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Are Digital Billboards Dangerously Distracting?
Digital ads use bright lights, rotating images, and flashy content to get your attention, but do they take your eyes (and your mind) off the road long enough to create a hazard? Digital billboards — dynamic, electronically illuminated, light emitting diode (LED) advertisements — are a rapidly growing section of the marketing industry. One look around Times Square and you’ll understand why: The billboards are shiny, interesting, and attention-grabbing. We often can’t help but look at them. On the road, these advertising structures stand far above the ground, rotating through ads approximately every 8–10 seconds and marketing various companies, organizations, and products in a single space.
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Better Aging Through Practice, Practice, Practice
The New York Times: SIXTY is not the new 40. Fifty isn’t either. Your lung capacity in late-middle age is in steady decline, as are the fast-twitch muscle fibers that provide power and speed. Your heart capacity has been ebbing for decades. Your sight has been getting worse, your other senses, too, and this, along with a gradually receding ability to integrate information you are absorbing and to then issue motor commands, means your balance is not what it used to be. (Your flattening arches aren’t helping.) Your prefrontal cortex — where the concentrating and deciding gets done — has been shrinking for some time, perhaps since you graduated from college.
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Scientists now know the psychology behind your worries about the environment
The Washington Post: More and more, attempts to explain why people behave the way they do in politics have turned away from the actual substance of issues and toward the traits of individuals themselves. Thus, this election season, there has been considerable focus on why Donald Trump appeals to voters, with psychologists noting that traits like “authoritarianism” — a preference for clear, unambiguous and decisive answers — help to explain the phenomenon. ...
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Why “Yes” Is More Powerful Than “No”
Getting up the nerve to ask your boss for a raise or promotion can feel excruciating. Although we might dread the prospect of asking the boss—or even a colleague—for a favor, a large body of evidence suggests that we’re actually much better at influencing others than we might imagine. “Potential requesters stress about imposing on others, feel self-conscious about revealing their shortcomings, and fear the worst—rejection,” Cornell University psychological scientist Vanessa Bohns writes in a new article in Current Directions in Psychological Science.
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UNSW researchers find human intuition does exist
The Sydney Morning Herald: Ever had a hunch? Gone with a gut instinct? Felt something in your bones? People have long believed in intuition: the idea that we can make successful decisions without rational, analytical thought or inference. Now it turns out there is such a thing as human intuition - and it can be tested scientifically. ... "There's lots of really cool stories about it, but no one's been able to show that it really exists and how it works," said Associate Professor Joel Pearson, who led new research into intuition at the University of NSW's School of Psychology. Read the whole story: The Sydney Morning Herald
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Girls are still afraid of math, even when their moms are scientists
Quartz: Understanding why girls do worse than boys (pdf) in math, and why they have more anxiety about the subject, is complicated. Cultural norms that favor boys, teacher bias, and even parents’ own math anxiety all seem to play a role. By that logic, things should be better in more countries where lots of women hold powerful math and engineering jobs. They are not. A new study shows that even when countries where lots of moms have high-status STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) jobs, math anxiety for girls is significant. What’s more, the gap between girls’ and boys anxiety in math is bigger in more developed and equitable countries.
