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Parenting and Temperament in Childhood Predict Later Political Ideology
Political mindsets are the product of an individual’s upbringing, life experiences, and environment. But are there specific experiences that lead a person to choose one political ideology over another? New research from psychological scientist R. Chris Fraley of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and colleagues suggest that parenting practices and childhood temperament may play an influential role. Their study is published online in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Hot hands and hoops: Irrational belief in the NBA
Professional basketball begins again next week, and dedicated fans will be happy to put last year’s labor disputes and lockout behind them. But many will also remember 2011-2012 as a magical season. It was the season of Jeremy Lin, a New York Knicks point guard who, for a few weeks last winter, captured the country’s imagination. Lin was an unheralded and undrafted bench player from Harvard, one of the few Asian Americans in the NBA, whose unlikely hot streak landed him on the cover of Sports Illustrated—twice, back to back. He made headlines beyond the sporting press as well, from Time to the Associated Press, and was the subject of seven instant books.
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Elizabeth Warren, Scott Brown and the Myth of Race
TIME: If, as David Axelrod once said, “Campaigns are like an MRI for the soul,” then what do we see when we peer into the campaigns of Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown and his challenger, liberal icon Elizabeth Warren? We see a classic culture clash: town vs. gown, the Red Sox vs. the Head of the Charles Regatta, a small-town guy with an iconic pickup truck vs. a Harvard professor who’s a national star. Brown’s latest ad attacks Warren as if she has been caught in a lie about her racial background: Warren claims to be part Cherokee and Delaware Indian. In her response ad, she says she never benefited professionally from her heritage, a claim backed up by officials who hired her.
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The more money we have, the fewer problems we see
The Washington Post: “Money doesn’t buy happiness” is a cliche for a reason. The Nobel laureate psychologist/economist Daniel Kahneman and Princeton economist Angus Deaton have found that “emotional well-being” (that is, what emotions people report themselves as having felt the previous day) maxes out at around $75,000 of annual income, even though peoples’ evaluations of how well their lives are going rise indefinitely with income. “We conclude,” Kahneman and Deaton write, “that high income buys life satisfaction but not happiness.” But this kind of analysis can be problematic when it’s used to compare whole societies, rather than individual people.
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Tips For Improving Your Teens’ Sleep Schedule
The Wall Street Journal: Many parents wrestle with helping their teenagers get enough sleep, especially when high school classes start before dawn. Battling early school start times and teens’ changing body clocks, which pressure them to fall asleep later, can be overwhelming for parents. I interviewed experts and parents for today’s “Work & Family” column on groggy teens, and they offered some helpful tips. Few teens want parents setting their bedtimes; my own adolescents long resisted my requests to stop texting or Web-surfing late at night. But educating teens on how sleep loss damages health, energy and appearance can encourage them to set their own limits, parents say.
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Study: People Who Wait to Have Sex Are ‘Less Dissatisfied’ in Marriage
The Atlantic: PROBLEM: A lot of "marriage promotion" and youth health movements are predicated on notions of how adolescent sexual gallivanting influences romantic/marital relationships as adults. The dominant notion is that starting earlier means problems later. But there's more to it. Some of what we've heard from previous research: Having sex at younger ages is associated with earlier marriage and cohabitation, more divorce, and more extra-marital pregnancy. METHODOLOGY: Dr.
