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What Children Lose When Their Brains Develop Too Fast
The great Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget used to talk about “the American question.” In the course of his long career, he lectured around the world, explaining how children’s minds develop as they get older. When he visited the U.S., someone in the audience was sure to ask, “But Prof. Piaget, how can we get them to do it faster?” Today it’s no longer just impatient Americans who assume that faster brain and cognitive development is better. Across the globe, as middle-class “high investment” parents anxiously track each milestone, it’s easy to conclude that the point of being a parent is to accelerate your child’s development as much as possible.
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We’re Living Through the ‘Boring Apocalypse’
It could have been a scene straight out of an apocalyptic horror movie. When the World Health Organization declared the Omicron variant of the coronavirus a “variant of concern” in late November, borders closed, markets tumbled and warnings spread about how this new threat could ravage the world’s population. And then … many of us went right back to whatever we were doing. In a poll of Americans conducted from Dec. 3 to Dec. 6, almost all — 94 percent — had heard of Omicron.
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The Marshmallow Test: Bunkum or a True Predictor of Future Success?
You know those times when you try to share a favorite movie, band, or restaurant with friends, and they just don’t get it? For mysterious reasons, you can’t refashion the moment for them as you experienced it originally. Where you found passion and insight and a life-changing creme brulee, they see just another meal served up by a sulky waiter. For more than a decade, psychology has been enduring the institutional version of this. It’s called the replication crisis because researchers have been unable to replicate the results of many well-cited studies. And that’s a problem.
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They Died From Covid. Then the Online Attacks Started.
... Just as cellphones have changed American policing, social media has transformed the way Americans chronicle their lives and, increasingly, their demise. It has also resulted in many people leaving behind a trail of ideology that’s hard to untangle from their untimely deaths. And in a hyperpartisan culture plagued by “alternative facts” and debates over the most basic scientific realities of the pandemic, many among the vaccinated are eager to brandish such accounts as the final, indubitable proof that the Covid deniers and those who are anti-vaccine are dangerously misguided.
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They Say Suffering Will Make You Stronger—But It’s Not That Simple
Is suffering good for us? Does it make us better people, kinder and more resilient; does it give meaning to our lives? It would be nice if it did, particularly since so many of us have been suffering these days. Around three-quarters of a million Americans have died of Covid, and those who loved them often didn’t get to say goodbye or hold a proper funeral. Millions have lost their jobs or their businesses, millions have had their life projects put on hold or derailed. There have been those trapped together who hate each other and others who essentially lived in solitary confinement. Even the luckiest experienced boredom, anxiety, and dread.
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Why Rethinking Our Ideas Means We’re Growing
It's easy to stick to our beliefs and much harder to accept views that contradict them. But psychologist Adam Grant argues that rethinking our ideas is good for us—we might even come to enjoy it. ...
