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Americans are obsessed with parenting advice. So why are our kids so miserable?
The Washington Post: Americans are obsessed with parenting advice. Bloggers, magazines, whole Web sites urge us to do more. Or less. Be more Chinese, they implore. Or more French. But despite this constant flow of advice, we have very little idea how to make kids happy.
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Inside the Psychologist’s Studio: Claude Steele
Past APS Board Member Claude Steele says his social psychology research — on topics ranging from self-image to alcohol’s effects on attention — reached a new level of quality once he learned to take the perspective of the actor, not the observer. In a newly released “Inside the Psychologist’s Studio” interview, the acclaimed scientist says adopting the subjects’ viewpoint helped him design more effective experiments. “When you take the perspective of somebody who’s actually in a psychological situation, like a student who’s intoxicated, everything is a lot clearer, and your intuition is better informed,” Steele said in the interview.
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Studying for the Test by Taking It
The New York Times: PROTESTS are flaring up in pockets of the country against the proliferation of standardized tests. For many parents and teachers, school has become little more than a series of workout sessions for the assessment du jour. And that is exactly backward, research shows. Tests should work for the student, not the other way around. In an experiment published late last year, two University of Texas psychologists threw out the final exam for the 900 students in their intro psych course and replaced it with a series of short quizzes that students took on their laptops at the beginning of each class. “They didn’t like it, at least at first,” said one of the professors, James W.
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How to Train Your Voice to Be More Charismatic
The Wall Street Journal: Scientists are tuning in on the power of the spoken word, seeking the secrets of charisma. By analyzing the harmonics of pitch, frequency and timbre, researchers at University of California, Los Angeles are discovering how charismatic public speakers use their voices to dominate, rouse and influence a large audience. They are finding that successful politicians in various countries, including Italy, France and Brazil, all share key vocal qualities that strongly affect how people respond to them, independent of the meaning of the words they say or the ideas they express.
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What Happens When You Make Someone Feel Wealthy
New York Magazine: Since society's winners tend to get to make the rules, the way winners react to being winners is really important. What's the psychological effect of feeling like you've crawled to the top of the heap (or have been ensconced there comfortably for a while)? A key to answering this question is understanding that people can't always gauge their position in society correctly — sometimes, the best they can do is take a quick glance at their neighbors and base their opinion on that.
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Saving Old Information Can Boost Memory for New Information
The simple act of saving something, such as a computer file, may improve our memory for the information we encounter next.
