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Yours or Mine? How We Handle Objects Depends on Who Owns Them
From scissors and staplers to car keys and cell phones, we pass objects to other people every day. We often try to pass the objects so that the handle or other useful feature is facing the appropriate direction for the person receiving the item, but new research shows that we’re less accommodating when it comes to handing over our own belongings. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “The associations or attachments that we have with an object leak into our movements in unintended ways when we interact with them,” says psychology researcher and study author Merryn Constable of the University of Toronto.
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People Prefer Hiring “Naturals” Over Hardworking “Strivers”
When deciding which candidate to hire or what company to invest in, do we favor someone who has a history of hard work and perseverance or the hotshot with a natural talent? Findings from three studies conducted by University College London professor Chia-Jung Tsay suggest that when assessing people with equivalent levels of achievement and success, we’re predisposed to judge someone who’s a “natural” as more talented, more hirable, and more likely to succeed than someone who’s a “striver.” “[T]here exists the belief that certain achievements cannot be explained solely by perseverance and hard work—that natural talent plays a role, and some ‘have it’ and others ‘do not,’” Tsay writes.
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The Right Music Can Bring Teams Together
A team researchers finds evidence that what we’re listening to at work might influence how willing we are to cooperate with coworkers.
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SRCD Policy Fellowships for 2017–2018 Year
The Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) is seeking applicants for SRCD Policy Fellowships for 2017–2018. There are two types of fellowships: Congressional and Executive Branch. Both types of fellowships provide researchers with exciting opportunities to come to Washington, DC, and use their research skills in child development to inform public policy. Fellows work as resident scholars within congressional or federal agency offices. Fellowships run from September 1, 2017, through August 31, 2018.
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New Reports Showcase Collaborations Between Governments, Behavioral Scientists
Dozens of collaborations between behavioral scientists and government agencies are on display in two new reports emanating from Washington, D.C. and the United Kingdom. Annual reports from the White House’s nascent Social and Behavioral Sciences
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: The Development of Inequity Aversion: Understanding When (and Why) People Give Others the Bigger Piece of the Pie Alex Shaw, Shoham Choshen-Hillel, and Eugene M. Caruso It is traditionally believed that, as children age, they come to understand the unfairness of inequality and become less likely to endorse. The authors tested this idea in three studies, in which 4- to 6-year-olds, 7- to 8-year-olds, and the researchers determined how erasers would be distributed among group members.