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Know Thyself: How Mindfulness Can Improve Self-Knowledge
Mindfulness -- paying attention to one’s current experience in a non-judgmental way -- might help us to learn more about our own personalities, according to a new article published in the March 2013 issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Recent research has highlighted the fact that we have many blind spots when it comes to understanding our patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Despite our intuition that we know ourselves the best, other people have a more accurate view of some traits (e.g., intellect) than we do.
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Study: People who ostracize others could be hurting, too
MSN: Bullies with the blues have only themselves to blame, according to a new study. Research published in the journal Psychological Science said deliberately ignoring or excluding someone can hurt the ostracizer as much as their victim. "By causing harm to others, the perpetrators may be thwarting their own basic psychological needs to feel in control and to feel connected to others," the researchers found. Richard Ryan of the University of Rochester, with graduate student Nicole Legate, explored this by having participants play a ball-throwing computer game.
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Single, childless and want work-life balance? How taboo
The Washington Post: The Yahoo no-work-from-home brouhaha had working moms up in arms last week. Professional women with children had been dealt a blow, they said. Oh, and as one writer reminded us, it’s an issue for working dads, too. Okay, but what about all the single people? And all the people without kids? We need to stop acting like they’re not part of the work-life conversation. Whether it’s our pets or our parents, our health or our education, there are many facets of our lives besides children that, thanks to work, get short shrift.
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Our brains, and how they’re not as simple as we think
The Guardian: I never used to discuss neuroscience on the bus but it's happened twice in the last month. On one occasion a fellow passenger mentioned that her "brain wasn't working properly" to explain that she had gone through a long period of depression. On another, an exchange student enthusiastically told me that one of the advantages of learning abroad is that a new language "made your brain more efficient". In each case, the conversation was spattered with references to the brain as casually as we mention family members– "I don't think my brain can handle multi-tasking" gliding between us as easily as "my cousin studied in Paris".
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‘Queen Bee’ stereotype in the workplace is a rarity
TODAY: Jing Wang Herman has plenty of experience as the lone female in the office. Currently the CEO for the USA operations of GetTaxi.com, Wang Herman previously racked up eight years on Wall Street, landed on a Forbes 30 Under 30 list - and earned her taxi driver’s license. “I’m always in male-dominated environments. I don’t even realize it anymore,” she said. As she climbed the corporate ladder, her mentors have been men, a fact of little consequence, said Wang Herman, whose tech company makes an app to hail and pay taxis. “To me, mentoring is gender neutral.” Some might wonder if she’s a Queen Bee, a powerful, conniving woman who undermines competing females.
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Intel Science Talent Search: Social Roles Seen Through Eye Movements
The Intel Science Talent Search (Intel STS), the nation's most prestigious pre-college science competition, recognizes and rewards 300 student semifinalists and their schools each year. The 40 finalists are then invited to Washington, DC, where they display their work in public, meet with notable scientists, and compete for a $100,000 prize. Representing the field of psychological science in this year’s contest was Michael Zhang of Smithtown High School East in New York, who investigated how visual behavior reflects the self-perception of human subjects playing one of four distinctive roles. Zhang assigned each participant the role of thief, security guard, cleaning person, or tourist.
