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Social science takes spotlight bow in election
USA Today: Polls, and pollsters, took a star turn on this year's election night, calling the presidential election days ahead of the outcome. Pundits and politicos look a little less bright, on the other hand, after a presidential race that many of them saw as too close to call turned out to be effectively over before midnight on Tuesday. Everyone from conservative nabob George Will to liberal gadfly Dana Milbank criticized prominent poll aggregator Nate Silver of The New York Times, for example, in the run-up to the election. Silver proved more prescient than they predicted, however.
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Proof math can be a real pain
Chicago Tribune: Sian Beilock is the author of "Choke: What the Secrets Of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To." She recently co-authored a report that suggests that when a person is anxious about math, his or her brain responds in the same way it would if the person was experiencing pain. eilock, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, helps people learn how not to choke in important, stressful situations, such as taking a math test.She has her own story of choking: Years ago she was playing in the U.S. Youth Soccer Olympic Development Program, and a national coach was on the field, standing behind her.
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New Insights Into Personality From Psychological Science
Read about new insights into personality from Psychological Science and Current Directions in Psychological Science. What Is Extraversion For? Integrating Trait and Motivational Perspectives and Identifying the Purpose of Extraversion Kira O. McCabe and William Fleeson Can the goals people pursue predict individual differences in extraverted behavior? Participants used a personal digital assistant to report their current level of extraversion, their momentary goals, and their current level of positive affect 5 times a day for 10 days. The researchers found that within- and between-person fluctuations in levels of extroversion were associated with changes in people's momentary goals.
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“The signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — But Some Don’t” by Nate Silver
The Washington Post: Nate Silver is best known as a statistician and election analyst (psephologist) who correctly predicted the winner in 49 of the 50 states during the 2008 presidential race and called all 50 states correctly this past week. He quietly persevered in his election analyses despite a torrent of criticism and invective from a variety of commentators who called the race a tossup or even insisted that Mitt Romney would win handily. Notwithstanding his track record, however, his book “The Signal and the Noise” is a much more general tome about predictions good, bad and ugly, whose basic outline is straightforward.
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Using Just 10% of Your Brain? Think Again
The Wall Street Journal: Pop quiz: Which of these statements is false? 1. We use only 10% of our brain. 2. Environments rich in stimuli improve the brains of preschool children. 3. Individuals learn better when they receive information in their preferred learning style, whether auditory, visual or kinesthetic. If you picked the first one, congratulations. The idea that we use only 10% of our brain is patently false. Yet it so permeates popular culture that, among psychologists and neuroscientists, it is known as the "10% myth." Contrary to popular belief, the entire brain is put to use—unused neurons die and unused circuits atrophy.
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Why War Helps, Rather than Harms, Some With PTSD
TIME: War is often the trigger for mental illness, but the latest research reveals some unexpected effects of combat on post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Feeling at home at war may seem like an oxymoron, but it has been reported for as long as wars have been. Now, research involving veterans of the war in Afghanistan suggests for the first time that some soldiers suffering from symptoms of PTSD before deployment improve during or after their combat duty. And another new study suggests that the size of a particular brain region— the amygdala— may predict which soldiers are at highest risk for the disorder.
