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How Schools Are Failing Their Quietest Students
New York Magazine: In 2013, educator and writer Jessica Lahey wrote a convincing piece for The Atlantic in which she argued that her introverted students needed to learn to speak up in class. In it, she defended her decision to keep class participation as a small but significant portion of her students’ grades. The quieter kids in the class simply needed to learn how to speak up in “a world where most people won’t stop talking,” she wrote. Two years later, she changed her mind. ... One of their central arguments is that introverts are different from extroverts not just on a behavioral level — their physiology is distinct, too, in a real, measurable way.
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Donald Trump, Con Artist?
The New Yorker: Late last month, on “Good Morning America,” “CBS This Morning,” and other political talk shows, Marco Rubio called Donald Trump “a con artist.” (“We’re on the verge of having someone take over the conservative movement and the Republican Party who’s a con artist,” he said, on “Today.”) Trump, Rubio argued, has made a career of “sticking it to working Americans”; several of his businesses had gone bankrupt and some, like Trump University, may have been fraudulent. Rubio implied that Trump’s Presidential campaign was another instance of intentional deception. It’s a message we’ve heard not just from Rubio, but from Ted Cruz and Mitt Romney, as well as various pundits.
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Does a “Triple Package” of Traits Predict Success?
What makes one person more successful than another? For decades, social scientists have been trying to identify the factors that lead some people, but not others, to land dream jobs in high-paying, prestigious careers. While there’s certainly no set formula for becoming a success, researchers have identified several social factors that can certainly help your chances. Educational attainment, general intelligence, and the Big-Five personality trait of conscientiousness have all been shown to consistently predict job performance, income, wealth accumulation, and status attainment. But what about other social factors?
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Why Meeting a First Date for Breakfast Might not Be a Bad Idea
Scientific American: Every day we make decisions that have important implications for our happiness and how we live our lives. Whether we are studying for an exam, preparing for a job interview, or deciding on the best outfit for a first blind date, these very different situations have something in common: They happen at a certain time of day, a time we often can choose or control. When making decisions, we often don’t consider how the time of day might affect our choices. Rather, we decide on a time based on what’s most convenient to us. Yet recent research suggests that time of day has an important effect on our behavior and the actions of others. ...
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Empathy May Be Overrated in an Election, and in a Leader
The New York Times: Is empathy an essential virtue for a presidential candidate? The conventional wisdom is that a good candidate must be able to feel your pain. Bill Clinton was hailed by pundits as a virtuoso of empathy, supposedly riding that quality to triumph over George H.W. Bush, who was so often said to be short of empathy that he felt compelled to tell an audience, “Message: I care.” ... Other researchers, though, argue that empathy isn’t as irrational as it seems. They see it as not just a knee-jerk reflex but as something we can control.
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Rethinking the Rules for Police Interrogations
Undark: ON SEPTEMBER 3, 2006, a 16-year-old boy named Bobby Johnson confessed to murdering a retiree in New Haven, Connecticut. In his statement, Johnson said he borrowed a gun from his cousin. Then he and a younger friend robbed the old man and shot him through the window of an idling car. Johnson pleaded guilty at trial. He was sentenced to 38 years in prison. It was an open-and-shut case — or so it seemed. ... Johnson, for instance, had an IQ of 69, but there are few legal protections for people like him. Police cannot hurt or threaten suspects, but many psychological techniques — including lying about evidence — have been widely upheld as non-coercive.
