-
The Push to Redefine “Good Design” Amid the Black Lives Matter Movement
In 2015, Nextdoor, the location-based social networking app, gained a reputation as a locus of racial profiling. Users were sending alerts for merely spotting hoodie-wearing Black men walking in their neighborhoods. One damning report described Nextdoor as “a forum for paranoid racialism—the equivalent of the nosy Neighborhood Watch appointee in a gated community.” In studying the problem, Nextdoor realized that its easy-to-use app was partly to blame. Creating intuitive, easy-to-use products and interfaces is the domain of user experience designers. Don’t Make Me Think is both the title of a core textbook in the field and many designers’ professional mantra.
-
Despite Warnings, Social Distancing Does Not Make Us Lonely
For months we’ve been reading warnings that the coronavirus pandemic could make us lonely. But now researchers have good news: people are more resilient than we thought. A new study published in American Psychologist has found that social distancing has not led to more loneliness. For the nationwide study by Florida State University College of Medicine, researchers surveyed more than 2,000 people before and during stay-at-home orders. This was part of a larger study on how we are reacting psychologically to the Covid-19.
-
The Learning Opportunities Hiding in Our Failures
Successes enjoy more attention than failures. We celebrate stories of triumph, and pore over them to extract the reasons why things went so well. Industries package the lessons and share them as tips for ‘best practice’, while after-dinner speakers regale their audiences with the steps they took to glory. By contrast, if they’re not buried completely, failures, and those who perpetrate them, are more often seen as sources of shame or ignominy. Yet it is often the errors, missteps and outright flops that contain more useful practical information on how to do things better, if only we were more willing to share and study them.
-
Adam Grant on How Jobs, Bosses and firms may improve after the crisis
APS Member/Author: Adam Grant IN 1993 THE management guru Peter Drucker argued that “commuting to office work is obsolete.” As of last year, his vision hadn’t quite come true: nearly half of global companies in one survey still prohibited remote working. Then the pandemic hit. Suddenly millions of people started doing their jobs from home. Work will never be the same. Yet the changes to where we work are only a small part of the story. The experiences from past recessions and crises suggest that covid-19 is likely to transform three features of our work lives: job satisfaction, ethical leadership and trust. Start with our attitudes towards work.
-
New Content From Current Directions in Psychological Science
A sample of articles on risk for developing aggressive behavior, cultural evolution, adolescent depression, inequality among adolescents, memory and statistical learning, and how digital technologies impact emotions.
-
Contracting COVID-19: Lifestyle and Social Connections May Play a Role
New research proposes lifestyle, social, and psychological factors may increase the risk of contracting COVID-19. [July 9, 2020]
