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Legacy in Mind: Why Bother Saving the Planet?
It’s supposed to hit 97 degrees this week in Washington, DC, my home town. My plan is to stay indoors and crank up the AC, for as long as the heat wave lasts. I know that the price tag for my comfort will show up in my next utility bill, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay. I also know that my choice has other, hidden costs—costs that will be paid by future generations, including my children and their children. Global warming is an undisputed scientific fact now, and there is little doubt that this ominous trend is related to human activity, including the burning of fossil fuels. I completely accept the science of climate warming, yet I don’t always do the right thing by my heirs.
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‘Color Blind’ Policies Could Make Diversity Harder to Achieve
Whether it be growing concerns about bias or recognition of the value of diversity, many organizations and institutions have elected to deemphasize race or remove it entirely from their decision-making processes. Yet new evidence from psychological science research suggests that this color-blind approach may not be as effective as people believe it is. Color blindness offers a seemingly simple way to deal with race: If individuals and institutions do not even notice race, then they cannot act in a biased manner on that basis. But according to a new article published by Evan Apfelbaum of the MIT Sloan School of Management and colleagues, efforts to ignore race can backfire.
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America Needs to Study Fractions
Scientific American: What part of math was most intimidating when you were in grade school? Maybe it was fractions. Or even worse, long-form division. Somehow splitting numbers really seemed complicated. And the U.S. might be paying for kids’ inability to overcome those early challenges: a new study finds that Americans are falling significantly behind in math aptitude compared with China, Finland, the Netherlands and Canada. And the root cause is deficiencies in knowledge of fractions and division. Nearly 600 children were tested once when they were 10 to 12 years old and again five years later.
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Parents Especially Dads Are Happier than their Childless Pals. (Happy Father’s Day.)
TIME: Consider it an early Father’s Day present, guys: your kids — yes, the ones who wake you up in the middle of the night and demand to be fed three meals a day — are actually making you really happy. Really. Being a parent, especially a dad, appears to confer greater levels of happiness, positive emotion and meaning than being childless, according to new research to be published in Psychological Science. “If you have a dinner party, are parents at that party happier than non-parents at that dinner party?” says Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor of psychology at University of California, Riverside, and the paper’s senior author.
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Männer mit harten Gesichtszügen sind Softies
Bild: Von wegen gefühlsarmer Macho! Männer mit herben, breiten Gesichtszügen haben oft ein weiches Wesen, viele sind sogar fürsorgliche Softies. Zu diesem Ergebnis kamen jetzt Psychologen der schottischen Universität St. Andrews. Demnach sind Männer mit einem groben, harten Erscheinungsbild eher bereit, ihre eigenen Bedürfnisse in den Hintergrund zu stellen, um Freunden und Kollegen zu helfen. Bisher wurde Männern mit breiten Gesichtern oft unterstellt, sie seien aggressiv und unehrlich. Außerdem galten sie als unkooperativ und kalt. So lief die Untersuchung: Die Wissenschaftler gaben Probanden Geld für ein Spiel.
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The New Neuroscience of Choking
The New Yorker: Last Sunday, at the Memorial golf tournament in Dublin, Ohio, Rickie Fowler looked like the man to beat. He entered the tournament with momentum: Fowler had recently gained his first ever P.G.A. tour victory, and he had finished in the top ten in his last four starts. On the first hole of the final round, Fowler sank a fourteen-foot birdie putt, placing him within two shots of the lead. And that’s when things fell apart. Fowler pulled a shot on the second hole and never recovered. On the next hole, he hit his approach into a greenside bunker and ended up three-putting for a double bogey. He finished with an eighty-four, his worst round on the tour by five shots.
