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Chopping the Cherry Tree: How Kids Learn Honesty
Back in the 90s, in the midst of the so-called culture wars, Republican moralist William Bennett published a hefty collection of stories and fables and poems called the Book of Virtues. The bestselling volume extolled timeless values like courage and compassion and honesty. At the same time, Herbert Kohl and Colin Greer authored an anthology called A Call To Character, which also used stories to promote a somewhat different set of timeless values. The dueling miscellanies represented a fundamental and acrimonious division over how to raise and instruct the next generation of American citizens.
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You Feel Closer to Your Destination Even When You’re Not
Pacific Standard: If there’s one thing science is good at, it’s showing us how things we do every day affect the way we think and feel about the world in ways we’d never imagine. Take, for example, moving around. You probably wouldn’t expect the simple act of getting closer or further away from a place changes your perspective on that place very much, if at all. But, according to a new study, it totally does. Sam Maglio and Evan Polman, of the University of Toronto and University of Wisconsin-Madison, respectively, recently hit the streets of Toronto and Vancouver and interviewed pedestrians at strategically chosen subway stops, crosswalks, and a mall.
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Delay That’s in Our DNA
The Wall Street Journal: If your first impulse is to put off reading this column, your parents may be the reason. But read it anyway, because impulsiveness and procrastination so often go hand in hand. In a new paper, researchers at the University of Colorado have found that each of the two traits is nearly half heritable, with no genetic factors unique to either trait alone. They go together, in other words, like peanut butter and jelly. The connection may sound counterintuitive, since at first blush impulsiveness seems like the opposite of procrastination. The former, after all, involves acting rashly, while the latter is about irrational delay.
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Our Gullible Brains
The Atlantic: Can a person be bright? Cold? Soft? Sweet? When the psychologists Solomon Asch and Harriet Nerlove posed these questions to a group of 3- and 4-year-olds in 1960, the response, on the whole, was skeptical. “Poor people are cold because they have no clothes,” one child said. By second or third grade, though, children could understand the psychological meanings of these so-called double-function terms and how they relate to the physical world [1]. “Embodied cognition” is a subset of psychological research that explores the way physical sensations can evoke abstract concepts. Take warmth, for example.
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The Psychology of a Memorable Lunch
The Huffington Post: It's about 11 in the morning, and I'm already thinking about lunch. I'm at my desk in my downtown office, so I have lots of options. I could go to that new sandwich place around the corner, where I know they make a great turkey club. Or I could walk up the street and get one of those big salads, which would be satisfying and healthy. Or I could just run downstairs to the snack bar and grab a yogurt and some pretzels. It's a tough decision. It's also a common decision, one that many of us confront every day. Our choices have implications, not only for how much we enjoy lunch today, but also for longer term goals like fitness and health. But how do we choose?
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The political power of white anxiety
The Boston Globe: What makes voters lean conservative? New research from psychologists at Northwestern University suggests one cause might be anxiety about changing demographics. In a nationally representative survey, whites who identified themselves as independents became significantly more likely to report leaning Republican after being told that California had become a majority-minority state—an effect that was especially pronounced for those who lived closer to California. Likewise, in other experiments, Americans reported significantly greater support for conservative positions—both race-related and non-race-related—after reading that minorities would eventually become the majority.
