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One City’s Ambitious Plan To Ease Overcrowded Trains? Pay Riders
Fast Company: BART, the regional transportation system in the San Francisco Bay Area, has a new strategy to help cope with commute-hour congestion that's packing train platforms and cars to the gills: BART Perks, a rewards program that uses cold hard cash to make off-peak travel more enticing. BART's leadership is betting that this unconventional short-term solution will be a big enough patch until longer term plans come to fruition. As cities grapple with ways to better manage their transit systems, BART is using a psychology-fueled strategy to solve the age-old problem of getting people to work efficiently and on time.
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Brain-Training Claims Not Backed by Science, Report Shows
A scientific review puts the claims behind brain-training games and apps to the test.
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Police Body Cameras Are Pointless Unless Cops Use Them Correctly
The Huffington Post: Officers involved in at least two controversial fatal police shootings this month failed to activate their body-worn cameras, leaving critical gaps in evidence that threaten to undermine the primary purpose of the devices. Police in Charlotte, North Carolina, have come under fire for how they have handled video recordings related to the shooting death of Keith Lamont Scott, a 43-year-old black man killed by an officer on Sept. 20. The department’s patrol division is equipped with body cameras, but its tactical division ― to which many of the involved officers belong ― is not. ...
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Nudging Works. Now, Do More With It.
Bloomberg: Last Wednesday was a historic day for behavioral science. The White House released the annual report of its Social and Behavioral Sciences Team. The U.K.’s Behavioural Insights Team released its own annual report on the same day. With the recent creation of similar teams in Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and Qatar, the two reports deserve careful attention. Outlining dozens of initiatives, the reports offer two general lessons about uses of behavioral science by governments. First, both teams are enlisting behavioral science not for controversial purposes, but to encourage people to benefit from public programs and to comply with the law.
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Sophisticated Communication from 8-Month-Old Babies
Scientific American: New parents love the developmental milestones – the first smile, crab-like crawl, and “ma-ma-ma” are unforgettable. Around their first birthday, babies start pointing, a communicative gesture that is universally, and uniquely, understood by humans. More than ever before, parents have insight into precisely what their babies are interested in; Oh, you want the Snoopy doll next to the book? Sure, here you go. But, what if babies are communicating with us about objects even earlier? According to new findings in the Journal of Psychological Science, babies younger than one year can also communicate through gestures.
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Effect of Commitment on Forgiveness Investigated in Large-Scale Replication Project
After a betrayal of trust, what motivates an aggrieved partner to try and resolve the problem instead of walking away or seeking revenge? Many studies have indicated that how people respond to a partner's betrayal is associated with how committed they feel to their relationship, raising the possibility that boosting people’s feelings of commitment may lead them to choose less destructive responses. A new multi-lab research project aimed at replicating the primary evidence for a causal link between commitment and betrayal confirmed the association between feelings of commitment and responses to betrayal.
