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We Know You Hate ‘Moist.’ What Other Words Repel You?
The New York Times: Moist. Luggage. Crevice. Stroke. Slacks. Phlegm How did those words make you feel? Certain everyday words drive some people crazy, a phenomenon experts call “word aversion.” But one word appears to rise above all others: “moist.” For that reason, a recent paper in the journal PLOS One used the word as a stand-in to explore why people find some terms repellent. “It doesn’t really fit into a lot of existing categories for how people think about the psychology of language,” the study’s author, Paul Thibodeau, a professor of psychology at Oberlin College, said of moist.
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Why Richer People Spend More Time With Their Friends
The Atlantic: In the 1994 movie adaptation of the comic book Richie Rich, Macaulay Culkin plays a boy whose immense wealth keeps him having from a normal, friend-filled childhood. The movie’s happy ending—Richie ditches his stuffy prep-school milieu and becomes rich in friendship with some middle-class kids from the sandlot—points to a reassuring PG-movie morality. However, according to a new study in Social Psychological and Personality Science, it may actually be high earnings that bestow Americans with the ability to spend more time with friends.
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Better Math Skills Predict Bigger Bank Accounts
Having a head for numbers is an ability that people can bank on—quite literally. Being good with numbers gives people an edge in all kinds of jobs, from investment banking to professional poker. But the ability to quickly and intuitively crunch numbers—a skill called numeracy—doesn’t just give people an edge in math class. New research shows that it can also lead to greater personal wealth. Numeracy skills go beyond the capacity to calculate numbers, extending to other important abilities like reasoning, information processing, and accurately analyzing risk.
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With Food, Similar Substitutes Are Less Satisfying
While people tend to prefer the food option that’s most similar to the item they can’t have, they’re likely to be more satisfied with the option that diverges a bit.
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To Help Students Learn, Engage the Emotions
The New York Times: Before she became a neuroscientist, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang was a seventh-grade science teacher at a school outside Boston. One year, during a period of significant racial and ethnic tension at the school, she struggled to engage her students in a unit on human evolution. After days of apathy and outright resistance to Ms.
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The wealthier you get, the less social you are. Here’s why it matters.
Vox: Rich Americans aren't only getting richer. They're becoming more isolated from the rest of America, too. A recent analysis of survey data from more than 100,000 Americans finds that the rich spend significantly less time socializing than low-income Americans. On average, they spend 6.4 fewer evenings per year in social situations. Rich Americans spend less time socializing with their family and neighbors — although they do spend more time socializing with friends. The study is part of a growing body of research that suggests a yawning gap between what it means to be rich and poor in the United States. ...
