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OPRE Funding Announcement: Secondary Analyses of Strengthening Families Datasets
The Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) in the Administration for Children and Families, US Department of Health and Human Services has recently published a discretionary research funding announcement titled "Secondary Analyses of Strengthening Families Datasets," which are summarized below. If you have questions regarding this grant announcement, please email the OPRE grant review team at [email protected] or call 1-877-350-5913. Secondary Analyses of Strengthening Families Datasets The full announcement for “Secondary Analyses of Strengthening Families Datasets” is available online at www.acf.hss.gov/grants/open/foa/view/HHS-2014-ACF-OPRE-PD-0802.
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No Extra Credit for Delivering on Promises
If you promise to complete a project on time and you deliver it ahead of the deadline, don’t expect any special kudos from your boss. If you pledge a certain level of service and deliver even more than you promise, you aren’t likely to receive any especially-rosy customer reviews. That’s the conclusion drawn from a recent management study about the social consequences of surpassing promises. There is plenty of research showing that keeping promises builds trust and loyalty from customers, employees, and friends.
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‘Self Talk’: When Talking to Yourself, the Way You Do It Makes a Difference
The Wall Street Journal: Do you ever talk to yourself? Be honest. Researchers say talking to yourself, out loud, is more common than many of us might care to admit. Psychologists call it "self talk" and say how we do it makes a big difference in both our mood and our behavior. Most people engage in self-talk, experts say, though some do it louder and more often than others. When I asked, I heard from people who talk to themselves in the basement, in their cubicle at work and at the urinal in the men's room. One woman turns the car radio down so she can hear herself better. Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal
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Predicting Uncertain Events on a Global Scale
When it comes to predicting world events, some of the most influential decisions are fraught with a significant amount of uncertainty: Will this national economy stabilize or crash? Will that country follow through with their promises to halt production of WMDs? Will these public demonstrations lead to democratic change or violent revolt? “Governments rely routinely and heavily on intuitive beliefs about high-stakes outcomes,” write psychology researchers Barbara Mellers, Philip Tetlock, Don Moore, and colleagues. Despite this, training the people who make these intuitive judgments is difficult, because there is little scientific research available that can shed light on the issue.
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Elite Colleges Don’t Buy Happiness for Graduates
The Wall Street Journal: A word to high-school seniors rejected by their first choice: A degree from that shiny, elite college on the hill may not matter nearly as much as you think. ... University of Pennsylvania Professor Martin Seligman, who has studied the psychology of happiness, said it was impossible to know whether the college experiences Gallup asked about were the cause of later success or simply coincidental to it. "One hopeful possibility is that if college were changed to produce more emotional support, this would result in much more engagement later in life," he wrote in an email.
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Debunking pseudoscience and studying psychopathy
Scott Lilienfeld is both a researcher of and advocate for psychological science. His clinical work has primarily focused on psychopathy; he developed the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI-R), a 154-item personality test developed to be taken by general, rather than clinical, populations. The PPI-R provides an indication of traits associated with psychopathy without linking them to specific behaviors. Additionally, Lilienfeld has devoted much of his work to correcting the widely misunderstood nature of psychopathy, which is still commonly — but falsely — believed to be a signifier of violent tendencies and psychotic disorders.
