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How to Be a Better Test-Taker
The New York Times: THE REALITY Many capable, hard-working students perform poorly on exams because they’ve overtaxed their “working memory” — the mental scratchpad on which we combine information from our long-term memory with the specifics of the problem in front of us, in the service of finding a solution. THE PROBLEM “When students are anxious about how they’ll do on an exam,” says Sian Beilock, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, “their worries use up some of their working memory capacity, leaving less of this cognitive horsepower to apply to the task at hand.” HOW TO Dr.
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Sind Sie risikointelligent?
20 Minuten Online: Kritisch und gleichzeitig kreativ mit Risiken umzugehen - das wird von vielen, insbesondere von Menschen in höheren Positionen im Arbeitsalltag verlangt. Vielfach wähnen sich die Betroffenen während des Entscheidungsprozesses am Roulette-Tisch: Rot oder doch lieber schwarz, alles auf eine Karte oder auf Beständigkeit und Sicherheit setzen? Wie gut wir darin sind, Entscheidungen unter Risikoeinfluss zu treffen, liess sich bislang nur schwerlich bemessen. Herkömmliche Tests sind lediglich in der Lage, Hinweise über die Aufmerksamkeitskontrolle oder die Intelligenz eines Menschen zu liefern.
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When You’re Evil, the Whole World Looks Dark
The Wall Street Journal: Is it dark in here, or is it me? In the latest example of the study of “embodied cognition” — the notion that metaphors don’t just help us express abstract ideas but can also shape basic perception — researchers had 40 students recall and describe either an ethical or unethical deed from their past. On a 7-point scale, the students then judged the brightness of the room they were in. “As predicted, participants in the unethical condition judged the room to be darker than did participants in the ethical condition,” write the authors of the study, which is forthcoming in Psychological Science. Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal
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Black Women Leaders Approved for Assertiveness in the Workplace
While black men and white women are often jeered for being assertive and aggressive leaders, black women are expected to adopt dominant leadership styles usually associated with white men.
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Is Psychology About to Come Undone?
The Chronicle of Higher Education: If you’re a psychologist, the news has to make you a little nervous—particularly if you’re a psychologist who published an article in 2008 in any of these three journals: Psychological Science, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, or the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. Because, if you did, someone is going to check your work. A group of researchers have already begun what they’ve dubbed the Reproducibility Project, which aims to replicate every study from those three journals for that one year.
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Going the Distance: Stereotypes and Hard Work
The Huffington Post: I plead guilty to trading in stereotypes once in a while. For example, I've somehow gotten the idea that East Africans are especially good distance runners, and I think I've even said as much on a few occasions. But I don't know this to be true. I've never done the work to verify that East Africans are statistically superior at distance running. It just seems that every time I flip on ESPN and happen on a long-distance event, an East African is winning. This kind of stereotyping seems harmless enough, but is it? I intend it with admiration rather than disrespect, but new research suggests that whether stereotypes are positive or negative may be irrelevant.
