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Can Leadership Potential be Predicted at Age 10?
New research concludes that the foundations of leadership may be laid early in life, suggesting that our cognitive abilities as children strongly influence our odds of moving up the corporate ladder as adults. Analyzing data from almost 17,000 working individuals in the UK collected in two major studies over a span of 4 decades, psychological scientists Michael Daly, Mark Egan, and Fionnuala O'Reilly of Stirling University found that high scores for cognitive abilities at age 10 dramatically improved the odds of becoming the boss by age 50.
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Forgetting the Pain of Exercise
The New York Times: Completing a marathon can be exhilarating but also agonizing. Thighs cramp. Backs ache. Toes bleed. Stomachs churn. Afterward, leg muscles can become so sore and tight that finishers must ease themselves backward down stairs and request assistance to rise from the toilet. Yet, despite these aches and indignities, many of us who have finished a marathon will eagerly sign up later for another, to the occasional bafflement of friends or loved ones who saw us after the first race, peeling off bloody socks. ...
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How Can Students Better Apply Math Learning? New Studies Hold Answers
Education Week: Mathematics is the language of science, the foundation of engineering, the power switch for new technology—but students often struggle to transfer their understanding of math concepts to practical application in other STEM subjects. Researchers at the Association of Psychological Science conference here last month discussed new findings on ways to help students link their math learning to science, technology, and engineering. Read the whole story: Education Week
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The Flexibility of Racial Bias
Scientific American: The city of Baltimore was rocked by protests and riots over the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African American man who died in police custody. Tragically, Gray’s death was only one of a recent in a series of racially-charged, often violent, incidents. On April 4th, Walter Scott was fatally shot by a police officer after fleeing from a routine traffic stop. ... It would be easy to see in all this powerful evidence that racism is a permanent fixture in America’s social fabric and even, perhaps, an inevitable aspect of human nature. Indeed, the mere act of labeling others according to their age, gender, or race is a reflexive habit of the human mind.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: It's All in the Family: Brain Asymmetry and Syntactic Processing of Word Class Chia-lin Lee and Kara D. Federmeier The specialization of the left hemisphere for language processing is considered to be one of the key examples of functional lateralization in the brain; however, studies now indicate that the right hemisphere may play a larger role in language than was once assumed. Electroencephalographic data were collected as right-handed participants judged the grammaticality of phrases presented in the left or right visual field.
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To Treat Depression, a New Approach Tries Training the Brain
The Wall Street Journal: Should depression be treated more like a stroke? That’s the view of a growing number of researchers developing new psychological treatments that aim to directly target the particular brain dysfunctions and cognitive and emotional processes understood to underlie depression. The approach is to think of a brain region that goes awry as “more like a muscle that is atrophied,” says Greg J. Siegle, director of the Program in Cognitive Affective Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. “The solution to an atrophied muscle is to rehab it.” ... About two-thirds of depressed people have this negative attention bias, says Christopher G.
