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Yale’s Most Popular Class Ever: Happiness
NEW HAVEN — On Jan. 12, a few days after registration opened at Yale for Psyc 157, Psychology and the Good Life, roughly 300 people had signed up. Within three days, the figure had more than doubled. After three more days, about 1,200 students, or nearly one-fourth of Yale undergraduates, were enrolled. The course, taught by Laurie Santos, 42, a psychology professor and the head of one of Yale’s residential colleges, tries to teach students how to lead a happier, more satisfying life in twice-weekly lectures. “Students want to change, to be happier themselves, and to change the culture here on campus,” Dr. Santos said in an interview.
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The ‘IKEA Effect’ — And Getting Kids To Eat Their Veggies
A couple of years ago, at the peak of my children's reluctance to eat vegetables, I decided to try an experiment. When the kids arrived home from daycare one afternoon, I had bowls of colorful vegetables cut up and ready to go: crunchy red and yellow peppers, bushy little florets of broccoli, tomatoes and mushrooms and olives. I gave them each a cheese pizza base to "decorate" for dinner, and they gleefully complied. My older daughter made a face with olive eyes, broccoli hair, and a bright, red-pepper mouth. My younger daughter loaded on veggies by the fistful. It felt like a parenting win!
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The Best Way to Combat Anti-Muslim Bias
The best way to curb anti-Muslim rhetoric the next time you witness it? Simply point out the other person's hypocrisy. But do it with some tact. A new study led by Emile Bruneau, a researcher and the director of the Peace and Conflict Neuroscience Lab at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, suggests that the best way to lower anti-Muslim feelings is to show individuals the hypocrisy of their stance. Bruneau became interested in figuring out the most effective way of combating anti-Muslim prejudice after he noticed his liberal friends responding online to Islamophobic sentiment in the wake of terrorist attacks.
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We’re Getting More Sleep. A Whole 18 Minutes. It’s Not Enough.
Years of scolding from health experts about a good night’s rest may be breaking through. Americans are finally getting more sleep — about 18 minutes more per weeknight compared with 2003. It may not sound like much, but researchers say it’s a positive sign. “If we only got more sleep, we would then see that we actually perform better and would probably be more creative and more productive during the day,” said Dr. Mathias Basner, the associate professor of sleep and chronobiology in psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania and the lead author of the analysis of federal survey data, published this month in the journal “Sleep.” The incremental gains took place over 13 years. Dr.
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Women Beat Expectations When Playing Chess Against Men
Ranked chess players’ data suggest that women playing against men perform better than expected based on official ratings
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Scientists Hate the NIH’s New Rules for Experimenting on Humans
She’s probably mostly kidding when she tells the origin story this way, but Kathy Hudson—until last year the deputy director for science, outreach, and policy at the National Institutes of Health—says that a massive update to the NIH’s rules for funding science started with humiliation. A pal who ran approvals at the Food and Drug Administration, Hudson says, “used to walk around and talk about how NIH funded small, crappy trials, and they would say it at big gatherings.” This was Washington, in front of congresspeople—or at conferences full of leading researchers. “I would get so pissed off,” Hudson says. But then, well, she took it to heart.
