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With a Little Help from My Friends
Scientific American: Humans are social animals, and our species has evolved some unique ways of enforcing the bonds of friendship. Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Oxford, studies the behavioral mechanisms behind the number and nature of such relationships. His work suggests social cohesion and long-term bonding among primates—Homo sapiens included—are the keys to their evolutionary success. Primate societies are held together by unspoken contracts grounded in “social grooming,” whether in the form of physical affection or nonphysical activities such as storytelling.
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Fending Off Math Anxiety
The New York Times: My mother was what we would now call math anxious, if not phobic. My daughter, on the other hand, was a math major, which always left me feeling like the transitional generation, capable of mastering standardized-test math problems and surviving college calculus (it’s one of the pre-med requirements) but never really connecting to the beauty or power of the subject. ... “Math anxiety is prevalent all around the world,” said Julianne Herts, a study author and a doctoral student at the University of Chicago who works in cognitive psychology. “If you look within Japan, students in Japan who are math anxious aren’t scoring as well at math,” she said.
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If money can make you happy, does debt make you sad?
aeon: Humans have long debated the adage ‘Money can’t buy you happiness.’ Popular opinion suggests that, indeed, it cannot, but more recently researchers have challenged this notion. Based on extensive studies, investigators found that money, or income, can contribute to your happiness. In our capitalist society, income leads to increases in happiness to the extent that funds are required to attain the things that lead to happiness. By meeting needs for shelter or food, allowing the purchase of a home or groceries, or opening the window to experiences such as adventure or travel, money can increase our sense of satisfaction with life.
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You Probably Believe Some Learning Myths: Take Our Quiz To Find Out
NPR: This blog post has some pretty useful information. So print it out; get out your highlighter and take off the cap. Ready? Now throw it away, because highlighters don't really help people learn. We all want for our kids to have optimal learning experiences and, for ourselves, to stay competitive with lifelong learning. But how well do you think you understand what good learning looks like? Ulrich Boser says, probably not very well. His new research on learning shows that the public is largely ignorant of, well, research on learning. Boser runs the science of learning initiative at the left-leaning thinktank the Center for American Progress.
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Reclaim Your Commute
Harvard Business Review: Every day, millions of people around the world face long commutes to work. In the United States alone, approximately 25 million workers spend more than 90 minutes each day getting to and from their jobs, and about 600,000 “mega-commuters” travel at least 90 minutes each way, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In the United Kingdom, the average round-trip commute takes 54 minutes (up from 45 minutes in 2003), and in most of the world’s major cities, from Milan to Manila, it’s over an hour. And yet few people enjoy their commutes.
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Why You Shouldn’t Ask For an Opinion
The New York Times: Behavioral Scientist and “Pre-Suasion” Author Robert Cialdini shared at The New York Times’s New Work Summit the best way to get buy-in from potential collaborators. Read the whole story: The New York Times
