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Pay Attention
NYU began holding commencement ceremonies here in Yankee Stadium in 2009. Since then, graduates have heard from prime ministers, presidents, Supreme Court justices, movie stars, civil-rights crusaders, and Taylor Swift. So I know what you’re all thinking: Finally, they brought in a social psychologist! Perhaps that’s why over the past few weeks, as I’ve thought about what I might say to all of you, I’ve felt grateful. I’ve felt excited. But most of all, I’ve felt a strong sense of responsibility. Because I am part of NYU. I love this university, and I love the students that I have the privilege to teach.
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New Content From Perspectives on Psychological Science
A sampling of recent content covering AI, socialization, inequality and more.
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How to Recover Your Shrinking Attention Span
... “I think there’s a huge disconnect between what we feel like is happening and what is actually happening,” says Monica Rosenberg, a psychologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois. “There is a whole flurry of people reporting that they feel like they can’t pay attention,” says Nilli Lavie, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London. “They say they are constantly distracted, their attention jumps from one thing to another, and they can’t concentrate.”
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A Child’s Environment May Shape How Their Brain Solves Problems
The findings may have implications for the classroom, as well as for broader efforts to reduce socioeconomic disparities in children’s academic outcomes.
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The Attention-Span Panic
... A great irony of this contemporary insecurity about attention is that, compared with the rest of the animal kingdom, the human attention span is really not that impressive. Although we have many exceptional cognitive abilities (abstract thought, for instance), Raymond Klein, an experimental psychologist at Dalhousie University, told me that a house cat staring at a mouse hole can marshal much more impressive attentional resources than the average person.
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The Oldest Millennials Are 45! This Tool Helps Plan For Longevity
"We did a survey where we asked people what their aspirations were for living to 100," says psychologist Laura Carstensen, director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. "The most common responses were: I hope I don't have dementia, and I hope I haven't run out of money." Practical concerns matter, of course, but Carstensen says the risk is that they crowd out any ability to see the upsides of a longer life. "If we only have this white-knuckled approach, we're never going to realize the potential opportunities," she says.
