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Old and On the Road: Can We Train Older Drivers to Be Safer?
Huffington Post: Mr. Magoo, a cartoon regular of early TV, was notorious for his hazardous driving. He was a retiree, befuddled and extremely nearsighted, yet he continued to drive despite these obvious failings. In the opening sequence to his long-running show, he has run-ins with a railroad train, a haystack and several barn animals, a roller coaster, a fire hydrant, a mud hole, and a high voltage line -- all while honking his horn and shouting, "Road hog!" Looking back, it seems like a cruel stereotype of the elderly, especially elderly drivers. But like all stereotypes, the Mr. Magoo caricature had a bit of truth to it.
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Online dating’s promise — and pitfalls
Los Angeles Times: Online dating has come a long way from its less-than-positive association with the personal ad. But is it actually a better way to meet that special someone? In some ways yes -- and in others, maybe not, according to a study on online dating released by the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest. "Romantic relationships can begin anywhere. When Cupid’s arrow strikes, you might be at church or at school, playing chess or softball, searching for a partner at a party, or minding your own business on the train," the authors write. "But sometimes Cupid goes on vacation, or takes a long nap, or kicks back for a marathon of Lifetime original movies.
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Standing in Your Own Way
In case you missed it, the cameras were rolling at the APS 23rd Annual Convention in Washington, DC. Watch Jared M. Bartels from the University of Minnesota present his poster session research on “Fear of Failure, Self-Handicapping, and Negative Emotions.” Bartels and his co-author William E. Herman wanted to find out whether self-handicapping, reduces negative emotional responses to failure. An example of self-handicapping would be thinking to yourself that you are not good at public speaking, and then doing poorly on a presentation. Bartels and Herman studied participants’ responses to scenarios that incorporated academic failure with and without self-handicapping.
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A more peaceful world if women in charge?
CNN: Would the world be more peaceful if women were in charge? A challenging new book by the Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker says that the answer is “yes.” In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Pinker presents data showing that human violence, while still very much with us today, has been gradually declining. Moreover, he says, “over the long sweep of history, women have been and will be a pacifying force. Traditional war is a man’s game: tribal women never band together to raid neighboring villages.” As mothers, women have evolutionary incentives to maintain peaceful conditions in which to nurture their offspring and ensure that their genes survive into the next generation.
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Numeracy: The Educational Gift That Keeps on Giving?
Cancer risks. Investment alternatives. Calories. Numbers are everywhere in daily life, and they figure into all sorts of decisions. A new article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, examines how people who are numerate—that’s like literacy, but for numbers—understand numbers better and process information differently so that they ultimately make more informed decisions. People who are numerate are more comfortable thinking about numbers and are less influenced by other information, says Ellen Peters of Ohio State University, the author of the new paper.
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Special Issue of Early Education and Development
The goal of the special issue Social and Emotional Learning in Early Education is to explore more deeply the role of social and emotional learning (SEL) in the development of 3- to 6-year-olds and programming efforts in classroom settings. Susan E. Rivers & Marc A. Brackett will be guest editors. The submission deadline is June 1, 2012. www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10409289.2011.628606
