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Speaking Evidence to Policy
The Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking has issued a report that points to significant new opportunities in research and leadership for psychological scientists with expertise in areas including judgment and decision making, analysis and research design, data privacy and ethics issues, and more.
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Psychological Scientists Honored by OBSSR
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research (OBSSR) has announced that psychological scientists are taking home top honors at its annual event recognizing the best in behavioral science. APS Fellow Terrie E. Moffitt has been named the NIH Matilda White Riley Behavioral and Social Sciences Honors Distinguished Lecturer, and several psychological scientists have won the Matilda White Riley Early Stage Investigator Paper Competition. OBSSR’s Matilda White Riley Behavioral and Social Sciences Honors festival recognizes the best behavioral science conducted across and beyond NIH. Moffitt, the Nannerl O.
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Should We Pay Children for Good Behavior?
Hi, Dan. I’m raising two teenagers and have discovered just how hard it is to teach them to be polite, to clean up after themselves and to leave the house on time. Would it make sense for me to pay them for better behavior? —Billy Simple rewards may seem like a good idea, but they often have unintended consequences. Consider the case of Kelly the dolphin, who lived in a marine institute in Mississippi. To teach her to keep her pool clean, her trainers started trading her fish for any litter she collected. Kelly soon learned that litter of any size would win her a treat.
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The Real Reason You Procrastinate
This article would have been much better if I hadn’t waited until the last minute to write it. But then I wouldn’t have been able to claim that I did what so many procrastinators do regularly: I delayed work on a task to give myself an excuse if I happened to make a complete mess of it. It’s not that I’m lousy at my job, I could plausibly say. It’s just that I had so many other things to do at work and at home that I couldn’t give it my best effort. These sorts of self-serving excuses are so common that psychologists have coined a name for the practice. They call it self-handicapping. Think of self-handicapping as a strategy of intentionally sabotaging your own efforts.
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Conversing Could Be Key to Kids’ Brain Development
More than 20 years ago, psychologists Betty Hart and Todd Risley discovered what they called the "30 million word gap." Through family visits, they estimated that children under 4 from lower-income families heard a staggering 30 million fewer words than children from higher-income families. That study was embraced by Hillary Clinton and it spurred a White House conference on the topic, public service announcement campaigns and the creation of at least two outreach organizations. The clear message: Talk to your babies a lot.
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Childhood Friendships May Have Some Health Benefits in Adulthood
Time spent with friends in childhood is associated with physical health in adulthood, according to data from a multi-decade study of men.
