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Fractions Are Key To Math Success, New Study Shows
CBS Detroit: ANN ARBOR — What part of math success comes from knowing fractions? More than you might think, according to a new study that analyzed long-term data on more than 4,000 children from both the United States and the United Kingdom.
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A Fan’s Brain
The New Yorker: The psychology of sports fandom is often so obvious and unsubtle in its raw tribalism that it can seem silly to apply academic rigor to the subject. “They Saw a Game: A Case Study” is considered a seminal paper in the sports-psychology subgenre. First published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, in 1954, it brought the scientific method to bear on students’ reactions to a particularly violent football game between Princeton and Dartmouth.
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Respect of peers more important than money
The Telegraph: The admiration and respect of our peers has a greater bearing on our overall happiness in life than our bank balance or the status associated with being rich, researchers found. Psychologists from the University of California, Berkeley carried out four studies to observe the connection between various types of status and our overall happiness in life. In one study, the researchers carried out a survey of 80 university students who between them were involved in 12 different social groups such as sororities.
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You Choose, They Lose: The Psychology of Income Inequality
Pacific Standard: Paper or plastic? PC or Mac? Do you want fries with that? American culture is all about making choices. And two scholars report that mulling over our options affects how we think about economic inequality. “When the concept of choice was highlighted,” they write, “people (taking part in a series of experiments) were less disturbed by statistics demonstrating wealth inequality, less likely to believe that societal factors contribute to the success of the wealthy, less willing to endorse redistributing educational resources more equally between the rich and the poor, and less willing to endorse increased taxes on the rich.” Read the whole story: Pacific Standard
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Thinking About Choice Diminishes Concern for Wealth Inequality
Against the backdrop of a worldwide recession, wealth inequality has become a prominent theme in discussions about politics and the economy. In some ways, Americans seem to advocate a more equal distribution of wealth. In surveys and public opinion polls, for example, the majority of Americans supports having a strong middle class. But, when it comes to specific policies, they often vote against measures that would narrow the gap between those with the highest and lowest incomes.
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Class discrimination harms health of poor
United Press International: Discrimination and the stigma attached to poverty may contribute to physiologic changes associated with poorer health, U.S. researchers suggest. Lead author Dr. Thomas Fuller-Rowell of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar, said although the link between poverty and poor health has been long known, this study considered the impact of class discrimination. The study involved 252 17-year-olds from upstate New York enrolled in a long-running Cornell University study on rural poverty. All were white but the study did not look at the effect of race.
