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Lean Out: The Dangers For Women Who Negotiate
The New Yorker: This spring, an aspiring professor—W, as she’s chosen to call herself in a blog post about the experience—attempted to negotiate her tenure-track job offer with the Nazareth College philosophy department. She wanted a slightly higher salary than the starting offer, paid maternity leave for one semester, a pre-tenure sabbatical, a cap on the number of new classes that she would teach each semester, and a deferred starting date. “I know that some of these might be easier to grant than others,” she acknowledged in her e-mail. “Let me know what you think.” Nazareth didn’t hesitate to do just that: W wrote that the college promptly let her know that she was no longer welcome.
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Character Lab Opens Request for Proposals
Character Lab, a nonprofit cofounded by Angela Duckworth, is working to help fund, and eventually scale, interventions to boost student character strengths and skills in school settings. To this end, we are excited to share with you Character Lab's Request for Proposals (RFP), which can be found at www.characterlab.org/research/2014-rfp/. Through this RFP, Character Lab will award a total of $1.2 million in grants to support the execution of two-year, school-based research projects focused on grit, self-control, gratitude, open-mindedness and/or prosocial purpose during the 2015–2016 and 2016–2017 school years. Each proposal may request up to $300,000.
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A Captive African Elephant Calf Exhibits Precocious Social Relationships
African elephants (Loxodonta africana) in their native habitats live in groups of 2 to 50 elephants called family units, usually containing genetically related adult females and calves and juveniles of both sexes. A calf spends most of its time near its mother. Older calves increase the time they spend with other members of the family unit. “Allomothers,” usually young female relatives, assist in rearing a calf by providing comfort and safety. The dominant animal in the group (the “matriarch”) plays a critical role in group dynamics and survival.
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Language, Mind, and Human Nature
Hailed as one of the world’s most influential people, experimental psychologist Steven Pinker’s interests span all aspects of language, mind, and human nature. In his classic book The Language Instinct, Pinker argues that languages are learned but that language is an instinct — an evolutionary adaptation for the communication of complex ideas. Pinker has studied the meaning and acquisition of verbs, and what they tell us about concepts of causation, space, time, and intentions.
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Why You Should Freak Out More, Not Less, Over Your Profile Photos
New York Magazine: We've all spent too much time obsessing over our profile pictures on Facebook, dating websites, and everywhere else. It would be nice to think we're being neurotic, that it doesn't actually matter whether you use that photo where you look coy-happy or the one where you're a bit more mischievous-happy. But a new study in Psychological Science suggests otherwise: Even subtle differences between photos of the same person can greatly alter others' first impressions of them. Look at the images above.
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George Washington Trumps Pinocchio When It Comes to Promoting Honesty in Kids
Pacific Standard: Once upon a time, a group of researchers began to wonder whether telling children traditional stories meant to instill a sense of honesty actually worked. So they took three classic tales, shared them with three- to seven-year-olds, and waited for the results. To their surprise, they found only one story—the one about young George Washington chopping down the cherry tree—was effective in getting fibbing kids to fess up. While hearing that tale produced only a modest improvement in honesty, the other two stories had no impact whatsoever. Read the whole story: Pacific Standard