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Is Gender Identity Biologically Hard-wired?
PBS: JUDY WOODRUFF: Now another installment in our series Transgender in America. A small number of children as young as 3 are beginning to understand their gender identity as something different from what they were assumed to be at birth. NewsHour special correspondent Jackie Judd has our story of doctors and families living through these discoveries. JACKIE JUDD: Eight-year-old Skyler Kelly is hoping for a career in the Major Leagues and enjoys the privileges of being big brother to 4-year-old Luke. It is not how life started for Skyler. Read the whole story: PBS
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Not So Innocent: Toddlers' Inferences About Costs and Culpability Julian Jara-Ettinger, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, and Laura E. Schulz How do perceptions of competence and motivation influence children's social evaluations of others? Children watched two puppets push a button on a toy. When the button was pushed, the toy played music. One puppet correctly pushed the button on the first try; the other puppet correctly pushed the button only after several unsuccessful attempts. When asked, both puppets refused to help the child's accompanying parent push the button.
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The Seduction of a Sunny Day: How Weather Biases Car Buying Behavior
An analysis of 40 million car sales reveals the weather on the day of purchase can bias buyers towards choosing a car they may later regret.
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The Mechanics of Preventing Procrastination
The Atlantic: Procrastination is, in essence, stealing from yourself. The reason goals are so hard to reach, many psychologists think, is because each person believes they are really two people: Present Me and Future Me. And to most people, Future Me is much less important than Present Me. Present Me is the CEO of Me Corp, while Future Me is a lowly clerk. “Instead of delaying gratification,” people “act as if they prefer their current self’s needs and desires to those of their future self,” write psychologists Neil Lewis of the University of Michigan and Daphna Oyserman of the University of Southern California in a new study in Psychological Science.
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Speaking a Mile in Someone Else’s Shoes
Pacific Standard: In the midst of a debate over the potential cognitive benefits of learning a second language, new research suggests it may have social value as well. Actually, even being around people who speak different languages may help children learn to take others' perspectives, making communication more effective for everyone. "[E]xposure to multiple languages is, and has been for millennia, an integral part of human development," writes a team led by University of Chicago psychology graduate student Samantha Fan in Psychological Science.
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Two Ways to Take Better Notes
New York Magazine: If you ask ten people what the best way to take notes is, you'll probably get ten different answers. Ultraorganized note-takers (a group to which I cannot claim membership) come up with all sorts of crazy schemes involving bullet points and different-colored pencils and diagrams connecting ideas and so on. Others, like me, just use a series of dashes followed by semi-coherent summaries of ideas. Which systems work best? It's an open question, but one researchers are making progress on, and a new study in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition lends some helpful insights.
