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New NAS Report Tackles Issue of Child Poverty, Engaging Psychological Science
The National Academy of Sciences Board on Children, Youth, and Families (BCYF) has released a report of a consensus study on reducing child poverty in the United States, thanks in part to key leadership by
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Generous spending leads to increased happiness: SFU psychologist Lara Aknin in World Happiness Report
Generous spending leads to increased well-being, while volunteering shows no clear causal link to happiness, says Lara Aknin, social psychologist and associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Simon Fraser University. Aknin, along with researchers from Harvard Business School and the University of British Columbia, contributed a chapter to this year’s World Happiness Report where she explored the evidence surrounding prosocial behaviours and happiness. The World Happiness Report, released annually by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness.
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Cross-Examining Our “Fixed Pie” Approach to Truth
The zero-sum fallacy, the idea that a gain in one area must result in a loss in another, may be a confounding factor at work in courtrooms worldwide.
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People Underestimate How Fun It Is to Do the Same Thing Twice
A common, low-stakes living-room scenario: A couple is trying to decide on a movie to watch. There’s an option one-half of the relationship is thrilled about, but the other has already seen it. On those grounds, it’s ruled out. But a new study suggests that this notion that having already seen it—or read it, done it, visited it—automatically precludes a second go-around might be mistaken. Repeating something, it turns out, “may turn out to be less dull than people think,” writes Ed O’Brien, the author of the study and a behavioral-science professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.
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Do You Hate When Adults Ask You What You Want to Be When You Grow Up?
Has anyone ever asked you what you want to be when you grow up? Do you appreciate when adults ask the question and consider it a sign that they are interested in your life, hopes and dreams? Or are you annoyed, filled with dread and wish you could run and hide? How do you respond to these queries? Do you dive in and discuss your future plans honestly? Or do you give a pat answer to get the grown-up off your back? If there were a way to magically make this question disappear forever, would you wish it away? In “Stop Asking Kids What They Want to Be When They Grow Up,” Adam Grant, a professor of management and psychology at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, writes:
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A psychology experiment unexpectedly discovered a man who can’t cooperate because of brain damage
When someone’s especially cooperative, don’t thank their easy-going nature, but give credit to their brain. A team of New York University psychologists hypothesized that cooperation depends on the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DPC), an area of the brain in the frontal lobe involved in regulation control and goal pursuit; after all, cooperation often requires reigning in one’s naughty impulses to take everything for themselves. To test their theory, the researchers conducted an experiment involving participants with brain damage to the DPC—and discovered someone who would not cooperate at all.
