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I was really bad at sports in high school. This new study helps me understand why.
Vox: I was a horrible lacrosse player in high school: bad at catching the ball, slow, and not very aggressive. Yet I'd spend hours at a handball wall with my stick: throwing, catching, repeating. I played on winter leagues, and woke up early for 6 am pickup games. Freshman and sophomore years, I made it onto the junior varsity team — a miracle. By 11th grade, it was time to try out for varsity lacrosse. This is when my history teacher — the varsity coach — pulled me aside and suggested I shouldn't bother. I'd probably be cut, he said (adding that I was getting very good grades). ...
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How To Teach Children That Failure Is The Secret To Success
NPR: Is failure a positive opportunity to learn and grow, or is it a negative experience that hinders success? How parents answer that question has a big influence on how much children think they can improve their intelligence through hard work, a study says. "Parents are a really critical force in child development when you think about how motivation and mindsets develop," says Kyla Haimovitz, a professor of psychology at Stanford University. She coauthored the study, published in Psychological Science with colleague Carol Dweck, who pioneered research on mindsets.
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Why Some Cultures Frown on Smiling
The Atlantic: Here’s something that has always puzzled me, growing up in the U.S. as a child of Russian parents. Whenever I or my friends were having our photos taken, we were told to say “cheese” and smile. But if my parents also happened to be in the photo, they were stone-faced. So were my Russian relatives, in their vacation photos. My parents’ high-school graduation pictures show them frolicking about in bellbottoms with their young classmates, looking absolutely crestfallen.
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Scientists Are Trying to Solve the Mystery of Awe
New York Magazine: Think about a time you’ve experienced awe. Maybe you were gazing up at a massive mountain range, or looking down into the depths of an infant’s eyes, or watching lightning as it seemed to crack the sky open. Maybe you felt humbled, or shaken; maybe you were struck by the vastness of the universe and your own tiny part in it. Psychologists consider awe a form of “self-transcendence”: you temporarily blur at the edges, feeling a connection to something greater than yourself. Accounts of awe abound in the arts and humanities, but it wasn’t until relatively recently that psychologists have begun to explore the phenomenon in depth.
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More and more research shows friends are good for your health
The Washington Post: Overwhelmed recently by the stress of an impending move — along with the usual demands of a busy life — I turned to the people I love. In small chunks of time between tasks on my to-do list, I called and texted with my sister, my parents, local friends and old friends scattered around the country. Some conversations turned my stress into laughter. Others made me cry. One friend came over to clean out my closet. Then she took our kids for four hours so we could pack without interruption. ...
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Dynamic Dazzle Distorts Speed Perception
During World War I, a zoologist proposed that British warships could use the “disruptive” camouflage of zebras and leopards to confuse enemy ships. Instead of attempting to hide from view, the idea was that “razzle dazzle” patterns would make it difficult for the enemy to accurately gauge a ship’s position -- misleading rather than hiding. Although both American and British warships were painted with psychedelic zebra-stripe patterns based on this theory, it was never conclusively shown that the razzle dazzle stripes helped the ships elude enemy fire.
