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Psychology Greener Than Thou
The Wall Street Journal: Organic-food advocates, often seen as insufferably smug and even depicted that way in TV comedies like "Portlandia," won't find a new study reassuring. Sixty-two participants either looked at pictures of fruits and vegetables labeled as organic, comfort foods such as ice cream and brownies, or foods that don't fit neatly into a category (rice, beans). They rated these foods' desirability. Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal
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Memory, Judgment, and Neuroeconomics—Insights from Current Directions in Psychological Science
Current Directions in Psychological Science, a publication of the Association for Psychological Science, offers a unique perspective on developments taking place across the many different areas of psychological science. New reports from the June issue of the journal examine how people retrieve memories from their minds, a new model of how working memory works, how we judge each other’s personalities, and a multi-disciplinary field of study that merges behavior and economics. Retrieval-Based Learning: Active Retrieval Promotes Meaningful Learning Scientists who study learning tend to investigate how memories are formed during learning. But Jeffrey D.
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Scientists Find Learning Is Not ‘Hard-Wired’
Education Week: Neuroscience exploded into the education conversation more than 20 years ago, in step with the evolution of personal computers and the rise of the Internet, and policymakers hoped medical discoveries could likewise help doctors and teachers understand the "hard wiring" of the brain. That conception of how the brain works, exacerbated by the difficulty in translating research from lab to classroom, spawned a generation of neuro-myths and snake-oil pitches—from programs to improve cross-hemisphere brain communication to teaching practices aimed at "auditory" or "visual" learners.
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God’s Flipside: Religion Without Kindness
Huffington Post: I recently watched one of the most brutal and upsetting films I've ever seen, called The Stoning of Soraya M. I suppose the title of this 2008 film should have warned me away, but I really don't believe that anything could prepare viewers for the graphic, bloody and excruciatingly prolonged scene that gives the film its name. It's the story of a 35-year-old mother, falsely accused of adultery by her bullying husband and local mullah, who is convicted under Islamic law and executed by the men of a rural Iranian village. The stoning, based on a true story, took place in 1986, but the small-mindedness and hate-filled religiosity are medieval. The Stoning of Soraya M.
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The Big Reason Employees Need Bosses
BusinessNews Daily: It turns out that equality may not be the best policy … at least when it comes to work. That’s because a new study has found that teams with a built-in hierarchy outperformed groups where each person held an equal amount of power. The study found that groups with an equal distribution of power among all workers experienced more conflict, reduced differentiation in roles and less coordination and integration within the group. This is because, without a hierarchy of power, the researchers found that group members jostle for power amongst each other.
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With PSA Testing, The Power Of Anecdote Often Trumps Statistics
NPR: Millions of men and their doctors are trying to understand a federal task force's recommendation against routine use of a prostate cancer test called the PSA. The guidance, which came out last week, raises basic questions about how to interpret medical evidence. And what role expert panels should play in how doctors practice. About 70 percent of men over 50 have gotten a PSA blood test. Some are convinced it was a lifesaver. Tom Fouts of Florida is one of them. He and his doctor had been watching his PSA (prostate-specific antigen) creep up for almost two years. Fouts was losing sleep over it, wondering if it meant a silent killer was incubating in his prostate gland.
