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Q&A With Psychological Scientist John Dunlosky
John Dunlosky is a professor of psychology at Kent State University. A major aim of his research program is to develop techniques to improve the effectiveness of people’s self-regulated learning across the life span. We invited our Facebook and Twitter followers, as well as students, to submit questions based on Dunlosky's recent PSPI report, and here is what he had to say. How did you define "learning" in your study? Learning was defined in many ways — from how well students performed on tests that involved recalling critical information that they had studied, to tests that involve comprehending the information or applying it to solve problems.
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What You Might Be Missing
The Wall Street Journal: People lie. We tell Aunt Linda we like her new hat. We tell a creditor that the check is in the mail. And we don't just lie to others, we lie to ourselves: Those extra pounds look good on me. I can quit smoking anytime I want—I just don't want to. Because we are liars, simply asking people what their innermost thoughts are can produce inaccurate results. This is particularly true for sensitive topics such as racism and bigotry. Psychologists and pollsters have long known that people will offer self-serving answers to questions about such topics and will act in ways that reveal latent biases. ...
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A Match Made in the Code
The New York Times: New Orleans — In the quest to find true love, is filling out a questionnaire on a Web site any more scientific than praying to St. Valentine? Yes, according to psychologists at eHarmony, an online company that claims its computerized algorithms will help match you with a “soul mate.” But this claim was criticized in a psychology journal last year by a team of academic researchers, who concluded that “no compelling evidence supports matching sites’ claims that mathematical algorithms work.” In response, eHarmony’s senior research scientist, Gian C. Gonzaga, went into the academic lions’ den known as S.P.S.P.
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What a Mess: Chaos and Creativity
One of the most influential ideas about crime prevention to come out in recent years is something called the “broken windows theory.” According to this theory, small acts of deviance—littering, graffiti, broken windows—will, if ignored, escalate into more serious crime. In practice, this theory leads to zero tolerance of public disorder and petty crime. Both theory and practice have been embraced by some big city mayors, most notably Rudy Giuliani, who credited the strategy with significantly cutting serious crime in 1990s New York City. The idea has been controversial from the start, for many reasons, but it does get some empirical support from psychological science.
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Being Stoic for the Spouse’s Sake Comes at a High Cost
Among life’s many tragedies, the death of a child is one that is perhaps the greatest for parents. No matter what the age of the child or the cause of death, the irrefutable fact of the loss is one that shatters the normal cycle of life, leaving parents traumatized and often incapacitated by grief. Research on coping with bereavement has focused primarily on the individual, despite the fact that family and married relationships are all profoundly disrupted by the loss. But in the wealth of studies about parental grief, little attention has been paid to precisely how couples relate to each other as they struggle to come to terms with the death of a child.
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Powerful People Are Looking Out For Their Future Selves
Psychological research suggests that people who feel powerful are more likely to save money, in part because they feel a stronger connection with their future selves.
