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How to Become the Smartest Group in the Room
You’re a manager tasked with putting together a team to tackle a new project. What qualities do you look for in creating such a crack team? Research from psychological scientists Anita Williams Woolley (Carnegie Mellon University), Ishani Aggarwal (Fundação Getulio Vargas), and Thomas Malone (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) finds that the smartest groups don’t necessarily have the highest IQs – rather, what they do tend to have are excellent social skills.
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Teens Take Fewer Risks Around Slightly Older Adults
Adolescents are known risk takers, especially when they're surrounded by same-aged peers. But new research suggests that being in a group that includes just one slightly older adult might decrease teens' propensity to engage in risky behavior. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "The take home message is that decision making in groups of adolescents and young adults is more prudent when a somewhat older adult is present," explains psychological scientist and lead researcher Laurence Steinberg of Temple University.
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The Knicks Won. Let’s Gamble!
Pacific Standard: The lottery, it's been said, is a tax for people who are bad at math, yet quite a lot of presumably intelligent people take the risk buying lottery tickets at least once in a while. Maybe they think it's fun, maybe it's an addiction, or maybe some people really are just that bad at math. Or, a new study argues, maybe it's just a sunny day, the Knicks won, and people are feeling good. "People in a good mood are more willing to gamble—or, more broadly, to accept risky bets," write neuroscientists Ross Otto, Stephen Fleming, and Paul Glimcher in Psychological Science.
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The Power of Daily Writing in a Journal
The Wall Street Journal: Charley Kempthorne wakes each morning before sunrise, pours a cup of black coffee, opens his computer and writes in a private journal that he began in 1964. These days, he logs between 1,000 and 3,000 words a day. By his rough calculations, his journal is about 10 million words long. ... “Most of my journal has been and continues to be an end in itself,” says Mr. Kempthorne, who quit a university teaching job in his 30s to run a farm and small house-painting business. “It helps me understand my life better.
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When do children show evidence of self-esteem? Earlier than you might think
The Conversation: Many youngsters, like Jessica, seem to exude positive feelings about their abilities – they happily report that they are good at running, jumping, drawing, math or music. However, the belief in being good at certain concrete skills could be different from a more general sense of self-worth or what scientists call “positive self-esteem.” For example, at early ages, children can report “I’m good at running” or “I’m good with letters.” But preschoolers might not be able to answer questions about their overall sense of self-worth. So, when do kids develop a sense of self-esteem and how can we measure it?
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Funny How Everyone You Know Became a Snow Expert Last Week, Huh?
New York Magazine: Something funny happens in the days leading up to a big snowstorm: A lot of people who know next to nothing about snowstorms suddenly start acting like they know a lot about snowstorms. There are a lot of people spreading questionable information, in other words, and if it seems like those who are loudest about their perceived weather expertise are the ones who least know what they’re talking about, well, that’s not very surprising to psychologists who study self-perceived knowledge. “[T]his is a great example of overclaiming,” University of Chicago psychologist Nicholas Epley told Science of Us in an email.
