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How to Get Beyoncé Out of Your Head: The Scientific Solution
The Atlantic: Here are, in no particular order, some of the songs most likely to get stuck in your head when you hear them. Apologies in advance. - "Single Ladies" - Beyoncé - "Alejandro" - Lady Gaga - "Bad Romance" - Lady Gaga - "Call Me Maybe" - Carly Rae Jepsen - "I Want to Hold Your Hand" - The Beatles - "She Loves You" - The Beatles - "SOS" - Rihanna - "You Belong With Me" - Taylor Swift According to music psychologist Ira Hyman, who recently published a paper on earworm science in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, songs function much like puzzles in our brains: Music is catchy because its patterns and rhythms engage our minds like a crossword puzzle would.
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Maybe Isolation, Not Loneliness, Shortens Life
NPR: Loneliness hurts, but social isolation can kill you. That's the conclusion of a study of more than 6,500 people in the U.K. The study, by a team at University College London, comes after decades of research showing that both loneliness and infrequent contact with friends and family can, independently, shorten a person's life. The scientists expected to find that the combination of these two risk factors would be especially dangerous. ... "It doesn't negate the loneliness work that's been done to date," says Bert Uchino, a University of Utah psychology professor.
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Four Ways to Give Good Feedback
TIME: When effectively administered, feedback is a powerful way to build knowledge and skills, increase skills, increase motivation, and develop reflective habits of mind in students and employees. Too often, however, the feedback we give (and get) is ineffectual or even counterproductive. Here, four ways to offer feedback that really makes a difference, drawn from research in psychology and cognitive science: ... The eminent psychologist Edward Deci has identified several conditions under which feedback may actually reduce learners’ motivation.
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Looking for Evidence That Therapy Works
The New York Times: Mental-health care has come a long way since the remedy of choice was trepanation — drilling holes into the skull to release “evil spirits.” Over the last 30 years, treatments like cognitive-behavioral therapy, dialectical behavior therapy and family-based treatment have been shown effective for ailments ranging from anxiety and depression to post-traumatic stress disorder and eating disorders. ... Why the gap? According to Dianne Chambless, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, some therapists see their work as an art, a delicate and individualized process that works (or doesn’t) based on a therapist’s personality and relationship with a patient.
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For Babies, It’s Better To Like What I Like
NPR: Babies as young as nine months appear to approve of people who like what they like — and approve of being mean to those who don't share their tastes. Kiley Hamlin, lead author of a study in the journal Psychological Science, discusses the importance of similarity to young children. ... First let me introduce our guest. Kiley Hamlin is a Canada research chair and an assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Welcome to the program. Read the whole story: NPR
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Women Who Score Well on Both Math And Verbal Tests Still Don’t Choose Science Careers
Smithsonian Magazine: Women remain underrepresented in the sciences, but why? One team publishing in Psychological Science claims that it’s simply because women have more career choices these days. To arrive at this conclusion, the researchers examined national survey data from 1,490 students, both male and female, bound for college. The partipants were interviewed in the 12th grade, then again when they were 33 years old. They answered questions about their SAT scores, their motivations and beliefs and, later, their occupations. Those who had the highest verbal abilities—a group already dominated by women—they found, were most likely to avoid a career in science, technology or engineering.
