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Detecting the ‘Artful Dodge’
NPR: Henry Kissinger once joked at a press conference: Does anyone have any questions for my answers? If politicians had their way, they might just write their own questions for the press, but, of course, politicians can't write all the questions. So instead, they're coached on the art of question-dodging, taught how to segue from the question they're asked to the question they wish they had been asked and are prepared to answer. Come October, how often will politicians pull that trick in their news conferences and debates? Will they be able to do it without us noticing it? And more importantly, is there a way to prevent this dodging and keep the debates honest?
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How Americans get wiser with age… but the Japanese are as wise as they’ll ever be by 25
The Daily Mail: It is commonly thought that age brings wisdom. And this is largely true, it seems – unless you are Japanese. In which case, by the time you are 25, you are likely to be just as wise as your elders, an astonishing new study reveals. Americans, however, are more conventional and develop deep understanding over time, according to research by the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. In one of the tests, designed to measure five crucial aspects of reasoning, U.S. citizens’ scores improved by 22 per cent over 50 years. Read the whole story: The Daily Mail
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Intelligence Is in the Genes, but Where?
You can thank your parents for your smarts—or at least some of them. Psychologists have long known that intelligence, like most other traits, is partly genetic. But a new study led by psychological scientist Christopher Chabris of Union College reveals the surprising fact that most of the specific genes long thought to be linked to intelligence probably have no bearing on one’s IQ. And it may be some time before researchers can identify intelligence’s specific genetic roots. Chabris and David Laibson, a Harvard economist, led an international team of researchers that analyzed a dozen genes using large data sets that included both intelligence testing and genetic data.
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Craving an Ice-Cream Fix
The New York Times: The notion that food can be addictive has been debated for some time and largely rejected by both nutrition and addiction researchers. But this spring, the secretary of health, Kathleen Sebelius, said that for some, obesity is “an addiction like smoking.” One month earlier, Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, gave a lecture at Rockefeller University, making the case that food and drug addictions have much in common, particularly in the way that both disrupt the parts of the brain involved in pleasure and self-control.
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Study: Oxytocin (‘The Hormone of Love’) Also Makes Us Conformists
The Atlantic: PROBLEM: Oxytocin, which you may also know as "the hormone of love," is the driving force behind sociability, trust, and generosity. It enables everything from mother-child bonding to orgasms, and it's one of the main things that sociopaths lack. The catch is that it strictly promotes in-group love -- and so it can't be used to kumbaya away cultural and political conflicts. Since oxytocin causes favoritism, might it also contribute to group conformity? METHODOLOGY: You can get oxytocin release by shaking someone's hand or hugging a loved one.
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Failure Is an Option
Parents Magazine: Whenever Helena Bogosian takes her daughters, Margot, 5, and Nina, 4, out to eat, she asks if they can have the same toy in their kids' meal so neither feels slighted. But one time the girls got different things because the restaurant had run out of the plastic grasshoppers they both wanted. Margot started crying hysterically, so the Tenafly, New Jersey, mom drove to four more franchises in fruitless pursuit of matching toys. By the time she gave up, it was dark, the kids were fast asleep in their car seats, and she felt foolish. "I learned that avoiding a child's disappointment can be harder than helping her deal with it," she says.
