-
One Sibling Works for B’s; One Gets Easy A’s
The New York Times: Two weeks ago, I was hanging out after a speaking engagement, answering questions and chatting with some parents, when two women approached me with a great Parent-Teacher Conference question. These moms wanted to know how to parent siblings with differing talents and academic abilities. Specifically, one of the mothers wanted to know how she could best support one of her children, who works herself to the bone for B’s, while the other sibling seems to earn A’s with very little effort. As a parent of two boys with very different personalities, interests and skills, this is a question I’ve been itching to research myself. ...
-
Standardized tests discriminate against the next Einsteins and Teslas
Quartz: At 16, Albert Einstein wrote his first scientific paper titled “The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields.” This was the result of his famous gedanken experiment in which he visually imagined chasing after a light beam. The insights he gained from this thought experiment led to the development of his theory of special relativity. At 5, Nikola Tesla informed his father that he would harness the power of water. What resulted was his creation of a water-powered egg beater. Tesla, who invented the basis of alternating current (AC) power systems, had the unusual talent to imagine his inventions entirely in his mind before building them.
-
The Right Way To Talk To Yourself
The Brilliant Blog: n the privacy of our minds, we all talk to ourselves—an inner monologue that might seem rather pointless. As one scientific paper on self-talk asks: “What can we tell ourselves that we don’t already know?” But as that study and others go on to show, the act of giving ourselves mental messages can help us learn and perform at our best. Researchers have identified the most effective forms of self-talk, collected here—so that the next time you talk to yourself, you know exactly what you should say. Self-talk isn’t just motivational messages like “You can do it!” or “Almost there,” although this internal cheering section can give us confidence.
-
Are You a Career Adapter?
Over the course of your career, you’ll change jobs, get promoted, take on new responsibilities, encounter new technologies, and adjust to new supervisors, co-workers and subordinates. You might assume that your ability to navigate through those changes rests in large part on your personality traits. But new behavioral research paints a more nuanced view of what scientists call career adaptability—the ability to manage existing and impending career challenges. An international team of vocational psychologists recently developed a new measure, the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS), to assess how individuals manage their career development.
-
Boosting Self-Worth Can Counteract Cognitive Effects of Poverty
For people in poverty, remembering better times — such as past success — improves cognitive functioning by several IQ points and increases their willingness to seek help from crucial aid services, a study finds.
-
Inferring Missing Information
Every day people make judgments and decisions, even when they don’t have the necessary information. Ramadhar Singh studied how people, when making predictions about others, infer the missing information from the facts they do have. In his research, Singh first experimentally demonstrated that Predicted gift size = Generosity x Capability (Income). Based on this evidence, he then identified that inferred value of the missing capability information increases with the given value of generosity information. In contrast, inferred value of the missing generosity information is constant usually around the middle level of generosity in the donor.
