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Left-Leaning Research
89.3 KPCC Public Radio: Remember, from math class, the number line? Smaller numbers on the left, bigger ones on the right? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, saying don't worry, I won't ask you about absolute value. But Dutch psychologist Anita Eerland might. She suspects people internalize the number line both mentally and physically. So she and colleagues had subjects stand on a Wii balance board while answering questions projected on a screen. The questions? All estimating quantities: Height of the Eiffel Tower. Average lifespan of a parrot. Everyday stuff. While subjects were answering, the team tilted the Wii board subtly left or right.
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The Rocky Road to a Sense of Self
Adolescents spend a lot of time figuring out who they are, and for good reason. A coherent concept of self — based on commitments, standards, and life roles — is associated with positive mental health outcomes. Now, a group of researchers in the Netherlands has fleshed out some of the details about relationships among identity, self, and mental health in young adolescents. The results appeared in the European Journal of Personality. Seth J. Schwartz and his coauthors collected data from 580 Dutch sixth graders.
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Want to Get Teens Interested in Math and Science? Target Their Parents
Efforts focused on increasing students’ interest in STEM often take place within the classroom, but findings suggest that parents can play an important role in these efforts.
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Première impression (First Impression)
Le Monde: L'information fait frémir. Cent millisecondes suffisent pour qu'un employeur potentiel, ou un membre de jury de concours ou d'examen, se fasse une opinion sur quelqu'un. En un dixième de seconde, il se fera une première impression : compétent (ou incompétent), travailleur (ou cossard), aimable (ou détestable). Et pour peu que ce sélectionneur se vante de se fier à son intuition, les conséquences peuvent être formidables (ou désastreuses). Un chercheur américain, Alex Todorov, professeur de psychologie à l'université de Princeton (Etats-Unis), avait fait ce constat dès 2006, à la suite de tests réalisés sur 200 personnes.
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Why Reflection Is Good For Well-Being
The Huffington Post: Make sure you take time to rest and reflect -- new research shows it's important for our well-being. The review of studies, published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, shows that "resting" our brains -- a.k.a daydreaming -- is linked with improvements in self-awareness, learning and memory. "We focus on the outside world in education and don't look much at inwardly focused reflective skills and attentions," study researcher Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a professor of education, psychology and neuroscience at the University of Southern California, said in a statement.
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Jonathan Haidt: He Knows Why We Fight
The Wall Street Journal: Nobody who engages in political argument, and who isn't a moron, hasn't had to recognize the fact that decent, honest, intelligent people can come to opposite conclusions on public issues. Jonathan Haidt, in an eye-opening and deceptively ambitious best seller, tells us why. The reason is evolution. Political attitudes are an extension of our moral reasoning; however much we like to tell ourselves otherwise, our moral responses are basically instinctual, despite attempts to gussy them up with ex-post rationalizations. Our constellation of moral instincts arose because it helped us to cooperate.
