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Our Weak, Fragile Millennials
The Wall Street Journal: From a conversation between John Leo, editor of Minding the Campus, and New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt about the turmoil in higher education, published online Feb. 3: John Leo: What happens to the academy now? You used the word “die.” Is it dead or dying? Most academics think it’s just aflutter. They seem to have no idea that something important happened at Yale. Jonathan Haidt: The big thing that really worries me—the reason why I think things are going to get much, much worse—is that one of the causal factors here is the change in child-rearing that happened in America in the 1980s.
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One critical psychological factor would tell us whether Donald Trump is conning us
Business Insider: With Donald Trump surging in the GOP race, the other Republican candidates are pulling out all the stops in an attempt to discredit him. In a series of interviews, Marco Rubio repeatedly called Trump a "con artist." Business Insider's video team recently asked psychology and science writer Maria Konnikova, author of a book about con artists, "The Confidence Game: Why We Fall For It...Every Time," what the science says about whether or not Trump really is a con artist. Read the whole story: Business Insider
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We’re not getting enough sleep
WHYY: If you’re feeling sleep-deprived, you’re not alone. New numbers from the Centers for Disease Control shows that more than one-third of American adults are not getting the recommended amount of sleep on a regular basis. Those seven-plus hours of shut eye are important for all sorts of daily functions: from memory to physical health, and the CDC research gives a disturbing glimpse of just how poorly we’re doing across the country. We’ll break down the CDC study with SIGRID VEASY a professor of medicine at University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and a member of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology.
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What’s the Point of Moral Outrage?
The New York Times: HUMAN beings have an appetite for moral outrage. You see this in public life — in the condemnation of Donald J. Trump for vowing to bar Muslims from the United States, or of Hillary Clinton for her close involvement with Wall Street, to pick two ready examples — and you see this in personal life, where we criticize friends, colleagues and neighbors who behave badly. Why do we get so mad, even when the offense in question does not concern us directly? The answer seems obvious: We denounce wrongdoers because we value fairness and justice, because we want the world to be a better place. Our indignation appears selfless in nature.
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Physical attraction, feminine faces and why ‘the Johnny Depp effect’ doesn’t always apply
The Washington Post: Forcing someone to fit into a "rigid gender category" can make them seem less physically appealing to others, according to the results of a new study. That revelation may explain why "the Johnny Depp effect" — in which women prefer more feminine faces to more masculine ones — applies in some cases, but not others, researchers found.
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Why Dressing for Success Leads to Success
The Wall Street Journal: Dress better, work better? A number of recent studies suggest that dressing up for work in a suit or blazer could do wonders for an employee’s productivity, whether going into a negotiation, making a sales call or even participating in a videoconference with business associates. Using a number of measures, including simulated business meetings at which subjects wore formal and more casual clothing, the studies offer indications that wearing nicer clothes may raise one’s confidence level, affect how others perceive the wearer, and in some cases even boost the level of one’s abstract thinking, the type in which leaders and executives engage. ... Michael W.
