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Seeing Happiness in Ambiguous Facial Expressions Reduces Aggressive Behavior
Encouraging young people at high-risk of delinquency to see happiness rather than anger in facial expressions appears to dampen their levels of anger and aggression
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Living With Less. A Lot Less.
The New York Times: I LIVE in a 420-square-foot studio. I sleep in a bed that folds down from the wall. I have six dress shirts. I have 10 shallow bowls that I use for salads and main dishes. When people come over for dinner, I pull out my extendable dining room table. I don’t have a single CD or DVD and I have 10 percent of the books I once did. ... Does all this endless consumption result in measurably increased happiness? In a recent study, the Northwestern University psychologist Galen V. Bodenhausen linked consumption with aberrant, antisocial behavior.
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Girls May Leave Science Because They’re So Good At Everything Else
BuzzFeed: The argument that women are underrepresented in math and science careers because they're just not as good at math refuses to die, but a new study proposes an alternate explanation: women may be leaving these fields in greater numbers because they're more likely to be good at other things. In research published in Psychological Science, psychologist Ming-Te Wang and his coauthors measured the math and verbal abilities of 1,490 high school seniors and then followed up with them when they were 33. Read the whole story: BuzzFeed
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Bracket Frenzy Moves Beyond College Basketball
NPR: March madness means NCAA brackets, along with brackets for practically everything else, from Star Wars characters to grooming products to public radio shows. What makes brackets so appealing? Barry Schwartz has spent a career studying the psychology of choice at Swarthmore College. Read the whole story: NPR
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The Touch-Screen Generation
The Atlantic: On a chilly day last spring, a few dozen developers of children’s apps for phones and tablets gathered at an old beach resort in Monterey, California, to show off their games. One developer, a self-described “visionary for puzzles” who looked like a skateboarder-recently-turned-dad, displayed a jacked-up, interactive game called Puzzingo, intended for toddlers and inspired by his own son’s desire to build and smash. Two 30‑something women were eagerly seeking feedback for an app called Knock Knock Family, aimed at 1-to-4-year-olds. “We want to make sure it’s easy enough for babies to understand,” one explained. ... To a toddler, this is less magic than intuition.
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Can Our Beliefs About Exercise Make Us Fat?
The Huffington Post: Everyone is an expert when it comes to weight and weight control, and I'm no exception. I am what's known as an "exercise theorist." That is, I ascribe to the lay theory that sedentary lifestyle is a major cause of obesity, and that regular exercise is the cure. That's one of the reasons I show up at the gym most days -- and nag others to come with me. ... So what are the consequences of such lay theories? And more important, what are the consequences of embracing the wrong theory?
