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Why “Yes” Is More Powerful Than “No”
Getting up the nerve to ask your boss for a raise or promotion can feel excruciating. Although we might dread the prospect of asking the boss—or even a colleague—for a favor, a large body of evidence suggests that we’re actually much better at influencing others than we might imagine. “Potential requesters stress about imposing on others, feel self-conscious about revealing their shortcomings, and fear the worst—rejection,” Cornell University psychological scientist Vanessa Bohns writes in a new article in Current Directions in Psychological Science.
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UNSW researchers find human intuition does exist
The Sydney Morning Herald: Ever had a hunch? Gone with a gut instinct? Felt something in your bones? People have long believed in intuition: the idea that we can make successful decisions without rational, analytical thought or inference. Now it turns out there is such a thing as human intuition - and it can be tested scientifically. ... "There's lots of really cool stories about it, but no one's been able to show that it really exists and how it works," said Associate Professor Joel Pearson, who led new research into intuition at the University of NSW's School of Psychology. Read the whole story: The Sydney Morning Herald
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Girls are still afraid of math, even when their moms are scientists
Quartz: Understanding why girls do worse than boys (pdf) in math, and why they have more anxiety about the subject, is complicated. Cultural norms that favor boys, teacher bias, and even parents’ own math anxiety all seem to play a role. By that logic, things should be better in more countries where lots of women hold powerful math and engineering jobs. They are not. A new study shows that even when countries where lots of moms have high-status STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) jobs, math anxiety for girls is significant. What’s more, the gap between girls’ and boys anxiety in math is bigger in more developed and equitable countries.
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Hey! What Are You Laughing At?
NPR: Humor is a funny thing. We know it when we see it, but identifying why something is humorous is another thing entirely. In fact, explaining why a joke is funny is a pretty reliable way to sap it of all humor. Yet, psychologists have taken on a more ambitious task: the task of explaining what differentiates the humorous from the unhumorous — the funny from the not-so-much. In a paper published last month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, psychologists Caleb Warren and Peter McGraw find support for what they call the "benign violation" theory of humor.
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Do Children in France Have a Healthier Relationship With Alcohol?
The New York Times: The Italian Senator Dario Stefàno proposed a bill last month that would require schools in Italy to teach one hour of wine culture a week to students starting at age 6. Mr. Stefàno clarified that the intention was to teach children about the cultural importance of wine in Italy, rather than to teach them to drink. But the idea of wine education for children would seem very foreign to most American parents. ... One of us, Katherine Kinzler, was part of a team of researchers that found that by 12 months, babies are learning what foods are eaten in their culture. In the study, American babies were given two foods to try.
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How a dating app for burrito-lovers exposed one of online dating’s biggest myths
The Washington Post: The only conceivably good thing about branded April Fools’ pranks is that they’re confined to a 24-hour period. The press releases go out; the “jokes” get mocked and aggregated; and within a day it’s all disappeared from our minds and homepages. But this year, one prank remains stubbornly present, almost four weeks after the day came and went. In fact, Burrit-oh! — the dating site that pairs singles based solely on their taste in portable Mexican — has proven so unexpectedly successful that maker Zoosk is thinking of keeping it. “We all thought this was a really good idea and hoped it would take off,” said Megan Murray, the site’s senior content strategist.
