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How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive
As Washington debates sending checks to Americans and increasing the minimum wage, a new study offers evidence for how such policies could help eliminate poverty. Obviously, giving more money to people without much money helps them with money problems. But the study adds to a growing body of research that says that money really does help workers earn more money. Sendhil Mullainathan is a behavioral economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and he outlined early evidence for this theory in Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, co-authored with Princeton psychologist Eldar Shafir.
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How Schools Can Reduce Excessive Discipline of Black Students
Anne Gregory remembers the child’s fondness for the Dewey decimal system. He would write down a combination of numbers and letters on a scrap of paper and hunt down the desired book in the library. Details were his thing. He once wrote several pages outlining the sequence of moves needed to beat a video game, she says. But at the elementary school where Gregory worked as a counselor, educators saw a different child. A troublemaker. One teacher told Gregory that the boy frequently wandered about mid-lesson. So the teacher moved his desk to the far corner of the room, and sometimes sent him to the principal’s office.
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New Content From Perspectives on Psychological Science
A sample of articles on economics, hypothesis testing, theories in psychological science, practicality, validity, replication, and manipulation checks.
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New Content From Current Directions in Psychological Science
A sample of articles on the risk for alcohol use disorder, language comprehension in children with autism, varied skills, primate vocal communication, the importance of the context for child development, and the role of robots in understanding the human mind.
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New Research in Psychological Science
A sample of research on theory-of-mind development in deaf children, male variability in cooperation, hypnosis and visual tasks, attitude formation, early training and musical skills, whether children prioritize saving animals, and the use of moral language in the U.S. Congress.
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The Science of Reasoning With Unreasonable People
APS Member/Author: Adam Grant A few years ago, I made the mistake of having an argument with the most stubborn person I know. R., whose initial I’m using to protect his privacy, is a longtime friend, and when his family came to visit, he mentioned that his children had never been vaccinated — and never would be. I’m no proponent of blindly giving every vaccination to every newborn, but I was concerned for his children’s safety, so I started debunking some common vaccine myths. After days of debate, I was exhausted and exasperated. Determined to preserve our friendship, I vowed never to talk with him about vaccines again. Then came 2020.
