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The Importance Of Mind-Wandering
Wired: It’s easy to underestimate boredom. The mental condition, after all, is defined by its lack of stimulation; it’s the mind at its most apathetic. This is why the poet Joseph Brodsky described boredom as a “psychological Sahara,” a cognitive desert “that starts right in your bedroom and spurns the horizon.” The hands of the clock seem to stop; the stream of consciousness slows to a drip. We want to be anywhere but here. However, as Brodksy also noted, boredom and its synonyms can also become a crucial tool of creativity. “Boredom is your window,” the poet declared. “Once this window opens, don’t try to shut it; on the contrary, throw it wide open.” Brodsky was right.
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Zij van Venus, hij van Mars?
De Standaard: Komen mannen en vrouwen van verschillende planeten? Wetenschappers menen van niet. Onlangs schreven psychologen nog in Science dat er geen enkele bewezen reden is om jongens en meisjes op school apart les te geven. Wie jongens en meisjes verschillend behandelt, creëert meer verschillen dan er waren.In het oktobernummer van Current Directions in Psychological Science nemen vijf psychologen van de University of Michigan dit gelijkheidsdenken dan weer mee de slaapkamer in. Ze houden een paar populaire ideeën over verschillen tussen man en vrouw kritisch tegen het licht. Read the whole story: De Standaard
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How rude: When politeness backfires
Canada.com: Dr. Aidan Feeney has a few thoughts about politeness. Essentially, he thinks it has the ability to cost lives. "The more serious the situation, the more likely you are to be polite and the more room there is for confusion," says Feeney, a professor at the school of psychology at Queen's University, Belfast, and co-author of a new paper entitled "The Risk of Polite Misunderstanding," published last week by the Association of Psychological Science.
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Lectures from The Floating University
The Wall Street Journal: Last month, we hosted a few videos from The Floating University, which creates multimedia curricula on inter-disciplinary topics. Here, links to several more: Saul Levmore, William B. Graham Distinguished Professor of Law at The University of Chicago, explains what economists are good for, and why they weren’t good at predicting 2008′s financial crisis. Paul Bloom, the Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale University, discusses female choosiness and corresponding male traits across species, and includes a surprising study about pornography preferences in Macaques.
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Mastering Chess: Talent Or Practice?
Science 2.0: Why do some people, chess players or musicians, practice less but attain more? The common belief is that practice is necessary to achieve mastery in chess, but it's not enough. There has to be something else that sets apart people who get really good at chess, just like in music. A study published in Psychological Science last year found that musicians need a lot of practice, but researchers identified one additional factor: musicians who are better at sight-reading have better working memory, the ability to keep relevant pieces of information active in your mind. For chess, that additional factor has not yet been pinned down. One possibility is intelligence.
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Practice necessary, but not enough to master chess
Yahoo News India: There is a theory in psychology that the more you practice; the better you'll do in areas like sports, music, and chess. But, a psychological scientist has claimed that practice is necessary, but not sufficient, for player to get to the master level. This may explain why some people achieved much higher levels even though they practiced much less than their peers. Guillermo Campitelli, a researcher at Edith Cowan University in Joondalup, Australia, came to the conclusion after studying practicing on chess. In one survey of chess players in Argentina, Campitelli and Fernand Gobet of Brunel University in the United Kingdom found that, indeed, practice is important.
