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Why You Should Want Your Kid to Be a Slow Learner
New York Magazine: We tend to assume that learning things easily is the same as learning them well. In school, teachers are pleased when children grasp a concept or a skill in one lesson, and so, of course, are children. The trouble is, when learning is too easy, we may not actually be learning much at all. We know Abraham Lincoln, for example, as an autodidact who made himself erudite in literature, history, and the law. But if you had been at school with him, you probably wouldn’t have marked him out as a future lawyer, let alone a future president. A cousin remembers him as “somewhat dull ...
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Can’t Take My Eyes off You—Your Face, That Is
Scientific American: When it comes to first impressions of a potential new love, the eyes may indeed be the window to the soul—because the direction of your gaze when looking at this person offers an unconscious, automatic giveaway of whether your initial reaction is romance or sex. That’s according to a study in the journal Psychological Science. [Mylene Bolmont et al: Love Is in the Gaze: An Eye-Tracking Study of Love and Sexual Desire] Heterosexual subjects looked at photographs on a computer of fully clothed, attractive strangers of the opposite sex.
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Laptop Note-Taking: External Brain-Booster or Memory Drain?
Education Week: As more and more districts roll out 1-to-1 laptop and tablet initiatives, new research suggests students may be better off sticking to traditional pen and paper longhand for taking and studying notes. In a series of experiments published in the June edition of Psychological Science, Pam Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel Oppenheimer of the University of California Los Angeles found that students taking notes on a laptop could include more material—but that wasn't neccessarily a good thing. Read the whole story: Education Week
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How The Little Things Can Make A Big Difference
Forbes: Many people will be familiar with signs by the side of the road exhorting drivers to take their litter away with them. In the past, those signs would remind transgressors of the penalties they faced if caught. Nowadays, they are more likely to feature a statement along the lines of “other people do”. ... Of course, this attempt to persuade people to do or to buy things that they might not otherwise have done or bought has been at the heart of the advertising and marketing industry for half a century or more.
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Risky behavior by teens can be explained in part by how their brains change
The Washington Post: Teenagers can do the craziest things. They drive at high speeds. They stand around outside loud parties and smoke weed in front of cops. They guzzle liquor. They insult their parents — or lie to them — and feel no remorse, because, of course, their parents are idiots. It is easy to blame peer pressure or willfulness, but scientific studies suggest that at least some of this out-there behavior has a physiological tie-in: Brain mapping technologies show that the average teenager’s brain looks slightly different from an adult’s.
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Here Are the Psychological Reasons Why an American Might Join ISIS
Mother Jones: "Its Islam over everything." So read the Twitter bio of Douglas McAuthur McCain—or, as he reportedly called himself, "Duale Khalid"—the San Diego man who is apparently the first American to be killed while fighting for ISIS. According to NBC News, McCain grew up in Minnesota, was a basketball player, and wanted to be a rapper. Friends describe him as a high school "goofball" and "a really nice guy." So what could have made him want to join the ranks of other Americans drawn towards militant Islam like John Walker Lindh and Al Qaeda spokesman Adam Yahiye Gadahn?
