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Why ‘Busy’ Is A Four-Letter Word
The Huffington Post: Lately I’ve caught myself using language I’m not proud of. Specifically, a four-letter word that, when I hear someone else say it, makes me cringe and think to myself, “Really? Is that all you’ve got?” The word is…busy. When someone asks, “Hey how’re you doing?” my response is some variation of that word: “Really busy. Soooo busy. Crazy busy!” And their reply is often, “Yeah, me too!” or, “Better than the alternative.” And yes, having a lot on my plate is a good thing. I have ongoing, challenging projects with great colleagues. I have a family that needs and loves me and plans with friends I look forward to—lucky me!
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You Probably Don’t Know Who Your Work Rivals Are
New York Magazine: In most cases, it’s pretty easy to know who your work friends are: the people you goof off with on Slack, or vent to when a colleague does something annoying, or naturally gravitate toward during the office happy hours. There’s no easy strategy, though, for figuring out who your rivals are — the ones competing against you for the boss’s attention, or the leadership slot in that cool new project, or even a higher spot in the office social hierarchy.
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Long-Sought Research Deregulation Is Upon Us. Don’t Squander the Moment.
The Chronicle of Higher Education: It has been a 40-year labor: Regulatory systems are not easy to undo. Nevertheless, in January the federal government opened the door for universities to deregulate vast portions of research in the social sciences, law, and the humanities. This long-sought and welcome reform of the regulations requiring administrative oversight of federally funded human-subject research on college campuses limits the scope of institutional review board, or IRB, management by exempting low-risk research with human subjects from the board’s review.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Estimating Parallel Processing in a Language Task Using Single-Trial Intracerebral Electroencephalography A.-Sophie Dubarry, Anais Llorens, Agnès Trébuchon, Romain Carron, Catherine Liégeois-Chauvel, Christian-G. Bénar, and F.-Xavier Alario There is still much debate as to whether cognitive processing occurs sequentially or in parallel for specific tasks. The authors examined the extent to which parallel processing occurs during picture naming by recording intercerebral activity from the cortex of patients with epilepsy while they performed a picture-naming task.
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Why We Can’t Look Away From Our Screens
The New York Times: In a new book, “Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked,” the social psychologist Adam Alter warns that many of us — youngsters, teenagers, adults — are addicted to modern digital products. Not figuratively, but literally addicted. Dr. Alter, 36, is an associate professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University who researches psychology and marketing. We spoke for two hours last week at the offices of The New York Times. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity and brevity. Read the whole story: The New York Times
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Why You (And Everyone You Know) Felt Compelled to Share That BuzzFeed Quiz on Facebook
Fortune: Scrolling through the average Facebook feed is often a baffling experience. Why, for instance, did that aunt’s friend decide now was a good time repost an article about Pizzagate? And why, for a hot second a couple years ago, did it seem as if every single friend from college was posting the inexplicably popular BuzzFeed quiz, “What Country Do You Actually Belong In?” While a pair of new studies doesn’t provide answers to these exact questions, they do examine and analyze what goes on in our brains when we decide to share content.