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Seeing the Glass as Half Full: Taking a New Look at Cognition and Aging
From a cognitive perspective, aging is typically associated with decline. As we age, it may get harder to remember names and dates, and it may take us longer to come up with the right answer to a question. But the news isn’t all bad when it comes to cognitive aging, according to a set of three articles in the July 2014 issue of Perspectives in Psychological Science. Plumbing the depths of the available scientific literature, the authors of the three articles show how several factors -- including motivation and crystallized knowledge -- can play important roles in supporting and maintaining cognitive function in the decades past middle age.
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Practice May Not Be As Important As People Think
New York Magazine: Practice is a hot concept, especially in the age of high-stakes testing and Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell, you may recall, claimed in his 2008 book Outliers that it takes 10,000 hours of practice time (or therabouts) to achieve mastery of a skill. Since then, the claim has come in for a fair amount of debunking, and a new study in Psychological Science further complicates things. Practice, accordings to its findings, doesn't do a great job explaining why some people are better than others at a given skill.
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People Prefer Electric Shocks to Being Alone With Their Thoughts
The Atlantic: Considering the many challenges life has to offer, entertaining yourself with your own thoughts for a few minutes seems like one of the easier hurdles to overcome. You could recall your favorite childhood memory, plan your weekend, or try to solve a problem from work. But it turns out that people find this assignment incredibly hard. And, according to new research, they’ll even resort to giving themselves electric shocks to keep themselves entertained.
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The Secret of Effective Motivation
The New York Times: THERE are two kinds of motive for engaging in any activity: internal and instrumental. If a scientist conducts research because she wants to discover important facts about the world, that’s an internal motive, since discovering facts is inherently related to the activity of research. If she conducts research because she wants to achieve scholarly renown, that’s an instrumental motive, since the relation between fame and research is not so inherent. Often, people have both internal and instrumental motives for doing what they do. What mix of motives — internal or instrumental or both — is most conducive to success?
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How Feeling Grateful Improves Your Decision Making
Forbes: Ancient wisdom traditions have long held that gratitude is a prerequisite for fulfillment. Focusing on what we have, instead of what we think we need, fortifies the mind against rampant desire that ultimately leaves us feeling empty. The difficulty we face in living out that wisdom comes in the form of challenges to self-control – our perilous dance with instant gratification and temptation. Now new research suggests that gratitude can help us out here as well, by improving our decision-making chops by fortifying our patience.
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3 Things Everyone Should Know Before Growing Up
NPR: With peak graduation season just behind us, we've all had the chance to hear and learn from commencement speeches — without even needing to attend a graduation. They're often full of useful advice for the future as seniors move on from high school and college. But what about the stuff you wish you'd been told long before graduation? Here are just three of the many things I wish I'd known in high school, accumulated at various points along the way to becoming a professor of psychology. Read the whole story: NPR
