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Liking Work Really Matters
The New York Times: WE have all had to work on tasks we detest: Calculus homework, for example, is boring and hard. As soon as we start, we feel mentally exhausted, and the quality of our work suffers. Now imagine you are an aspiring architect. Learning how calculus can help you design more creative and ambitious structures could be fascinating. Instead of feeling exhausted by your homework, you might feel energized and could work on it all night. The same work, but with a very different psychological effect. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist at the Claremont Graduate University, has been studying this latter phenomenon for decades.
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Why We Wonder Why
Scientific American: Humans are curious creatures, and our curiosity drives a search for explanations. So while this search may fit squarely in the realm of science, it is hardly confined to the pursuits of scientists and intellectuals. Even preschoolers ask why, and indeed may do so to the exasperation of adults. Yet adults seek to understand things, too. They want to know why their partner responded angrily to their request, why the train was late, or why the weather changed so suddenly. By helping us understand our environment, explanations give us some control over our lives.
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The Hazards of Going on Autopilot
The New Yorker: At 9:18 P.M. on February 12, 2009, Continental Connection Flight 3407, operated by Colgan Air, took off from Newark International Airport. Rebecca Shaw, the first officer, was feeling ill and already dreaming of the hotel room that awaited in Buffalo. The captain, Marvin Renslow, assured her that she’d feel just fine once they landed. As the plane climbed to its cruising altitude of sixteen thousand feet, the pair continued to chat amiably, exchanging stories about Shaw’s ears and Renslow’s Florida home. The flight was a short one and, less than an hour after takeoff, the plane began its initial descent. At 10:06 P.M., it dropped below ten thousand feet.
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Labors Lost? Memories of Childbirth
The Huffington Post: I'm told, by women I trust, that childbirth is an experience unlike any other. These women have vivid and enduring memories of labor and birth, becoming a mother, giving life. They recall the event as profound and magical and life-changing -- and also very painful. Nobody questions the physical intensity of labor and childbirth, but how do we know how painful the experience really is? Does recall -- especially months and years later -- accurately reflect the experienced pain? This is not just an academic question. Mothers' lasting feelings about the experience of childbirth -- good or bad -- are closely tied to remembered pain.
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Nobody in America Trusts Anyone, Says New Study
New York Magazine: Trust: It's really important both for interpersonal relationships and for things like, say, having government that can function at all. Unfortunately, America is running on a serious trust deficit at the moment, if the numbers behind a new Psychological Science paper are to be believed. And the culprit, argue the authors, is inequality — when people feel that the rich are the only Americans doing well, their trust plummets as a result. Read the whole story: New York Magazine
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How to Motivate Students to Work Harder
The Atlantic: Over the past five years, more than $200 million has gone toward launching the new Common Core standards, with the goal of closing achievement gaps in public schools. But for all their meticulous detail about math and language curricula, the standards fail to address one important factor: the psychological barriers that stand between many students and deeper learning. Unless students are motivated to take on the new standards, and persuaded that they’re up to the challenge, the Common Core could have the unintended effect of leaving many students even further behind.
