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Kids Are Tiny, Judgmental Snobs When It Comes to Morality
New York Magazine: There’s a line in one of the Harry Potter books where Dumbledore, the wise old headmaster of Hogwarts, reassures Harry that despite some Voldemort-ish tendencies, there’s one very important thing that sets him apart from the Dark Lord: “It is our choices, Harry, that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities.” It’s a great line, and it works: Harry feels better about himself, and the wizarding world goes on turning. A younger wizard, though, would not be so easily placated.
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Other People Are Less Attention-Grabbing to the Wealthy
The degree to which other people divert your attention may depend on your social class, according to findings published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The research shows that people
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‘Brain-training’ games train you in only one thing: Playing brain-training games
The Washington Post: Spend enough time playing "brain-training" games, and you'll get pretty good at games. But you won't necessarily get better at anything else. That's the conclusion of an extensive review published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest this week. A team of psychologists scoured the scientific literature for studies held up by brain-training proponents as evidence that the technique works — and found the research wanting.
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How the Stress of Racism Affects Learning
The Atlantic: A recent study from Northwestern University corroborates Agostini’s experience, suggesting that the stress of racial discrimination may partly explain the persistent gaps in academic performance between some nonwhite students, mainly black and Latino youth, and their white counterparts. The team of researchers found that the physiological response to race-based stressors—be it perceived racial prejudice, or the drive to outperform negative stereotypes—leads the body to pump out more stress hormones in adolescents from traditionally marginalized groups.
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Looking down on the people
The Boston Globe: BEING AFFLUENT MEANS you don’t have to rely on others so much. So why look at them in the first place? Psychologists at New York University found that social class is associated with what people pay attention to, and for how long. In one experiment, pedestrians in New York City were asked to don a pair of Google Glass glasses, which recorded what the pedestrians looked at as they walked down the street for a minute. Read the whole story: The Boston Globe
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Teens’ Penchant For Risk-Taking May Help Them Learn Faster
NPR: The teenage brain has been characterized as a risk-taking machine, looking for quick rewards and thrills instead of acting responsibly. But these behaviors could actually make teens better than adults at certain kinds of learning. "In neuroscience, we tend to think that if healthy brains act in a certain way, there should be a reason for it," says Juliet Davidow, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University in the Affective Neuroscience and Development Lab and the lead author of the study, which was published Wednesday in the journal Neuron. ...
