-
Turns Out You Really Do Think Brilliant Thoughts in the Shower
New York Magazine: The timeline of big moments in human history is littered with sudden, seemingly random realizations. Rene Descartes, for instance, came up with the idea for Cartesian geometry while watching a fly zoom around his bedroom. Paul McCartney wrote “Yesterday” after the fully formed tune plopped itself into his brain (“I woke up one morning with a tune in my head,” he later recalled, “and thought, ‘Hey, I don’t know this tune — or do I?’”) Then there’s the guy who gave the eureka moment its name: Archimedes, the ancient Greek mathematician who noticed when he settled in for a bath that the density of an object could be measured by the volume of water it displaced.
-
Withdrawn Children Show Predictable Brain Activity During Social Interactions
New scientific findings provide insight into the brain activity of socially withdrawn children.
-
Why millennials struggle for success
CNN: "What's wrong with millennials?" This is a question many older Americans are asking. Why do they keep changing their minds about what they want to do with their lives? Why does even a hint of critical feedback send them into a tailspin of self-doubt? In a word, why don't they have more grit? Read the whole story: CNN
-
Distracted Driving: What It Will Take To Lower Fatalities
The Diane Rehm Show: Texting while behind the wheel is illegal in most states. Warnings abound about the risks of distracted driving; Texting alone can make you twenty-three times more likely to crash. And yet drivers are still doing it. A lot. New numbers say 70% of crashes could be due to distracted driving. And it’s not just teens. Meanwhile, traffic fatalities overall are rising sharply. Many experts now say the problem has reached crisis levels, and requires radical new thinking. One proposed solution: a device that lets police officers view cell phone activity after a crash, the way a breathalyzer checks for alcohol levels. What it will take to meaningfully reduce distracted driving.
-
Ne cliquez pas sur cet article, ou vous le regretterez (Do not click on this article, or you will regret it)
Slate: Ne vous a-t-on jamais dit que la curiosité est un vilain défaut? Une étude démontre que si celle-ci a permis de faire avancer l’humanité, elle nous pousse parfois à prendre des décisions que nous savons mauvaises, rapporte Science Daily. Pour mener à bien cette expérience, publiée le 21 mars 2016 dans la revue Psychological Science, deux chercheurs de l’université de Chicago et de Wisconsin-Madison ont testé cinquante-quatre étudiants à leur insu. C’est dans la salle d’attente de l’expérience à laquelle ils avaient accepté de participer que les observations ont eu lieu.
-
Some Vowel Sounds Pack a Punch for Brands
When naming a company or a product, marketers may want to pay extra attention to the exact syllables they’re considering. New research demonstrates that specific sounds can convey an impressive amount of symbolic meaning, which can influence the way people perceive a brand. Across five studies, a team led by University of Toronto psychological scientists Cristina Rabaglia and Sam Maglio demonstrated that people intuitively associate front vowel sounds—those produced with the tongue relatively far forward in the mouth, such as the “ee” in feet—with nearby objects. Conversely, vowel sounds produced with the tongue far back in the mouth, such as the “oo” in food, are associated with distance.
