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How To Not Come Off As Being Overly Confident
Business Insider: Confidence is indisputably a good thing. But over-confidence can spell trouble—especially when we’re learning. Research has shown over and over again that we are not very good judges of how effectively we’re learning new information, or how accurately we’ll remember it. This means we may stop the studying or training process prematurely, before new material is truly absorbed, and it means we may be in for an unpleasant surprise when we realize (at test or performance time) that we didn’t know that material as well as we assumed.
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Why Good Deeds Can Cause Moral Backsliding
LiveScience: Doing a good deed can lead some people to more kind acts while spurring others to backslide. But how people respond depends on their moral outlook, according to a new study. ... The findings were published in the journal Psychological Science. Some studies show that people maintain a kind of moral equilibrium, meaning that giving money to charity may lead them to skimp on the tip at dinner, whereas partying too much may inspire a volunteer day at the soup kitchen. But other studies found just the opposite: Behaving ethically leads people to more good deeds later, said study co-author, Gert Cornelissen, a psychologist at the University Pompeu Fabra in Spain.
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Psychologists Launch a Bare-All Research Initiative
Science: A group of psychologists are launching a project this week that they hope will make studies in their field radically more transparent and prompt other fields to open up as well. With a pledge of $5.25 million from private supporters, they have set up an outfit called the Center for Open Science. It is collaborating with an established journal, Perspectives on Psychological Science, to solicit work from authors who are willing to work completely in the open and have their studies replicated. Read the whole story: Science
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Your Child’s Fat, Mine’s Fine: Rose-Colored Glasses And The Obesity Epidemic
NPR: About 69 percent of American adults are overweight or obese, and more than four in five people say they are worried about obesity as a public health problem. But a recent poll conducted by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health revealed a curious schism in our national attitudes toward obesity: Only one in five kids had a parent who feared the boy or girl would grow up to be overweight as an adult. Put another way, assuming current trends persist, parents of 80 percent of American children think all these kids will somehow end up being among the lucky 31 percent of adults who are not overweight.
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How Facebook Improves Memory
TIME: Checking status updates on Facebook may be just the distraction your memory needs. Facebook and other social media are generally considered distractions, rather than aids, to building memory. Interrupting whatever you’re doing to check your status or watch that cute cat video seems unlikely to help you retain the information you need, particularly for older people whose attention can be more fragmented. Read the whole story: TIME
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Marriage Research: Study Shows A 21-Minute Writing Task Can Improve Your Marriage
The Huffington Post: While millions of couples spend hours trying to learn how to improve their marriages through books or therapy, one recent study found that sustaining a happy marriage may only take 21 minutes, a pencil and a piece of paper. A Northwestern University study set to be published in "Psychological Science" later this year surveyed 120 married couples for two years about their relationship satisfaction, and asked them to describe their most significant recent arguments.
