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Believing What You Don’t Believe
The New York Times: HOW is it that people can believe something that they know is not true? For example, Kansas City Royals fans, sitting in front of their television sets in Kansas City, surely know that there is no possible connection between their lucky hats (or socks, or jerseys) and the outcome of a World Series game at Citi Field in New York, 1,200 miles away. Yet it would be impossible to persuade many of them to watch the game without those lucky charms. It’s not that people don’t understand that it’s scientifically impossible for their lucky hats to help their team hit a home run or turn a double play — all but the most superstitious would acknowledge that.
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At Work: Is Telecommuting The Way to Go?
The Wall Street Journal: If you want to convince the boss you should start working from home, chances are there is a study out there that says it makes employees more productive. If you’re a boss and would prefer your employees stay tethered to their office cubicles, a sheaf of academic research will bolster that argument, too. A team of social scientists recently set out to review the research on telecommuting, in hopes of finding out once and for all whether it’s a net positive for workers and their employers. The resulting study, published last week in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, boldly declares: It depends. ... But there are plenty of exceptions.
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If You’re Happy and You Know It, Raise Your Head
The Atlantic: Shortly after Steven Livingstone arrived at McGill University, he went out to a bar with some new friends to check out the Montreal nightlife. It was loud, and crowded, and dimly lit, and he found himself struggling to hear when one of his friends tried to talk to him. “Because it was dark at the bar, I couldn't see his face either,” Livingstone says. “But I could see his head. He was moving his head in a really sort of animated fashion, and it was at that moment that I realized that he was excited about something. He was trying to tell me about it.
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Why Christmas Creep Turns Holiday Shoppers into Grinches
TIME: We’re a nation divided, with each side judging the other harshly, unable to empathize with the counterpart’s point of view. And with each sure that their side’s own values, methods and motives are more just, more reasonable, and just plain better. Sound familiar? And yet, according to the National Retail Federation, more than 40% of Americans begin their holiday shopping before Halloween. No one’s forcing them to do so. Could such a large percentage of our population truly be neurotic, materialistic, and/or easily manipulated, like Joanne suggests? Read the whole story: TIME
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Is Your 4-Year-Old A Liar? Here’s The Bright Side
NPR: Most parents bewail the inevitable occurrence of lying in their kids, but the emergence of deception in childhood may actually signal the development of something pretty wonderful: an ability to understand other people's beliefs as distinct from one's own. This ability is part of what psychologists call "theory of mind," and a new paper finds that improving children's theory of mind abilities can turn honest 3-year-olds into strategic liars. That might not sound like a positive outcome, but it tells us something important about how theory of mind affects social behavior. ... That's where new research by Xiao Pan Ding and colleagues comes in.
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Math Anxiety Doesn’t Equal Poor Math Performance
Experiencing math anxiety — nervousness and discomfort in relation to math — impairs math performance for some students, but new research shows that it’s linked with improved performance for others, at least to a degree. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
