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The Education Issue: Believing self-control predicts success, schools teach coping
The Washington Post: At first blush, Julia King’s middle-school classroom at D.C. Prep Public Charter School seems like any other middle school. Seventh-graders are busy reviewing math skills that they struggled with on a recent test. Walls are plastered with motivational posters: “Willpower, Improve, Never Give Up!” But look more closely. Something else is going on here — something that would have seemed more familiar to these 12- and 13-year-olds’ great-grandparents. ... The study of self-control began in the 1960s with a marshmallow.
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Discriminated Groups Strategize to Avoid Prejudice
Scientific American: When they think they'll be discriminated against, people do their best to put on a good face for their group, new research finds. An obese person, for example, might focus on dressing nicely to combat stereotypes of slovenliness. A black man, used to assumptions that he's violent, might smile more. The new study reveals both that people are well aware of stereotypes and that they try to combat them.
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How to Stimulate Curiosity
TIME: Curiosity is the engine of intellectual achievement — it’s what drives us to keep learning, keep trying, keep pushing forward. But how does one generate curiosity, in oneself or others? George Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, proposed an answer in the classic 1994 paper, “The Psychology of Curiosity.” ... Here, three practical ways to use information gaps to stimulate curiosity: 1. Start with the question.
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Green spaces boosts wellbeing of urban dwellers – study
BBC: Using data from 5,000 UK households over 17 years, researchers found that living in a greener area had a significant positive effect. The findings could help to inform urban planners and have an impact on society at large, they said. The study is published in the journal Psychological Science. The research team examined data from a national survey that followed more than 5,000 UK households and 10,000 adults between 1991 and 2008 as they moved house around the country. They asked participants to report on their own psychological health during that time to estimate the "green space effect".
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The Two Faces of Attractiveness
The Huffington Post: Imagine that you're an early human, trying to make your way in a perilous world. One very useful talent would be reading and reacting to the faces of other early humans -- rapidly categorizing them into good and safe, on the one hand, or bad and threatening on the other. This skill would come in handy for everything from selecting mates to identifying friends and enemies. ... This automatic judgment -- beauty equals average -- is also a powerful cognitive bias, at least as predictable is the cognitive fluency rule. Indeed, according to psychological scientist Jamin Halberstadt, there is not a single study that has failed to show this effect.
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What’s Tylenol Doing to Our Minds?
The Atlantic: The active drug in Tylenol, acetaminophen, is one of the best medications we have for helping people in pain. It's also one the most commonly overdosed substances in the world and puts about 60,000 Americans in the hospital every year. Several hundred people in the U.S. will die in 2013 from liver failure after acetaminophen overdose. Tylenol isn't addictive like narcotics, and the kids don't take it to get high, which lends it an air of benignity and social acceptance not otherwise afforded to many pain medications. When people overdose on pills like Vicodin or Percocet, though, which contain acetaminophen, it's that component that often does the most damage. ...
