-
For Teens, Learning That Personalities Change Buffers Against Stress
Teaching teens that social and personality traits can change helps them cope with social challenges such as bullying, which can help mitigate stress and improve academic performance.
-
Getting smarter
aeon: Is it just me, or is everybody out there looking for a quick fix? There is something highly compelling about the idea that there is a secret switch we can flip to become suddenly smarter, to reveal cognitive abilities hidden inside each of us. It is a notion that certainly has commercial appeal. Over just seven years, the games-maker Lumosity rocketed from zero to 50 million users, promising rapid improvements in general intelligence by playing brain-training video games for just a few weeks.
-
Phone-Sick at Camp
The New York Times: Leaving for sleepaway camp is, for many children, a major step toward independence. Today, when cellphones keep parents and children in nearly constant contact, the fact that most camps have phone-free policies makes breaking away even more of a challenge. “Camp-age kids, by even 10 or 11, are used to texting and being in frequent contact with their parents,” said Christopher Thurber, a clinical psychologist who focuses on youth development and summer camp. “How we communicate has changed the nature of attachment, and it complicates the separation that kids and parents go through,” he said.
-
The Memory Illusion
Scientific American: In my book The Memory Illusion I cover a wide spectrum of ways in which our memories can betray us, and why you may not be who you think you are. In celebration of the book’s publication, I’m pleased to share with you a taste of some of the concepts that it explores in depth. You can also watch a short animated video about the book here. Can you trust your memory? Picture this. You are in a room full of strangers and you are going around introducing yourself. You say your name to about a dozen people, and they say their names to you. How many of these names are you going to remember? More importantly, how many of these names are you going tomisremember?
-
Cultivating Wisdom at Work
As the tutor of Alexander the Great, the Greek philosopher Aristotle knew a thing or two about the qualities that a strong leader must possess. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle explains that all great leaders possess one specific trait: practical wisdom. Wisdom allows leaders to accurately size up a situation and make the best possible decisions for both themselves and others. A recent study conducted by Igor Grossmann (University of Waterloo) and colleagues sought to answer a question about wisdom that has plagued philosophers ranging from Aristotle to Confucius: Is wisdom something we’re born with, or is it a quality that we can cultivate?
-
New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Pupillary Contagion in Infancy: Evidence for Spontaneous Transfer of Arousal Christine Fawcett, Victoria Wesevich, and Gustaf Gredebäck Pupillary contagion -- when an individual's pupil size influences the pupil size of an observer -- is thought to be an automatic mechanism that facilitates prosocial responding and group cohesion. To explore whether the phenomenon might exist early in life, researchers examined the pupillary responses of 6- and 9-month-olds.
