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We’re All Climate-Change Idiots
The New York Times: CLIMATE CHANGE is staring us in the face. The science is clear, and the need to reduce planet-warming emissions has grown urgent. So why, collectively, are we doing so little about it? Yes, there are political and economic barriers, as well as some strong ideological opposition, to going green. But researchers in the burgeoning field of climate psychology have identified another obstacle, one rooted in the very ways our brains work. The mental habits that help us navigate the local, practical demands of day-to-day life, they say, make it difficult to engage with the more abstract, global dangers posed by climate change.
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Stop bullying the ‘soft’ sciences
Los Angeles Times: Once, during a meeting at my university, a biologist mentioned that he was the only faculty member present from a science department. When I corrected him, noting that I was from the Department of Psychology, he waved his hand dismissively, as if I were a Little Leaguer telling a member of the New York Yankees that I too played baseball. There has long been snobbery in the sciences, with the "hard" ones (physics, chemistry, biology) considering themselves to be more legitimate than the "soft" ones ( psychology, sociology). It is thus no surprise that many members of the general public feel the same way.
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Mind vs. Body? Dualist Beliefs Linked with Less Concern for Healthy Behaviors
Many people, whether they know it or not, are philosophical dualists. That is, they believe that the brain and the mind are two separate entities. Despite the fact dualist beliefs are found in virtually all human cultures, surprisingly little is known about the impact of these beliefs on how we think and behave in everyday life. But a new research article forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that espousing a dualist philosophy can have important real-life consequences.
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Boosting New Memories With Wakeful Resting
Too often our memory starts acting like a particularly porous sieve: all the important fragments that should be caught and preserved somehow just disappear. So armed with pencils and bolstered by caffeine, legions of adults, especially older adults, tackle crossword puzzles, acrostics, Sudoku and a host of other activities designed to strengthen their flagging memory muscles. But maybe all they really need to do to cement new learning is to sit and close their eyes for a few minutes.
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Psychologie: Der Kompass des Bösen (Psychology: The compass of evil)
ORF Austria: Mehr als 50 Jahre ist es her, dass der US-Psychologe Stanley Milgram die Barbarei zum wissenschaftlichen Untersuchungsgegenstand erklärt hat. Forscher bieten nun eine Neuinterpretation seiner klassischen Experimente an: Grausam wird der Mensch nicht nur durch Gehorsam - sondern auch durch soziale Identifikation. "Ich habe ein einfaches Experiment an der Yale-Universität durchgeführt, um herauszufinden, wie viel Schmerz ein gewöhnlicher Mitbürger einem anderen zufügen würde, einfach weil ihn ein Wissenschaftler dazu aufforderte", notierte Stanley Milgram 1974 in einer Rückschau. Read the whole story: ORF Austria
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Flummoxed by Failure—or Focused?
The Wall Street Journal: Many people think of intelligence as static: you are born with lots of brains, very few, or somewhere in between, and that quantum of intelligence largely determines how well you do in school and in life. The astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has never liked this view. "I hardly ever use the word intelligence," says Mr. Tyson, who directs the Hayden Planetarium in New York. "I think of people as either wanting to learn, ambivalent about learning or rejecting learning." He speaks from experience: As a young man, he was booted from one doctoral program but managed to get into another and complete his Ph.D.
