-
Mindfulness May Improve Test Scores
Scientific American: There’s a meditation practice called “mindfulness” that is about actively focusing on the present moment and increasing one’s attention span. Recently scientists analyzed whether such a practice could help improve undergrads’ test scores in the Graduate Record Exams, the GREs. The idea is that if we limit mind wandering, our ability to focus improves, and so will our cognitive ability. [The paper is published in the journal Psychological Science. The researchers had 24 undergrads attend a mindfulness course and another 24 go to a nutrition class. Each 45-minute class met eight times over two weeks. Read the whole story: Scientific American
-
After You Read the Listings, Your Agent Reads You
The New York Times: Every saleswoman will tell you that the customer is always transparent. Maybe not entirely, completely, but compared with the poker face a buyer thinks that he or she is wearing, there are always expressions and signals that are obvious to the practiced observer. When I first started out in Manhattan real estate sales, my boss shrugged and shared one of his favorites with me. “People with clipboards,” he said, “never buy.” Whenever I tell that anecdote, I get resistance from someone who claims to have been carrying a clipboard right before buying a kazillion-dollar-apartment in One57, and if I weren’t so quick to jump to conclusions, why then I’d have my own yacht.
-
The Dangers of Social Isolation
Wired: You say you want to be alone? Think again. Researchers have found that older people with fewer human contacts are more likely to die—even if they’re happy in their solitude—than are people with richer social lives. The study adds to the debate over whether loneliness, social isolation, or some combination of the two leads to higher mortality. ... Other studies, including an analysis of older Americans led by John Cacioppo, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago in Illinois, have shown a link between loneliness and a higher death rate.
-
Obama to Unveil Initiative to Map the Human Brain
The New York Times: President Obama on Tuesday will announce a broad new research initiative, starting with $100 million in 2014, to invent and refine new technologies to understand the human brain, senior administration officials said Monday. ... “The underlying assumptions about ‘mapping the entire brain’ are very controversial,” said Donald Stein, a neuroscientist at Emory University in Atlanta. He said changes in brain chemistry were “not likely to be able to be imaged by the current technologies that these people are proposing.” Emphasizing the development of technologies first, he said, is not a good approach.
-
Verschwörungstheorien: Was Faktenleugner bewegt (Conspiracy: Fact Deniers)
Der Spiegel: Die überwältigende Mehrheit der Klimaforscher ist sich einig, dass sich das Klima verändert und dass vom Menschen verursachte Kohlendioxidemissionen diesen Prozess beeinflussen. Trotzdem wird in der Öffentlichkeit heftig darüber gestritten - und so mancher lehnt diese These komplett ab. Psychologen haben Motivation und Einstellungen von Klimawandelleugnern mittels eines Online-Fragebogens untersucht. Wie sie im Fachmagazin "Psychological Science" berichten, baten sie eine Reihe von Klima-Bloggern, auf ihren Fragebogen zu verlinken. Er erschien auf acht englischsprachigen Blogs, die der Wissenschaft positiv gegenüberstehen.
-
Mindfulness Training Boosts Test Scores
Pacific Standard: Studies reporting the benefits of mindfulness training keep rolling in—not quite with the regularity of those distracting thoughts that keep popping up in your head, but at a good clip nonetheless. The latest, from a team at the University of California, Santa Barbara, reports even a short, two-week course in focusing the mind can lead to immediate, tangible results: higher scores on tests measuring reasoning and comprehension.
