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There’s a Better Way to Brainstorm
The team brainstorming session is a common way for drumming up new ideas but research suggests that they have one big problem: Group interactions, like brainstorming, can actually inhibit idea generation. APS Fellow Paul B. Paulus of the University of Texas at Arlington has studied creativity in groups, and his research suggests that brainstorming doesn’t actually work as well as people might think. “In face-to-face settings, the opportunity to fully share information and knowledge is limited by the fact that only one person can express his or her ideas at one time,” Paulus and colleagues write in a recent study.
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Real Fixes for Workplace Bias
The Wall Street Journal: Corporations, not-for-profit groups and governments spend billions of dollars every year on diversity training—without knowing whether the programs work. A review of almost 1,000 studies on interventions aimed at reducing prejudice found that most programs weren’t tested. For the few that were, including media campaigns and corporate-diversity training, the effects, wrote Elizabeth Levy Paluck of Princeton and Donald P. Green of Yale in the Annual Review of Psychology (2009), “remain unknown.” ... What would it mean to transfer such insights to ordinary work environments? A good starting point is to ensure that the language in job advertisements is gender neutral.
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Where We Live Affects Our Bias Against Mixed-Race Individuals
Whites living in areas where they are less exposed to people of other races have a harder time categorizing mixed-race individuals than do Whites with greater interracial exposure, a condition that is associated with greater
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Stanford psychologist tells us how to fight workplace burnout
Chicago Tribune: At the end of a work day, do you feel spent, burned out, fit for nothing more strenuous than a glass of wine and a couch-based communion with your favorite TV show? Join the club. While working hard is admirable, our tendency to stay in a state of high alert can deplete us, both mentally and physically, according to Emma Seppala, the science director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University, and author of the new book "The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success." "There's a better way to manage our energy," Seppala says. Read the whole story: Chicago Tribune
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Even Astronauts Get The Blues: Or Why Boredom Drives Us Nuts
NPR: The poet John Berryman once wrote, "My mother told me as a boy (repeatingly) 'Ever to confess you're bored means you have no inner resources.' I conclude now I have no inner resources, because I am heavy bored." We've all been there: bored in class, bored at work, bored in stand still traffic. But why do we find boredom so unbearable? And, if we hate boredom so much, why do we still take boring jobs? This week on Hidden Brain, we try to answer these questions and more – hopefully, without boring you. ... The researcher Peter Ubel and his colleague, David Comerford, were curious about why people elect to do boring work.
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The Superior Social Skills of Bilinguals
The New York Times: BEING bilingual has some obvious advantages. Learning more than one language enables new conversations and new experiences. But in recent years, psychology researchers have demonstrated some less obvious advantages of bilingualism, too. For instance, bilingual children may enjoy certain cognitive benefits, such as improved executive function — which is critical for problem solving and other mentally demanding activities. // g?c=a+f+c:(g+=f.length,f=a.indexOf("&",g),c=0
