-
Is Juvenile Delinquency a Failure of Imagination?
The Huffington Post: The 1955 movie Blackboard Jungle was not great filmmaking, but it does endure as a historical curiosity. Even before a word of dialogue is spoken, the movie's scrolling introduction makes clear that this is not just storytelling, but an earnest public service announcement: "Today we are concerned with juvenile delinquency," it declares, " -- its causes -- and its effects." And indeed the nation was concerned with juvenile delinquency in the '50s. Obsessed, really. Blackboard Jungle captured society's fear of an entire generation of post-World War II teenagers, who were perceived as disrespectful, alienated, reckless, and most of all dangerous.
-
Going With Your Gut
The Wall Street Journal: Eyewitness identification of criminals is often mistaken, but a new, rapid-fire technique for asking people to finger culprits appears to improve accuracy, a study from Australia shows. Subjects saw short films of a crime, or of a more mundane event that, they were later told, involved a suspect in a nearby offense. Then the participants looked at photos for just three seconds each. They were asked to rate their confidence in the guilt of each person portrayed by using an 11-point scale—ranging from absolute certainty that they had fingered the culprit to absolute confidence that it was the wrong person. Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal
-
Intelligenz und Erbgut (Intelligence and Genes)
Süeddeutsche Zeitung: Die Bedeutung einzelner Genabschnitte für den IQ wird überschätzt Wie erblich ist Intelligenz? Diese Frage treibt Wissenschaftler seit vielen Jahrzehnten um. Zuletzt tauchten oft simple Antworten auf diese komplexe Frage auf. Dieser oder jener Baustein im Genom eines Menschen übe einen starken Einfluss auf dessen generelle Intelligenz aus, heißt es in einzelnen Studien. Ein internationales Team von Psychologen um Christopher Chabris vom New Yorker Union College weist diese Aussagen nun zurück. Die Forscher überprüften die Auswirkungen von zwölf DNA-Bausteinen auf den IQ, die in Studien bislang als relevant galten.
-
Investigadores completan una definición precisa sobre el aburrimiento (a precise definition of boredom)
ABC España: Investigadores canadienses han conseguido un nuevo estudio que revela con mayor precisión el proceso mental que produce el aburrimeinto. Según una nota de prensa de la Universidad de Guelph, muchas personas ven el aburrimiento como una cuestión trivial y temporal, pero en realidad está vinculado con problemas psicológicos, sociales y de salud. Esto lo explica el profesor de psicología Mark Fense, uno de los autores principales del estudio Perspectives on Psychological Science publicado por la Asociación para las ciencias de la psicología. El aburrimiento en el trabajo puede conducir a graves accidemtes.
-
Looking Out for #1 Can Make You Happy, If You Have No Choice
We are, at our core, social creatures and we spend considerable time and effort on building and maintaining our relationships with others. As young children, we’re taught that “sharing means caring” and, as we mature, we learn to take others’ point of view. If we make a decision that favors self-interest, we often feel guilt for prioritizing ourselves over others. In prioritizing others, however, we sometimes forego the things that we know will make us happy. This raises an intriguing question: Is there any way to pursue self-interest without feeling bad about it? Can we have the proverbial cake and it eat it, too?
-
Testing Can Be Useful for Students and Teachers, Promoting Long-Term Learning
Pop quiz! Tests are good for: (a) Assessing what you’ve learned; (b) Learning new information; (c) a & b; (d) None of the above. The correct answer? According to research from psychological science, it’s both (a) and (b) – while testing can be useful as an assessment tool, the actual process of taking a test can also help us to learn and retain new information over the long term and apply it across different contexts. New research published in journals of the Association for Psychological Science explores the nuanced interactions between testing, memory, and learning and suggests possible applications for testing in educational settings.
