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The Ugly Values of Beautiful People
Pacific Standard: The beautiful are different from you and me. But not in the ways we think. That’s the conclusion of new research from Israel, which confirms the truism that we idealize attractive people, and suggests that—at least as far as women are concerned—the pedestal we place them on is largely unearned. “Despite the widely accepted ‘What is beautiful is good’ stereotype, our findings suggest that the beautiful strive for conformity rather than independence, and for self-promotion rather than tolerance,” writes a research team led by Lihi Segal-Caspi of the Open University of Israel.
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Study: More women winemakers are making names for themselves
The Washington Post: In 1978, the first vintage that Cathy Corison made wine, she could count on one hand the number of women she knew of doing the same kind of work in the cellars of the Napa Valley. Without using all her fingers. Nearly 35 years later, Corison needs a lot more fingers. Winemaking remains primarily a man’s world, but research by Santa Clara University professors Lucia Albino Gilbert and John Gilbert has found that nearly 10 percent of California wineries now have women as the main or lead winemaker. Their second finding: Women winemakers tend to be more highly acclaimed than their male counterparts. Why?
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What Makes Self-Directed Learning Effective?
In recent years, educators have come to focus more and more on the importance of lab-based experimentation, hands-on participation, student-led inquiry, and the use of “manipulables” in the classroom. The underlying rationale seems to be that students are better able to learn when they can control the flow of their experience, or when their learning is “self-directed.” While the benefits of self-directed learning are widely acknowledged, the reasons why a sense of control leads to better acquisition of material are poorly understood.
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Gelfand Receives Anneliese Maier Research Award
APS Fellow Michele J. Gelfand, who studies conflict and conducts comparative cultural research, accepted the Anneliese Maier Research Award at a September 13, 2012 ceremony at Heidelberg University in Germany. The award is granted by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and includes a €250,000 prize, which will fund Gelfand’s collaboration with Klaus Boehnke and other colleagues at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany. Gelfand has been recognized for her work contrasting “tight” societies that have little tolerance for deviation from their strict social norms with “loose” societies that have a higher tolerance for deviation from their weaker social norms.
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Kurt Pawlik Honored for Contributions to Global Psychology
APS Fellow Kurt Pawlik, University of Hamburg, Germany, has received the 2012 APA Outstanding Psychologist Award for distinguished contributions to global psychology. Pawlik, who has been a professor at the University of Hamburg since March 1965, has researched a myriad of topics over his 45 year career, including the physiological psychology of learning and memory, psychological assessment, and clinical neuropsychology. During his impressive career, he has contributed over 160 publications to scientific journals, handbooks and edited volumes.
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Our Preferences Change to Reflect the Choices We Make, Even Three Years Later
You’re in a store, trying to choose between similar shirts, one blue and one green. You don’t feel strongly about one over the other, but eventually you decide to buy the green one. You leave the store and a market researcher asks you about your purchase and which shirt you prefer. Chances are that you’d say you prefer the green one, the shirt you actually chose. As it turns out, this choice-induced preference isn’t limited to shirts. Whether we’re choosing between presidential candidates or household objects, research shows that we come to place more value on the options we chose and less value on the options we rejected.
