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What If Everything You Knew About Disciplining Kids Was Wrong?
Mother Jones: Leigh Robinson was out for a lunchtime walk one brisk day during the spring of 2013 when a call came from the principal at her school. Will, a third-grader with a history of acting up in class, was flipping out on the playground. He'd taken off his belt and was flailing it around and grunting. The recess staff was worried he might hurt someone. Robinson, who was Will's educational aide, raced back to the schoolyard. Will was "that kid." Every school has a few of them: that kid who's always getting into trouble, if not causing it. That kid who can't stay in his seat and has angry outbursts and can make a teacher's life hell. That kid the other kids blame for a recess tussle.
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Some Advice on Advice: Timing Matters
We all need some advice sometimes, from getting help on a new project at work to making decisions about how to save for retirement. The problem is, we’re not always so good about taking other people’s advice. “A large literature shows that people do not take advice particularly well, often overweighting their own opinions or ignoring the advice that they receive,” according to Duke University psychological scientist Christina Rader. In a recent study, Rader and colleagues Jack Soll and Richard Larrick investigated how timing affects people’s willingness to follow outside advice. Are we more likely to follow advice before or after we’ve already had the chance to make our own decision?
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The Economics Of Happiness And A Country’s Income Inequality
NPR: Money can't buy you happiness, right? That's the assumption we've always had, and it feels good to feel that way. It's also been held by something called the Easterlin paradox that happiness is about lots of other stuff. Well, it turns out the story might be a little more complicated. ... There's new work by Shigehiro Oishi - he's a psychologist at the University of Virginia - that adds a wrinkle to the Easterlin paradox. So he told me that the United States is itself an example of the Easterlin paradox at work. GDP in the U.S. has grown much faster than happiness levels.
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Preterm Babies Have Less Wealth, Education in Adulthood
Parents: Across the globe, 15 million premature babies are born every year. Those who are born premature face adverse effects both academically and economically throughout their lifespan, according to a new study. The research, which was published in Psychological Science, suggests that preemies have lower academic abilities in childhood when compared to their peers. And when preemies enter adulthood, they are often less wealthy and have attained less education. In order to draw conclusions, researchers analyzed data from two large studies: Participants from the National Child Development Study were born in 1958 and those from the British Cohort Study were born in 1970.
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The psychology of why people like Steve Rannazzisi lie about having survived 9/11
The Washington Post: Steve Rannazzisi didn’t sound like someone putting on a show. “I was sort of the party starter of Merrill Lynch,” he said in an interview in 2009. “Until our building got hit with a plane.” “Oh, Christ,” his interviewer, the podcast host Marc Maron, interjected. “Yeah. And then the party ended right there.” Without tears or theatrics, Rannazzisi went on to explain that he was working on the 54th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. He felt the impact of a plane ramming into the first tower and ran outside to see what was happening. When the building began to crumble, “I just started f—ing booking it,” he told Maron.
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Making Government Logical
The New York Times: THERE wasn’t a lot of fanfare, but last week may turn out to be among the most consequential of President Obama’s second term. By executive order, Mr. Obama directed federal agencies to incorporate behavioral science — insights into how people actually make decisions — into their programs. When government programs fail, it is often because public officials are clueless about how human beings think and act. Federal, state and local governments make it far too hard for small businesses, developers, farmers, veterans and poor people to get permits, licenses, training and economic assistance.
