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Why We’re Wrong About Affirmative Action: Stereotypes, Testing and the ‘Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations’
The Huffington Post: Earlier this month a divided Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the University of Texas' right to use race amongst its criteria for undergraduate admissions, however limited that right may be. While the decision will be viewed as a small victory for supporters of race-based affirmative action, there is little reason to believe that the widely held claim that black and Latino students enter selective universities as comparatively inferior students will not cease to rear its ugly head.
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Research Reveals Pervasive Implicit Hierarchies for Race, Religion, and Age
As much as social equality is advocated in the United States, a new study suggests that besides evaluating their own race and religion most favorably, people share implicit hierarchies for racial, religious, and age groups that may be different from their conscious, explicit attitudes and values. The study findings appear in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “People from relatively low-status groups can readily report that their group does not have the most power. At the same time, most groups, even if they have less social power, favor their own group above all others,” explains psychological scientist Jordan R.
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The Key to Work-Life Balance is Really Work-Life Harmony
Should you leave now to make it on time to a family dinner, or stay late at work to finish up that last minute project? At some point, most of us have probably had to choose between the demands of work and our personal lives. Research has consistently shown that a healthy “work-life balance” is vital for maintaining job satisfaction and avoiding burnout. However, a new study suggests that the idea of “work-life balance” itself may be a problem. The standard concept of work-life balance is often seen as a zero-sum game, where work and life are completely separate domains that are constantly competing for time and energy.
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Cognitive Factors May Predict the Need for Speed
Driving over the speed limit is the most common violation drivers make and one of the biggest contributors to traffic crashes. Speeding is estimated to have contributed to 30% of all fatal automobile crashes in the US, resulting in 10,219 deaths in 2012 alone. Considering the very real dangers of speeding, why do some of us do it so often? Psychological scientists Mark A. Elliott and James A.
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The Disturbing Link Between Sleep Deprivation And False Memories
The Huffington Post: Sleep deprivation is a serious safety issue and has been implicated in everything from oil spills to plane crashes to nuclear power plant explosions. It turns out that getting a healthy amount of sleep could also be a justice issue. A novel study out of University of California, Irvine suggests that sleep deprivation could partly be to blame for false memories -- a phenomenon in which people absorb incorrect information after an event and end up misremembering the incident. Read the whole story: The Huffington Post
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Older People May Do Poorly on Cognitive Tests Partly Because They Don’t Care About the Tests
New York Magazine: Tom Hess, a University of North Carolina professor and author of a new study inPerspectives on Psychological Science, is trying to understand a strange finding: Even though older adults show declines when they are given tests of cognitive function, they often continue working (and living) at a high level that doesn’t appear to reflect much of a decline. What, then, aren’t the tests capturing, and why?
