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Think You’re An Auditory Or Visual Learner? Scientists Say It’s Unlikely
NPR: We've all heard the theory that some students are visual learners, while others are auditory learners. And still other kids learn best when lessons involve movement. But should teachers target instruction based on perceptions of students' strengths? Several psychologists say education could use some "evidence-based" teaching techniques, not unlike the way doctors try to use "evidence-based medicine." Psychologist Dan Willingham at the University of Virginia, who studies how our brains learn, says teachers should not tailor instruction to different kinds of learners. He says we're on more equal footing than we may think when it comes to how our brains learn.
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Men and women take different risks: study
Calgary Herald: A growing number of studies suggest that having women in a company's boardroom and executive suites fundamentally changes a corporation's decision-making process - and can improve the balance sheet too. While this is usually attributed to the fact that women take fewer risks than men, a study published this month suggests the stereotype of women as cautious riskavoiders misses the mark. Bernd Figner, a scientist at the Center for Decision Sciences at Columbia Business School, who studies when and how people take risks, suggests women are every bit as likely to step outside their security zones as men - the two sexes just do so in different ways.
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Is Shape of CEO’s Face a Measure of Power?
U.S. News & World Report: The width of a CEO's face may predict how well a company performs, according to a new study. Researchers compared the photos of 55 male CEOs of Fortune 500 organizations with their companies' financial performance. The study included only men because previous research found that a link between face shape and behavior applies only to men. The firms of CEOs with wider faces, relative to face height, performed much better than businesses led by CEOs with narrower faces, said Elaine M. Wong, of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and colleagues. Read the full story: U.S. News & World Report
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Patients’ Health Motivates Workers To Wash Their Hands
Can changing a single word on a sign motivate doctors and nurses to wash their hands? Campaigns about hand-washing in hospitals usually try to scare doctors and nurses about personal illness, says Adam Grant, a psychological scientist at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. “Most safety messages are about personal consequences,” Grant says. “They tell you to wash your hands so you don’t get sick.” But his new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that this is the wrong kind of warning. Hand-washing is an eternal problem for hospitals.
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The Bully in the Baby?
While only a minority of toddlers are habitual bullies, this aggressive tendency appears to emerge right along with the motor skills that make it possible.
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Jena McGregor On Leadership: Motivated by charity
The Washington Post: What would motivate you more: a bonus you could spend on yourself, or a bonus you had to spend on someone else? Most people, surely, would instinctively say the former. Why on Earth would I work smarter or better, or be more satisfied in my job, in exchange for something I had to turn around and give away? But a paper by researchers from Harvard Business School, the University of British Columbia and the University of Liege finds otherwise.
