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The Hazards of Going on Autopilot
The New Yorker: At 9:18 P.M. on February 12, 2009, Continental Connection Flight 3407, operated by Colgan Air, took off from Newark International Airport. Rebecca Shaw, the first officer, was feeling ill and already dreaming of the hotel room that awaited in Buffalo. The captain, Marvin Renslow, assured her that she’d feel just fine once they landed. As the plane climbed to its cruising altitude of sixteen thousand feet, the pair continued to chat amiably, exchanging stories about Shaw’s ears and Renslow’s Florida home. The flight was a short one and, less than an hour after takeoff, the plane began its initial descent. At 10:06 P.M., it dropped below ten thousand feet.
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Should the SAT be optional?
Quartz: Recently, several colleges and universities in the US have declared that applicants no longer need to submit their SAT or ACT scores to be considered for admission. Numerous schools have gone test optional; in fact, Bowdoin College has been test optional since 1969. However, when available, standardized test scores have been used almost uniformly in making admission decisions at most schools, with the SAT being used since 1926 and the ACT since 1959. Testing has come under intense scrutiny, and an ongoing discussion over its usefulness in college admissions has followed them to this day.
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Labors Lost? Memories of Childbirth
The Huffington Post: I'm told, by women I trust, that childbirth is an experience unlike any other. These women have vivid and enduring memories of labor and birth, becoming a mother, giving life. They recall the event as profound and magical and life-changing -- and also very painful. Nobody questions the physical intensity of labor and childbirth, but how do we know how painful the experience really is? Does recall -- especially months and years later -- accurately reflect the experienced pain? This is not just an academic question. Mothers' lasting feelings about the experience of childbirth -- good or bad -- are closely tied to remembered pain.
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Nobody in America Trusts Anyone, Says New Study
New York Magazine: Trust: It's really important both for interpersonal relationships and for things like, say, having government that can function at all. Unfortunately, America is running on a serious trust deficit at the moment, if the numbers behind a new Psychological Science paper are to be believed. And the culprit, argue the authors, is inequality — when people feel that the rich are the only Americans doing well, their trust plummets as a result. Read the whole story: New York Magazine
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How to Motivate Students to Work Harder
The Atlantic: Over the past five years, more than $200 million has gone toward launching the new Common Core standards, with the goal of closing achievement gaps in public schools. But for all their meticulous detail about math and language curricula, the standards fail to address one important factor: the psychological barriers that stand between many students and deeper learning. Unless students are motivated to take on the new standards, and persuaded that they’re up to the challenge, the Common Core could have the unintended effect of leaving many students even further behind.
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Why Flunking Exams Is Actually a Good Thing
The New York Times: Imagine that on Day 1 of a difficult course, before you studied a single thing, you got hold of the final exam. The motherlode itself, full text, right there in your email inbox — attached mistakenly by the teacher, perhaps, or poached by a campus hacker. No answer key, no notes or guidelines. Just the questions. Would that help you study more effectively? Of course it would. You would read the questions carefully. You would know exactly what to focus on in your notes. Your ears would perk up anytime the teacher mentioned something relevant to a specific question. You would search the textbook for its discussion of each question.
