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Muscle Head
The New York Times: “Feel the burn!” That was Jane Fonda in 1982, exhorting the viewers of her first-of-its-kind workout video to engage in an exotic pursuit called exercise. In her striped leotard and legwarmers, Fonda led the charge against the generally held opinion that exercise was a weird waste of time. (In those days, lifting weights was for Charles Atlas aspirants, and jogging was for quirky “health nuts.”) The tireless exertions of Fonda — and of tiny-shorted Richard Simmons and toothy Judi Sheppard Missett, the founder of Jazzercise — were ultimately wildly successful, making what was then an eccentric choice into what is now practically an obligation.
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Kids Come to Like Their Own Before They Dislike “Outsiders”
Social groups form along all sorts of lines -- from nationality to age to shared interests, and everything in between. We come to identify with our groups, whichever those might be, to the point where we prefer people who belong to our groups and discriminate against those who don't. These group affiliations undoubtedly confer tangible and intangible benefits, but those benefits often come at a cost to members of other so-called out-groups. Given the consequences for human societies, researchers David Buttelman and Robert Bohm of the University of Erfurt in Germany set out to investigate the early origins of intergroup discrimination.
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At Airports, a Misplaced Faith in Body Language
The New York Times: Like the rest of us, airport security screeners like to think they can read body language. The Transportation Security Administration has spent some $1 billion training thousands of “behavior detection officers” to look for facial expressions and other nonverbal clues that would identify terrorists. But critics say there’s no evidence that these efforts have stopped a single terrorist or accomplished much beyond inconveniencing tens of thousands of passengers a year. The T.S.A. seems to have fallen for a classic form of self-deception: the belief that you can read liars’ minds by watching their bodies. Read the whole story: The New York Times
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Ways of Remembering
Larry Jacoby is one of the world’s foremost researchers on memory — specifically on the difference between conscious and automatic memory. The distinction is useful for better understanding age-related differences in memory performance. His studies reveal, for example, that our ability to recall specific events declines as we age, spurring us to rely on unconscious, automatic memories. These unconscious influences can be misleading, often tricking people into remembering events that never really occurred. In addition to further refining theory about memory, one of Jacoby’s fundamental research goals is to develop procedures for the diagnosis and treatment of memory deficits.
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How to Succeed Professionally by Helping Others
The Atlantic: Kat Cole started helping out early. Raised by a single mother of three who held three jobs to support the family, Cole entered the workforce as soon as it was legal. At 15, she started selling clothes at a mall. At 17, she added a second job at a restaurant—first as a hostess and then as a waitress. After juggling these jobs through high school, Cole became the first person in her family to attend college. She studied engineering and planned to go to law school, but those aspirations would soon be shattered. The restaurant was Hooters, and Cole continued working there in college. When a cook quit, she volunteered to fill in.
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European Association for Behavior Analysis Conference
The 7th biannual conference of the European Association for Behaviour Analysis (EABA) will be held in Stockholm, Sweden from September 10 through 13, 2014. Visit the EABA website to submit a paper, poster, or symposium or to view conference details.
