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Speed reading claims discredited by new report
The Guardian: Despite the wishes of all those of us with a teetering to-be-read pile, companies and apps that promise to rapidly increase reading speeds are on a hiding to nothing, according to new research. A review paper, which has just been published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, analyses the latest research into the reading process, and what it means for speed-reading programmes and apps.
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What Voters Want
The New York Times: Imagine you’re discussing the presidential election with a group of friends who live in Iowa or New Hampshire. You ask them who they intend to vote for next month. “Oh, whoever’s the tallest,” one friend says. “So Jeb Bush, I guess!” “No way — I’m voting for Bernie Sanders,” another friend says. “He has a deeper voice, and my best friend growing up was named Bernie.” It sounds ridiculous — like dialogue from “The Twilight Zone” — but it’s not too far off from the sometimes superficial shortcuts our brains use to make decisions. ...
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Shielding Students From Stereotypes Helps Way More Than We Thought
The Huffington Post: We all know that negative stereotypes exist and that as a result, people may be discriminated against or denied access to resources without justification. But there's another disturbing effect that often goes unnoticed. It turns out that "stereotype threat," or simply knowing that others view you as a negative stereotype, may impair your academic performance. Scientists have long known about psychological exercises that can reduce the effects of "stereotype threat," but now it seems that such exercises not only benefit those experiencing this, but also the people around them. Read the whole story: The Huffington Post
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Imagining Positive Outcomes May Bring Pleasure Now But Pain Later
Positive fantasies about how future events will turn out can boost your mood in the here and now, but they may actually lead to increased depressive symptoms in the long run, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “Our findings suggest that as pleasurable and helpful as positive fantasies are for depressive mood in the moment, they can be problematic and cumbersome over time,” says lead researcher Gabriele Oettingen of New York University.
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How to Speed Read Without Skimming
The Wall Street Journal: Speed reading has been around for decades, thanks in large part to a Utah schoolteacher named Evelyn Wood, who launched her Reading Dynamics training program in 1959. Today, with so many of us feeling inundated by reading material, apps that teach speed reading on mobile devices have proliferated. Some try to speed things up by showing only a word at a time in rapid succession; others offer exercises or fast-moving text highlights. But do they work? Psychologists have done some reading of their own, and their message is: not so fast.
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The Countries Where People Are the Most Emotionally Complex
The Atlantic: Think of the last piece of big news you got. How did you feel about it? Happy? Sad? Angry? Worried? Excited? Grateful? A little bit of all of the above? Experiencing multiple emotions at once may make it seem like you don’t actually know just how you feel about something—that you’re ambivalent, or indecisive, or wishy-washy. Psychologists would say it just means you’re emotionally complex. And according to a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, emotional complexity varies a lot between countries. ...
