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Driving Home the Point
When Haneen Saqer, Ewart de Visser, and Jonathan Strohl arrived at Westfield High School in Chantilly, Virginia to talk about the perils of distracted driving, they thought they would be addressing a group of 100 students. Instead, they faced an auditorium of 700 students along with reporters from ABC News and NPR. After all, the trio — who are members of the George Mason University student group Distractions n' Driving (DnD) — had just come to share their graduate research in Human Factors and Applied Cognition. Watch coverage of the program from this ABC 7 News Clip: “We were a bit overwhelmed, but we were prepared,” de Visser says. “The kids really liked it because it was very engaging.
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Low Socioeconomic Status Means Worse Health – But Not for Everyone
Poverty is bad for your health. Poor people are much more likely to have heart disease, stroke, and cancer than wealthy people, and have a lower life expectancy, too. Children who grow up poor are more likely to have health problems as adults. But despite these depressing statistics, many children who grow up poor have good health. In a new article published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Edith Chen and Gregory E. Miller of the University of British Columbia suggest a possible reason: some children have role models who teach them to cope with stress.
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How to Love Your Body
In case you missed it, the cameras were rolling at the APS 23rd Annual Convention in Washington, DC. Watch Kaitlin K. Meyer from Northwestern University present her poster session research on “What You Love About Your Body: Evolution of an Antifat Talk Intervention.” Some people — even people with normal body mass indexes — are just a little too preoccupied by their desire to lose a few pounds. “Fat talk” occurs when people make negative comments about their own bodies (e.g., “My thighs are soooo big!”). Meyer says that college women are particularly susceptible.
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Throwing Light on the Dark Side
Huffington Post: Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there may have been someone who had not heard of "the dark side." But I seriously doubt it. Whether you are a Star Wars aficionado or not, there is no doubt that these hugely popular movies have saturated the culture and the common vocabulary. As Jedi knight Obi-Wan Kenobi explained to the innocent young Luke Skywalker in the original 1977 film, the once-virtuous Darth Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force, his destructive power fueled by rage and hate. The dark side is all the galaxy's evils rolled together. Of course, Star Wars creator George Lucas did not invent the metaphor of the dark side. Not even remotely.
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“Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning” by Gary Marcus
The Washington Post: As a teenager, Gary Marcus wanted to be a scientist. Two decades later, as a professor of cognitive psychology at New York University, he wanted to learn to play the guitar. And, more important, he wanted to understand how he was learning it. In “Guitar Zero,” Marcus uses his musical midlife crisis to frame a discussion of the science of adult learning and music’s effect on the human brain. For the past couple of decades, developmental psychologists have believed that complex skills, such as playing an instrument, are best acquired during brief windows of time, usually in early childhood, when the brain is more malleable.
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How to completely, utterly destroy an employee’s work life
The Washington Post: Recall your worst day at work, when events of the day left you frustrated, unmotivated by the job, and brimming with disdain for your boss and your organization. That day is probably unforgettable. But do you know exactly how your boss was able to make it so horrible for you? Our research provides insight into the precise levers you can use to re-create that sort of memorable experience for your own underlings. Over the past 15 years, we have studied what makes people happy and engaged at work. In discovering the answer, we also learned a lot about misery at work. Our research method was pretty straightforward.
