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The Moral Science Behind Self-Driving Cars
An interdisciplinary team of researchers are conducting experiments to learn more about how people might react to the moral quandaries posed by self-driving cars.
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How Changing Predictions Affect Our Decision-Making
Pacific Standard: If you heard on the radio this morning that there was a 30 percent chance of rain, would you pack an umbrella? Now, what if that estimate represents a revision over the previous night’s forecast—down from 40 percent, say, or up from 20 percent? According to a new study, revisions like that affect how we subjectively perceive probabilities—and maybe how we make decisions about everything from umbrellas to climate change. ... But that is not how we human beings think about probability.
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A Small Fix in Mind-Set Can Keep Students in School
The Wall Street Journal: Education is the engine of social mobility and equality. But that engine has been sputtering, especially for the children who need help the most. Minority and disadvantaged children are especially likely to be suspended from school and to drop out of college. Why? Is it something about the students or something about the schools? And what can we do about it? Two recent studies published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offer some hope. Just a few brief, inexpensive, online interventions significantly reduced suspension and dropout rates, especially for disadvantaged groups.
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Tutors See Stereotypes and Gender Bias in SAT. Testers See None of the Above.
The New York Times: In an annual ritual, hundreds of thousands of students took the SAT this spring as they made their first steps toward applying to college. But they were not the only ones being tested. Sprinkled among them in May, when the SAT was given for the second time since a much-ballyhooed revamping, were a number of people long past college — members of the test-prep industry who took the exam to see how those changes played out in practice so that they could improve their tutoring services. Armed with perhaps sharper pencils and a more jaundiced eye than the typical 17-year-old, they noticed two questions that some thought could throw off the performance of girls. ...
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Does being paid hourly vs. yearly change how you save?
PBS: The majority of all workers in the United States were paid hourly last year. Typically, hourly wage earners have low incomes and are vulnerable to economic shocks. So we wondered, does being paid hourly instead of yearly somehow change the way people view themselves and their work? According to a well-established psychological theory known as “construal theory,” the answer is yes. According to construal theory, people view the distant future much differently than they view today, tomorrow or next week. When we think about long-term plans, we consider intangible factors like goals and desires. When we think about our future retirement, we envision ourselves relaxing on the golf course.
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The War on Stupid People
The Atlantic: As recently as the 1950s, possessing only middling intelligence was not likely to severely limit your life’s trajectory. IQ wasn’t a big factor in whom you married, where you lived, or what others thought of you. The qualifications for a good job, whether on an assembly line or behind a desk, mostly revolved around integrity, work ethic, and a knack for getting along—bosses didn’t routinely expect college degrees, much less ask to see SAT scores.
