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Preschoolers Use Statistics to Understand Others
Children are natural psychologists. By the time they're in preschool, they understand that other people have desires, preferences, beliefs, and emotions. But how they learn this isn't clear. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that children figure out another person's preferences by using a topic you'd think they don’t encounter until college: statistics. In one experiment, children aged 3 and 4 saw a puppet named "Squirrel" remove five toys of the same type from a container full of toys and happily play with them. Across children, the toys that Squirrel removed were the same (for example, all five were blue flowers).
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An intuitive sense of property
Americans like to own their homes, and the rules and conventions for ownership are generally well understood. So it's easy to forget that in many corners of the globe the rules are more ambiguous--and more open to challenge. Indeed, there are an estimated one billion squatters in the world today--people who, mostly out of necessity, are living on property they do not own and cannot afford. Squatters rarely have a voice, but in a few industrialized cities where they do, their claims are usually founded on the idea of improvement.
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People Who Cannot Escape a System Are Likely to Defend the Status Quo
The freedom of emigration at will is internationally recognized as a human right. But, in practice, emigration is often restricted, whether by policy or by poverty. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that people who are told that their right to emigrate will be restricted have what could be considered a strange reaction: they respond by defending their country's system. The researchers suspected that people who are under an oppressive regime might try to see their situation in the best light possible.
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Happy Employees May Be the Key to Success…for Organizations
When JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater creatively deplaned earlier this week, many questions arose as to why someone would be willing to give up a steady paycheck during these tough economic times. While this “working man’s hero” will most likely be questioning his motives as he hands over his lawyer’s fees, a new report in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that his action may be a sign of trouble for JetBlue and other large companies.
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Current Directions in Schizophrenia Research
It has been nearly a century since the term “schizophrenia” was first used to describe what was then considered a hopeless and incurable disorder of thought and emotion. Schizophrenia is still baffling to both scientists and the general public, but it is no longer considered hopeless. Significant advances have been made on several fronts in fathoming and combating this debilitating mental illness—from genetics to neuroscience to the psychosocial aspects of the disorder. The August issue of the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, published by the Association for Psychological Science, is a state-of-the-art summary of the latest research on every facet of schizophrenia.
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Thick Skin, and more of it
The Washington Post: New on my firm's trading floor, I was glad to know at least one person. Derek had been a year ahead of me in college and was now a junior T-Bill trader. One day, I walked up behind Derek's desk to ask a question. His head was turning from side to side checking the multiple screens in front of him. Suddenly, he shouted an expletive. They continued to erupt for the next several seconds. Derek's boss walked up, less worried about the money being lost than something else. "Derek, don't talk like that in front of a lady," he said. The boss was 30. I was stunned. On trading floors, like navy ships, colorful speech is standard.
