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Are Babies Bigoted?
Smithsonian Magazine: In one of the fastest-growing areas in psychology, researchers are gaining insight into the mental processes of subjects that are barely able to communicate: babies. In recent years, innovative and playful experimental setups have suggested that infants as young as six months old have a sense of morality and fairness, and that 18-month-olds are capable of altruistically helping others. Some of this research, though, has also shed light on babies’ dark side.
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More Career Options May Explain Why Fewer Women Pursue Jobs in Science and Math
Women may be less likely to pursue careers in science and math because they have more career choices, not because they have less ability, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Although the gender gap in mathematics has narrowed in recent decades, with more females enrolling and performing well in math classes, females are still less likely to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) than their male peers. Researchers tend to agree that differences in math ability can’t account for the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields. So what does?
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Seeing, and Thinking, Like Sherlock
The New York Times: Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels and short stories about the incomparable detective Sherlock Holmes have never been out of print since their first publication in 1887. Holmes collections abound, as do movies, TV series, video games, hats, pipes, T-shirts and calendars, not to mention nonfiction books dissecting the Holmesian method. And now here come two more, one of them, of all things, a Sherlock Holmes self-help book. Maria Konnikova’s “Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes” may not make you a master detective, as the publisher notes, but it will teach you how to “observe, not merely see,” a prerequisite to thinking like the great man.
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The Three-Billion-Dollar Brain
The New Yorker: Last week, the Human Connectome Project, supported jointly by sixteen components of the National Institutes of Health, released its first set of data, a massive set of structural and functional images of the brains of sixty-eight adult volunteers—to almost no fanfare whatsoever. The amount of data, two terabytes, is so great that it poses problems for the Internet; you can download it for free if you like, but the organizers of the project would rather mail it to you on a hard drive. ...
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The New Power of Memory
The Wall Street Journal: Memory allows for a kind of mental time travel, a way for us to picture not just the past but also a version of the future, according to a growing body of research. The studies suggest that the purpose of memory is far more extensive than simply helping us store and recall information about what has already happened. Researchers from University College London and Harvard University have made strides charting how memory helps us draw a mental sketch of someone's personality and imagine how that person might behave in a future social situation. They detailed their latest findings in work published in the journal Cerebral Cortex last week. ...
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Pop Culture? There’s an Effect for That.
Scientific American: Hello, my name is Melanie, and I’m addicted to horrible television. Well, I’m also addicted to social media. And politics. And The Daily Show. And Jennifer Lawrence interviews… Okay, it’s probably fair to skip to the end of this list and admit that really, I’m just plain addicted to pop culture. ... The truth is, no matter what we’re looking at in the world around us — be it trends, television, current events, or celebrities — psychology is right there, smack dab in the middle of it. Apple might have built its brand by telling you that there’s an app for everything, but me? I’m here to tell you that there’s an effect for everything.
