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Can Big Science Be Too Big?
Modern science is largely a team sport, and over the past few decades the makeup of those teams has shifted, from small groups of collaborators to ever larger consortiums, with rosters far longer than that of the New England Patriots. Answering big questions often requires scientists and institutions to pool resources and data, whether the research involves detecting gravitational waves in deep space, or sorting out the genetics of brain development. But that shift has prompted scientists to examine the relative merits of small groups versus large ones. Is supersizing research projects the most efficient way to advance knowledge? What is gained and what, if anything, is lost?
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Effective Self-Control Strategies Involve Much More Than Willpower, Research Shows
Leading behavioral scientists propose a new framework that outlines four types of self-control strategies.
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Beyond Willpower: Strategies for Reducing Failures of Self-Control
Psychological Science in the Public Interest (Volume 19, Number 3)Read the Full Text (PDF, HTML) Nearly everyone at one time or another has engaged in overeating, excessive spending, procrastinating, or falling into other self-defeating behaviors. These behaviors reflect a failure of self-control — pursuing an option that is the most tempting right now instead of the option with longer-lasting value. Self-control failures have negative consequences for educational achievement, retirement savings, health, and well-being, and they’re the focus of increasing attention by psychological scientists, policymakers, and philosophers.
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Funding for Analysis of the Scientific Research Enterprise
Scientists who study science policy, the scientific research enterprise, or the connections between the two should know about a new funding opportunity that is being offered jointly by NSF and NIH.
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How Smartphones Are Affecting Our Relationships
The allure of smartphones, and their impact on our relationships, might be the result of our evolutionary history, researchers suggest.
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A Psychologist Explains Why 2018 Felt Like the Longest Year Ever
You might think that a year as chock full of newsworthy events as 2018 would feel like it blazed by in a flash. Yet for many of us, January feels like it was eons ago. So did 2018 fly by, or did it drag on? The answer is, strangely, both. Humans have a complicated relationship with time. Unlike physical matter and energy, we have no organ that directly detects time. Instead, our brains judge time indirectly, mostly through two processes—attention and memory. When we think about how time is currently progressing, time judgments are based primarily on attention.
