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Who Am I? The Heroes of Our Minds
The Huffington Post: One of my guilty pleasures is the TV show Ice Road Truckers, which tells the stories of the heavy haulers who deliver vital supplies to remote Arctic territories of Alaska and Canada. In just two months each year, these truckers make more than 10,000 runs over hundreds of miles of frozen lakes, known as ice roads. We get to share in the treacherous drives -- and just as important, the personal travails -- of the veteran Hugh "The Polar Bear" Rowland, the brash tattooed Rick Yemm, the cold-hating rookie T.J. Wilcox, and former school bus driver and motocross champ Lisa Kelly, one of the rare women to break into this man's world. I'm not alone in this fascination.
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In the Land of the Free, Interdependence Undermines Americans’ Motivation to Act
Public campaigns that call upon people to think and act interdependently may undermine motivation for many Americans, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Americans are repeatedly exposed to messages urging them to think and act with others in mind, telling us, for example, to act sustainably by bringing reusable bags to the grocery store or to act responsibly by getting a flu shot. Researchers MarYam Hamedani, Hazel Rose Markus, and Alyssa Fu of Stanford University wondered what impact these kinds of appeals have in a culture that stresses independence.
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Troubled Family Life Changes Kids’ Brains
Scientific American: Stress and neglect at home take an obvious toll on kids as they grow up. Many decades of research have documented the psychological consequences in adulthood, including struggles with depression and difficulties maintaining relationships. Now studies are finding that a troubled home life has profound effects on neural development. ... “Infants are constantly absorbing and learning things, not just when we think we're teaching them,” says Alice Graham, a doctoral student who led the study, forthcoming in the journal Psychological Science.
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Like Lance Armstrong, we are all liars, experts say
Los Angeles Times: Though we profess to hate it, lying is common, useful and pretty much universal. It is one of the most durable threads in our social fabric and an important bulwark of our self-esteem. We start lying by the age of 4 and we do it at least several times a day, researchers have found. And we get better with practice. In short, whatever you think about Lance Armstrong's admission this week that he took performance-enhancing drugs to fuel his illustrious cycling career, the lies he told may be no more persistent or outsized than yours, according to psychologists and others who study deception. They were just more public. And the stakes were bigger.
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Q&A: Willpower Expert Roy Baumeister on Staying in Control
TIME: It’s the third week of the new year, and many of us are realizing that those New Year’s resolutions are getting harder to keep. So TIME asked Roy Baumeister, professor of psychology at Florida State University and co-author of the bestselling book, Willpower for tips, gleaned from the latest scientific research, on how maximize self control, especially when you need it most. What does energy and glucose — the fuel our bodies extract from food — have to do with willpower? Self regulation depends on a limited energy supply.
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What Should We Be Worried About In 2013?
NPR: Just when we were patting ourselves on the back for eluding the end of the world and avoiding the fiscal cliff, the folks at The Edge have let loose a flood of new things to worry about. Every year Edge.org poses an Annual Question to dozens of scholars, scientists, writers, artists and thinkers. The respondents this year include the reasonably famous, such as Arianna Huffington, Steven Pinker, Brian Eno, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and 13.7's own Stuart Kauffman, as well as the not so famous (like me). The 2013 question is: "What should we be worried about?" Respondents were urged to raise worries that aren't already on the public radar, or to dispel those that are.
