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Lectures from The Floating University
The Wall Street Journal: Last month, we hosted a few videos from The Floating University, which creates multimedia curricula on inter-disciplinary topics. Here, links to several more: Saul Levmore, William B. Graham Distinguished Professor of Law at The University of Chicago, explains what economists are good for, and why they weren’t good at predicting 2008′s financial crisis. Paul Bloom, the Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale University, discusses female choosiness and corresponding male traits across species, and includes a surprising study about pornography preferences in Macaques.
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Practice necessary, but not enough to master chess
Yahoo News India: There is a theory in psychology that the more you practice; the better you'll do in areas like sports, music, and chess. But, a psychological scientist has claimed that practice is necessary, but not sufficient, for player to get to the master level. This may explain why some people achieved much higher levels even though they practiced much less than their peers. Guillermo Campitelli, a researcher at Edith Cowan University in Joondalup, Australia, came to the conclusion after studying practicing on chess. In one survey of chess players in Argentina, Campitelli and Fernand Gobet of Brunel University in the United Kingdom found that, indeed, practice is important.
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Uomini e donne sessualmente uguali
Vanity Fair Italia: Sfatato il mito che vuole l’uomo più incline a pensare al sesso e più voglioso di approcciare la partner: uomini e donne non sono diversi, neanche sessualmente. Almeno stando alla conclusione di una ricerca dell’Universita’ del Michigan (Stati Uniti), pubblicata da Current Directions in Psychological Science in cui Terry Conley e collaboratori hanno rielaborato i dati raccolti nel corso di diversi anni di studio sull’argomento. Secondo questa ricerca, donne e uomini la pensano allo stesso modo e ciò che comunemente si crede è soltanto frutto di pregiudizi infondati, spesso distanti dalla realtà.
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How do siblings shape your personality?
The Boston Globe: Research has long established that parents play an integral role in shaping our personalities, but scientists are now finding that our siblings may contribute just as much, or perhaps even more. In an intriguing new book called The Sibling Effect, science writer Jeffrey Kluger argues that brothers and sisters leave a firm imprint, helping to determine whether we’ll become free-spirited risk takers or careful studious types; whether we’ll be shy or the family entertainer; and whether we’ll be inclined to smoke, use alcohol, or take illegal drugs.
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Want To Resist Temptation? A New Study Suggests Thinking Might Not Always Help You
Uh-oh. Here comes temptation—for a dieter, it’s a sweet treat; an alcoholic, a beer; a married man, an attractive, available woman. How to defeat the impulse to gratify desire and stick to your long-term goals of slimness, sobriety, or fidelity? Here’s some advice: Don’t stop and think. Thinking may not help. That is one surprising conclusion of a new study by Loran Nordgren and Eileen Chou at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Nordgren and Chou wanted to make sense of two contradictory bodies of literature.
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From Halloween to Horror Movies, Why We Love to Be Afraid
ABC News: On any gloomy day, Michele Sinesky asks her husband to find a good monster movie on television -- "The Thing" or "The Tingler." "You name it, I've seen it twice," said the 63-year-old grandmother of four from Charlottesville, Va. "For one thing, it's an old-time memory back to my childhood when we kids would tell each other spooky stories late at night at sleepovers -- the sense of someone saying 'boo' to you." "But I also get an adrenaline rush when the monster jumps out at me," said Sinesky.
