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The Normalization Trap
The New York Times: What’s normal? Perhaps the answer seems obvious: What’s normal is what’s typical — what is average. But in a recent paper in the journal Cognition, we argue that the situation is more complicated than that. After conducting a series of experiments that examined how people decide whether something is normal or not, we found that when people think about what is normal, they combine their sense of what is typical with their sense of what is ideal. Read the whole story: The New York Times
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Cats may be as intelligent as dogs, say scientists
BBC: Japanese scientists say cats are as good as dogs at certain memory tests, suggesting they may be just as smart. A study - involving 49 domestic cats - shows felines can recall memories of pleasant experiences, such as eating a favourite snack. Dogs show this type of recollection - a unique memory of a specific event known as episodic memory. Humans often consciously try to reconstruct past events that have taken place in their lives, such as what they ate for breakfast, their first day in a new job or a family wedding. ...
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How to Deal When Your Boss Is a Complete Narcissist
TIME: Your boss’s three favorite words are “me,” “myself” and “I,” and they’ve never really gotten that “There’s no I in team” thing, because it’s all about them, all the time. The world is unfortunately full of narcissistic bosses whose self-aggrandizing and resistance to criticism has propelled them to leadership positions.
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Laughter Conveys Social Status
Naïve participants were highly accurate at judging an individual’s social rank just by listening to their laughter.
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Are Young Kids Doing Too Much Homework?
Slate: When I toured a public elementary school last spring, one question in particular seemed to make the principal squirm. Do the kindergartners get homework, I asked? Yes, he replied, explaining that it can help to solidify concepts—but he quickly conceded that some parents weren’t at all happy about it. The debate over elementary school homework is not new, but the tirades against it just keep coming. This fall, the Atlantic published a story titled “When Homework Is Useless”; you might have also seen the Texas second-grade teacher’s no-homework policy that went viral on Facebook around the same time.
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In Retirement, It’s Save Now or Pay (a Lot) Later
The Wall Street Journal: Given a choice between satisfying our immediate needs and desires or focusing on the future, the here and now typically wins out. That impulse doesn’t bode well for retirement savings. ... “Time, resources and attention are limited,” says Neil Lewis Jr., a Ph.D. candidate in social psychology at the University of Michigan and co-author of a recent study that examined ways to counteract the impulse to spend now instead of saving for retirement. “People allocate them to events that are pressing, rather than to events that may happen later.” ... Another technique comes from Mr.
