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Test Scores Drop as the School Day Drags on
Pacific Standard: You've probably noticed that it's harder to think clearly after a long day of reading, writing, and arithmetic—in short, after a long day of thinking. For the most part, that's not a particularly big deal, but a study out today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests it might matter to schools and their students. As it turns out, each hour that passes before starting a test drags scores down by a little bit, meaning students who take a test late in the day will perform noticeably worse. A core assumption underlying academic achievement testing is that the tests measure, at least roughly, how much students have learned.
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Clinical Psychological Science: Positive Affectivity Is Dampened in Youths With Histories of Major Depression and Their Never-Depressed Adolescent Siblings Maria Kovacs, Lauren M. Bylsma, Ilya Yaroslavsky, Jonathan Rottenberg, Charles J. George, Enikö Kiss, Kitti Halas, István Benák, Ildiko Baji, Ágnes Vetró, and Krisztina Kapornai Depressed individuals often display a reduced ability to experience pleasure and joy, known as anhedonia. Although anhedonia has been extensively studied, several questions remain, such as whether it persists after depression remission and whether it constitutes a risk factor for depression.
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Confident Leaders Inspire Creativity
Confident leaders foster greater creativity among their employees, according to a new study. “Employees are more likely to produce creative outcomes when they are aware that creativity is expected from them and is encouraged by their leaders,” writes study authors Lei Huang (Auburn University), Dina Krasikova (University of Texas at San Antonio), and Dong Liu (Georgia Institute of Technology). In some of the most influential research in the history of psychology, Albert Bandura and colleagues demonstrated that our belief in our own capabilities determines whether or not we succeed.
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Mastering the Art of Ignoring Makes People More Efficient
People searching for something can find it faster if they know what to look for. But new research suggests knowing what not to look for can be just as helpful. Although previous studies concluded that attempting to ignore irrelevant information slows people down, Johns Hopkins University researchers found that when people are given time to learn what’s possible to ignore, they’re able to search faster and more efficiently. The results, which offer new insight into how the mind processes difficult information, are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Science Explains Why You Love Morgan Freeman’s Voice
TIME: What is it about Morgan Freeman’s voice that makes us love it so, tasking it to play the voice of God in movies or to guide us safely to our destination through the navigation app Waze? It turns out, there are some science-backed reasons why Freeman’s voice has so many fans. One explanation is rather straightforward: “Some of the voices we hear all the time, they really form the backdrop of our lives,” says Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Research Center. At the movies, we’ve watched Freeman play the good guy over and over again, and those years of positive associations add up. “You would turn right when he told you to,” Rutledge says. Read the whole story: TIME
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Texting While Walking Isn’t Funny Anymore
The Wall Street Journal: Manny Fiori’s job is to make sure your phone doesn’t kill you. He guards the entrance to a garage near my San Francisco office and stops cars from hitting pedestrians so engrossed in screens they don’t notice they’re stepping into traffic. “People are so oblivious nowadays,” says Mr. Fiori, a building employee who barks orders and even holds out his arms to stop both cars and people. Watching the morning rush from his driveway is a scary measure of our smartphone addiction. In one hour last week, we tallied 70 pedestrians who never looked up—some watching TV shows, many grimacing while pounding out emails. Five of them can thank Mr.
