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What was B.F. Skinner really like? A study parses his traits
March 20th marks the birthday of famed behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner, who would have turned 108 today. Besides Sigmund Freud, B.F. Skinner was the most famous and perhaps the most influential psychologist of the 20th century. But his own “radical behaviorism”—the idea that behavior is caused solely by environmental factors, never by thoughts or feelings—made him a magnet of controversy, which grew even more intense with the publication of his best-known book, Beyond Freedom & Dignity.
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Is modern medicine ill with dehumanization? New article offers a diagnosis, unveils its causes, and prescribes a humanizing cure
“Anyone who has been admitted into a hospital or undergone a procedure, even if cared for in the most appropriate way, can feel as though they were treated like an animal or object,” says Harvard University psychologist and physician Omar Sultan Haque. Health care workers enter their professions to help people; research shows that empathic, humane care improves outcomes. Yet dehumanization is endemic. The results can be disastrous: neglect of necessary treatments or prescription of excessive, painful procedures or dangerous drugs. What are the causes and effects of dehumanization in medicine? And what can be done about it?
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Boost Intelligence by Focusing on Growth
Scientific American: Is intelligence innate, or can you boost it with effort? The way you answer that question may determine how well you learn. Those who think smarts are malleable are more likely to bounce back from their mistakes and make fewer errors in the future, according to a study published last October in Psychological Science. Researchers at Michigan State University asked 25 undergraduate students to participate in a simple, repetitive computer task: they had to press a button whenever the letters that appeared on the screen conformed to a particular pattern. Read the whole story: Scientific American
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How Symptoms Are Presented Online May Affect Whether We Think We Have The Disease
The Huffington Post: If you're one of those people who obsessively Googles your symptoms when you're feeling sick, you should read this. A new study in the journal Psychological Science shows that we're more likely to think we have the sickness or disease if a number of our symptoms are listed consecutively on a website. "People irrationally infer more meanings from a 'streak,'" study researcher Virginia Kwan, a psychologist at Arizona State University, said in a statement.
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Why Bilinguals Are Smarter
The New York Times: SPEAKING two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age. This view of bilingualism is remarkably different from the understanding of bilingualism through much of the 20th century.
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Lack Of Compassion Can Make People Feel Less Moral, Study Shows
Huffington Post: When a stranger asks for money, people choose not to give for a variety of reasons, even if their hearts want to -- perhaps they're not sure what the money will be used for, or perhaps they'd rather give to an organization that helps people in need. Or maybe they just don't want to part with their cash. But a new study in the journal Psychological Science suggests that there could be a hidden cost to not being compassionate -- it might make you feel a little less moral. "Compassion is such a powerful emotion. It's been called a moral barometer," study researcher Daryl Cameron, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said in a statement.
