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Does Teaching Kids To Get ‘Gritty’ Help Them Get Ahead?
NPR: It's become the new buzz phrase in education: "Got grit?" Around the nation, schools are beginning to see grit as key to students' success — and just as important to teach as reading and math. Experts define grit as persistence, determination and resilience; it's that je ne sais quoi that drives one kid to practice trumpet or study Spanish for hours — or years — on end, while another quits after the first setback.
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The Unconscious Mind Can Detect a Liar — Even When the Conscious Mind Fails
When it comes to detecting deceit, your automatic associations may be more accurate than conscious thought in pegging truth-tellers and liars, according to findings from a psychological study.
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What’s the Value of a Dollar? It Depends on How You Perceive Numbers
When it comes to how we value money, all dollars (or Euros or yen or pesos) are not created equal. If someone gives you three dollar bills and then offers a fourth, the prospect of getting that extra dollar is kind of exciting. But if someone offers you 33 dollar bills first, the additional dollar loses some of its luster. This is because the extra dollar in the first scenario has greater subjective value than the extra dollar in the second scenario, a phenomenon economists often call “diminishing marginal utility” (DMU). If you were to poll a bunch of people and map out the subjective value of each additional dollar, the values would take a curvilinear shape.
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How Do Social Pressures Tip Our Ethical Balancing Acts?
Scott Adams, who has endlessly satirized office culture in his comic strip Dilbert, once surmised that the most influential people in his life were probably not even aware of what they’d taught him. That lack of awareness Adams describes is rather common. Studies have demonstrated that people tend not to recognize the influence they have over others when they make a request, suggestion, or observation. You may have trouble saying no to a colleague who asks for help on a project or assignment, but you can bet that same individual would have trouble declining your requests, as well. But what happens when someone asks you to do something unethical?
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The Brooding Mind: Making the Worst of Ambiguity
The Huffington Post: Imagine yourself at your 10-year high school reunion, a long anticipated get-together for you and all your old friends. You haven't seen many of them since graduation day, and naturally everyone is comparing notes on the lives they have lived since then. This puts you in a reflective mood, but not in a good way. Life has been unkind to you -- compared to the lives of your friends, who have all been spared your travails. For days after the reunion, you can't focus on anything but your difficulties, and the unfairness of it all. If you're a brooder, that is. Someone else might have the same reunion experience, yet come away with a very different interpretation.
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Anxiety? There’s an App for That
Pacific Standard: The future of anxiety treatment may not be pills or therapy sessions, but games on your phone. Two researchers, one at the City University of New York’s Hunter College and the other at CUNY’s graduate center, published a study in Clinical Psychological Science this month that looks at the effects of “gamifying” psychological interventions for people prone to stress. They found that a bit of play time on a specially designed mobile app before high-pressure situations reduces stress and boosts composure when the pressure’s on.