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A Neuroscientist And A Psychologist On How Our Ancient Brains Work In A High-Tech World
The Diane Rehm Show: We all do it. Walking down the street–a quick check of the phone to see who emailed. Watching television–why not send out a tweet, too. Sitting at dinner with family–it will take only a second to read that text. Even when we know we should resist the temptation, it’s so hard to ignore technology. We pay for it in half-completed tasks, near accidents, and disjointed conversations. Why is this? It turns out our brains are not very good at driving away distraction, and technology has only aggravated it. Guest host Derek McGinty talks to neuroscientist Dr. Adam Gazzaley and psychologist Dr. Larry Rosen about our ancient brains in a high-tech world.
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School Principals Shape Students’ Values Via School Climate
Principals’ values are linked with aspects of school climate which are, in turn, linked with students’ own values, research shows.
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What Pigeons Can Teach Us About Multitasking
Evidence has long shown that humans are terrible at multitasking. People are prone to make more mistakes when they’re switching between different tasks, say answering emails and listening to a conference call, than when they
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Faced With Ambivalence, Powerful People Are Less Decisive Than Others
Although powerful people often tend to decide and act quickly, they become more indecisive than others when the decisions are toughest to make, a new study suggests.
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Why You Should Bet Against Your Candidate
The New York Times: When your favorite sports team is defeated, you’re disappointed, even dismayed. The same is true when your preferred political candidate doesn’t win. It hurts when your side loses. Fortunately, you can insure yourself against such unhappiness: just place a bet for your side to lose. This strategy, which has become easy to do with the rise of online prediction markets, creates a consolation prize — say, $1,000 (or whatever it takes) — to reduce your pain in the event of a defeat. ... But in practice, as my colleagues Richard P.
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How ‘Bias’ Went From a Psychological Observation to a Political Accusation
The New York Times Magazine: In 2004, 57 police officers of different races were divided into two groups for a simple experiment. Half of them were shown two photo lineups, one with an array of white faces and one with black faces. This group was more visually attuned to the white faces. A second group looked at the same lineups after words like “violent,” “crime” and “shoot” flashed on their screens, at the edge of their field of vision. This group of officers’ eyes were mostly drawn to the black faces. In a similar test, using pictures of guns and knives instead of words, a group of white college students exhibited a similar shift in attention. ...
