-
What to test instead
Boston Globe: Breaking down these multifaceted skills into testable qualities is difficult, and it’s something educators have been trying and failing to do for more than half a century. The first president of ETS, which has long administered the SAT, set out in 1948 to develop a test that could evaluate a student’s intellectual stamina, ability to get along with others, and so on—but the company eventually concluded it was too hard to measure in a reliable way. More recently, in the late 1980s and ’90s, the Harvard developmental psychologist Howard Gardner participated in an effort to design new kinds of tests in the humanities that could be graded objectively.
-
Our Preferences Change to Reflect the Choices We Make, Even Three Years Later
You’re in a store, trying to choose between similar shirts, one blue and one green. You don’t feel strongly about one over the other, but eventually you decide to buy the green one. You leave the store and a market researcher asks you about your purchase and which shirt you prefer. Chances are that you’d say you prefer the green one, the shirt you actually chose. As it turns out, this choice-induced preference isn’t limited to shirts. Whether we’re choosing between presidential candidates or household objects, research shows that we come to place more value on the options we chose and less value on the options we rejected.
-
Why Lies Often Stick Better Than Truth
The Chronicle of Higher Education: There is no good reason to believe vaccines cause autism. A 1998 paper in The Lancet that championed the link was immediately pilloried and later withdrawn as fraudulent. Its author, the British physician Andrew J. Wakefield, was found guilty of dishonesty and abuse of developmentally disabled children by the British General Medical Council. He has been stripped of his medical license. No other researcher has been able to replicate his work, and journals have retracted his other papers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Academy of Sciences, and many other groups found no evidence of a link.
-
Stress, depression may affect cancer survival
CNN: "A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ," John Steinbeck once wrote. Now we are closer to understanding why. A disease like cancer can be a mortal battle, often fraught with overwhelming stress. Given that stress management can be difficult even under ordinary circumstances, elevated feelings of anxiety and depression in cancer patients are certainly understandable. Yet, several recent studies underscore how critically important it is for those fighting illness to learn how to combat stress.
-
Q & A With Psychological Scientist Stephan Lewandowsky (Part 2)
Stephan Lewandowsky is a cognitive psychologist at the University of Western Australia. His research investigates memory and decision making, focusing on how people update information in memory. We asked Stephan Lewandowsky questions based on his recent paper on misinformation, published in the December issue of Psychological Science in the Public Interest. The report, "Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing", is co-authored by Ullrich Ecker of the University of Western Australia, Colleen Seifert and Norbert Schwarz of the University of Michigan, and John Cook of the University of Queensland.
-
The Peak Time for Everything
The Wall Street Journal: Could you pack more into each day if you did everything at the optimal time? A growing body of research suggests that paying attention to the body clock, and its effects on energy and alertness, can help pinpoint the different times of day when most of us perform our best at specific tasks, from resolving conflicts to thinking creatively. Most people organize their time around everything but the body's natural rhythms. Workday demands, commuting, social events and kids' schedules frequently dominate—inevitably clashing with the body's circadian rhythms of waking and sleeping.
