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The Ugly Values of Beautiful People
Pacific Standard: The beautiful are different from you and me. But not in the ways we think. That’s the conclusion of new research from Israel, which confirms the truism that we idealize attractive people, and suggests that—at least as far as women are concerned—the pedestal we place them on is largely unearned. “Despite the widely accepted ‘What is beautiful is good’ stereotype, our findings suggest that the beautiful strive for conformity rather than independence, and for self-promotion rather than tolerance,” writes a research team led by Lihi Segal-Caspi of the Open University of Israel.
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Study: More women winemakers are making names for themselves
The Washington Post: In 1978, the first vintage that Cathy Corison made wine, she could count on one hand the number of women she knew of doing the same kind of work in the cellars of the Napa Valley. Without using all her fingers. Nearly 35 years later, Corison needs a lot more fingers. Winemaking remains primarily a man’s world, but research by Santa Clara University professors Lucia Albino Gilbert and John Gilbert has found that nearly 10 percent of California wineries now have women as the main or lead winemaker. Their second finding: Women winemakers tend to be more highly acclaimed than their male counterparts. Why?
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What Makes Self-Directed Learning Effective?
In recent years, educators have come to focus more and more on the importance of lab-based experimentation, hands-on participation, student-led inquiry, and the use of “manipulables” in the classroom. The underlying rationale seems to be that students are better able to learn when they can control the flow of their experience, or when their learning is “self-directed.” While the benefits of self-directed learning are widely acknowledged, the reasons why a sense of control leads to better acquisition of material are poorly understood.
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Diss Information: Is There a Way to Stop Popular Falsehoods from Morphing into “Facts”?
Scientific American: A recurring red herring in the current presidential campaign is the verity of President Barack Obama's birth certificate. Although the president has made this document public, and records of his 1961 birth in Honolulu have been corroborated by newspaper announcements, a vocal segment of the population continues to insist that Obama's birth certificate proving U.S. citizenship is a fraud, making him legally ineligible to be president. A Politico survey found that a majority of voters in the 2011 Republican primary shared this clearly false belief. Scientific issues can be just as vulnerable to misinformation campaigns.
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Till Death, or 20 Years, Do Us Part
The New York Times: It makes little sense to explore a new era of family values based around Hollywood couplings. Or, worse yet, around mere rumors of the way movie stars conduct their marital affairs. But might there be seeds of something worth considering in one such rumor, that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes signed a five-year marriage contract? It’s a dim data point but not an isolated one, suggesting people are rethinking marriage, at least around the edges. Prenuptial agreements, a different sort of contract, are on the rise, as is vowless cohabitation. The ages at which people marry have hit record highs, 28.7 years for men and 26.5 for women.
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Nothing to fear but anxiety therapy itself
Brisbane Times: Putting on a brave face could actually make your fear worse, a study shows. An international expert on fear and phobias says her research has found it helps people to talk about their fears while they are experiencing them - and in some cases the best treatments involve scaring them more. Michelle Craske, a professor of psychology and director of the Anxiety Disorders Research Centre at the University of California, Los Angeles, said keeping people in a heightened fear state seems to help them learn to deal with their fearful emotions.
