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The Science of Truthiness
Slate: A bumper sticker was popular in the city where I went to college. It was yellow, with large black print that read: “Mopeds are dangerous.” Beneath the text was the blocky silhouette of a moped and nothing else. The sticker didn’t illustrate the claim that mopeds were dangerous—it didn’t show a moped crumpled against a tree or running someone over—but it was eye-catching, the yellow contrasting sharply with the black, and on message. I believed that bumper sticker, and still do, for all that I’ve rarely encountered a moped or read about a moped accident or even really grasped the difference between a moped and a Segway.
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Why You Shouldn’t Race Through Those Thank-You Notes
New York Magazine: Thank-you notes are the bane of newlyweds ever — they take forever, are drenched in overly saccharine language, and seem to serve little point other than adhering to an established social more. But a new study led by Lisa Williams of the University of New South Wales and published in the journalEmotion suggests that simple expressions of gratitude can help make others — even those who barely know you (those weird distant cousins of your significant other, for example) — feel more warmly toward you.
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The Positive Effects of Sports-Themed Video Games
Pacific Standard: It’s widely believed that video games are partially responsible for the childhood obesity epidemic, since they encourage kids to sit in front of screens rather than go outside and play. If that’s your worry, you might want to … buy your kid a new video game. Just make sure its title contains the acronym NFL, NBA, or MLB. Newly published research suggests adolescents who play more sports-themed video games are more likely to get involved in real-life sports activities over time. What’s more, playing these games appears to enhance kids’ self-esteem by allowing them to develop and master sports-related skills and knowledge.
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Work less, do more, live better
Times of Higher Education: You may worry that with the myriad demands of your work, if you try to constrain your workweek, including research, to 40 hours or less, you’ll never get anything done. There’s a book for you. In How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing (2007), psychologist Paul J. Silvia offers evidence-based advice about how to be productive as an academic writer without giving up on leisure time.
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Children May Be Losing Their Ability To Read Emotions, But There’s A Fix
The Huffington Post: Sure, your child can read emoticons. But a provocative new study suggests that all that screen time is making it hard for children to interpret real-life emotions. It shows that the more kids use digital media, the more their social skills decline. “Decreased sensitivity to emotional cues — losing the ability to understand the emotions of other people — is one of the costs" of heavy use of cell phones and computers, study co-author Dr. Patricia Greenfield, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a written statement.
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Holding a Mirror to Their Natures
The New York Times: When twins have similar personalities, is it mainly because they share so much genetic material or because their physical resemblance makes other people treat them alike? Most researchers believe the former, but the proposition has been hard to prove. So Nancy L. Segal, a psychologist who directs the Twin Studies Center at California State University, Fullerton, decided to test it — and enlisted an unlikely ally. He is François Brunelle, a photographer in Montreal who takes pictures of pairs of people who look alike but are not twins. Dr. Segal was sent to Mr. Brunelle’s website by a graduate student who knew of her research with twins.
