us all get along
The Boston Globe: We are born colorblind—literally. Newborn color vision is limited, lacking many of the visual distinctions that characterize mature sight. Soon enough, though, color takes over, figuratively as well as physiologically: We learn to see ourselves and others as parts of particular groups. Are we black or white? Male or female? What’s our religion, our language, our preference in music or food? Each time a child hears a description of a person or witnesses a human interaction, it contributes to the formation of her identity and sense of her role in the world. ...
