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Why Do Smart People Do Foolish Things?
Scientific American: We all probably know someone who is intelligent, but does surprisingly stupid things. My family delights in pointing out times when I (a professor) make really dumb mistakes. What does it mean to be smart or intelligent? Our everyday use of the term is meant to describe someone who is knowledgeable and makes wise decisions, but this definition is at odds with how intelligence is traditionally measured. The most widely known measure of intelligence is the intelligence quotient, more commonly known as the IQ test, which includes visuospatial puzzles, math problems, pattern recognition, vocabulary questions, and visual searches.
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You Can Turn a Job You Hate Into One You Like
New York Magazine: Not long ago, Kate Tolo took a walk with her co-worker during their lunch break. “I’m going to quit,” she confided in her colleague. “I hate this and I can’t do it anymore.” Tolo was working for a luxury denim company in Brooklyn, and while her job title was impressive — assistant technical designer — she wasn’t happy with her daily tasks, measuring and pinning jeans for quality assurance. But she didn’t really want to quit; she liked the company and its CEO, and she was wary of starting over somewhere else. She wanted the best of both worlds: to stay at her current job anddo something she thoroughly enjoyed. ...
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5 ‘love hacks’ to get through shaky times in your marriage
TODAY: Modern marriage comes with great expectations. You want your spouse to be a thoughtful companion, terrific lover, best friend, attentive co-parent, ambitious worker, your key to fulfillment and more. It’s an impressive ideal — if it works out. We’re in an era where the best marriages are better than ever, but the average marriage is shaky, says Eli Finkel, author of the new book, “The All-or-Nothing Marriage: How the Best Marriages Work.” “We’re lumping more and more expectations onto this one relationship and consequently, we’re actually damaging it,” Finkel, a psychology professor at Northwestern University and director of the school’s Relationships and Motivation Lab, told TODAY.
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LIBERALS AREN’T AS DIVIDED AS THEY THINK
Pacific Standard: Despite the unpopularity of President Donald Trump and the Republican Congress, Democrats are fretting about the 2018 elections. Can "I'm with her" moderates and Bernie Sanders-supporting leftists join forces? Or will the party be torn apart by internal divisions? Reassuring new research suggests those perceived differences aren't all that real. It reports that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the attitudes of American liberals are more internally aligned than those of their conservative counterparts.
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New Research From Psychological Science
A sample of new research exploring the social effects of gossiping about deviance, sex differences in kids’ use of spatial language, and sample-size planning for accurate statistical power.
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Standing is good for your mind as well as your body
The Economist: OFFICE desks at which you stand are all the rage. Abundant evidence suggests that sitting down for long periods is bad for health, and that working standing up is thus better for you. But is it better for the job? A piece of research just published in Psychological Science by Yaniv Mama of Ariel University, in Israel, and his colleagues, suggests it might be. Standing takes more effort than sitting does, and might therefore be expected to require more mental attention. The muscles involved have to be monitored and fine-tuned constantly by the brain. Psychological experiments suggest that attention is a finite resource.
