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365 days: Nature’s 10
Nature: When Brian Nosek was a graduate student in experimental psychology, he started working on the implicit-association test, which reveals people’s unconscious prejudices with the push of a button. Tap right every time a male name appears on a screen, for example, and left for a female name. That’s easy — but add some stereotypically male or female roles into the mix and things get interesting. Even the most liberal minds will sometimes stall when asked to press the same button for the word ‘executive’ and for the name ‘Susan’. The tests are challenging, informative and kind of fun. So in 1998 Nosek convinced his mentors, who had developed the test, to put it online.
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How to Be a Better Runner
Scientific American: I ran a marathon, once upon a time. (If you could call what I did “running.” It took me nearly five hours—you do the math.) Still, I did it: laced up my New Balances, pounded the pavement through five months of training, and then went ahead and finished the whole 26.2. Some folks, including my podiatrist (bunions), didn't think I could do it. But as sports psychologists I talked to told me, physical feats are often more about mind than matter. Just in time for those New Year's resolutions, here are five evidence-based tips for upping your running game—or any physical activity you choose. #1 Set a super clear goal.
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The One Question You Should Ask About Every New Job
The New York Times: TWO years ago, a student of mine named Nicole was torn on where to start her career. While applying for jobs in finance, technology, consulting and marketing, she suddenly realized that her biggest concern wasn’t what she did, but where she worked. ... The other three stories are “Will the Organization Help Me When I Have to Move?” “What Happens When a Boss Is Caught Breaking a Rule?” and “How Will the Organization Deal With Obstacles?” They’re all concerned with the same three issues.
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Dress for Success: How Clothes Influence Our Performance
Scientific American: The old advice to dress for the job you want, not the job you have, may have roots in more than simply how others perceive you—many studies show that the clothes you wear can affect your mental and physical performance. Although such findings about so-called enclothed cognition are mostly from small studies in the laboratory that have not yet been replicated or investigated in the real world, a growing body of research suggests that there is something biological happening when we put on a snazzy outfit and feel like a new person. ... Trying too hard to look sharp can backfire.
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Protecting a Few Students from Negative Stereotypes Benefits Entire Classroom
Interventions targeted at individual students can improve the classroom environment and trigger a second wave of benefits for all classmates, new research shows. The findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, indicate that sharing a classroom with greater numbers of students who participate in a brief intervention can boost all students’ grades over and above the initial benefits of the intervention. “Our results suggest that the whole effect of an intervention is more than the sum of its individual effects,” explains psychological scientist Joseph Powers of Stanford University, lead author on the study.
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Words are more precious than money for NSF
Science: House Republicans have backed off from a controversial attempt to set funding levels for specific disciplines within the National Science Foundation (NSF). They have also agreed to give NSF officials a freer hand in deciding whether a research proposal benefits society. The changes are contained in a budget agreement announced today that would give NSF a 1.6% increase, to $7.46 billion, in the 2016 fiscal year, which runs until 30 September. The added $119 million exceeds budget levels in separate bills that had stalled in the House and Senate. However, it falls well short of the 5.2% boost that President Barack Obama had requested in February for the agency. ...
