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How Americans Think About Wealth
The Huffington Post: OK, so I confess I woke myself up at 3:45 a.m. to watch the royal wedding, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Who doesn't like a good fairy tale? But in order to savor the spectacle, I had to temporarily suppress my discomfort in the face of such opulence. Behind the fairy tale is some of the most obscene wealth inequality in the world. And it's not just England. Wealth inequality is at historic highs in the U.S. as well, with some estimates suggesting that 1 percent of Americans control nearly half the nation's wealth.
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How Happy Are You? A Census Wants to Know
The New York Times: When they filled out the city’s census forms this spring, the people of Somerville got a new question. On a scale of 1 to 10, they were asked, “How happy do you feel right now?” Officials here want this Boston suburb to become the first city in the United States to systematically track people’s happiness. Like leaders in Britain, France and a few other places, they want to move beyond the traditional measures of success — economic growth — to promote policies that produce more than just material well-being.
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How data helps to know people’s mind
Yahoo India: Washington, April 29 (ANI): An author has described how psychologists can use their data to learn about the different ways that people's minds work. Most psychology research is done by asking a big group of people the same questions at the same time. "So we might get a bunch of Psych 101 undergrads, administer a survey, ask about how much they use alcohol and what their mood is, and just look and see, is there a relationship between those two variables," said Daniel J. Bauer of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the author of the article. Read the whole story: Yahoo India
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Confirmed: Two heads aren’t always better than one
CBS News: Two heads aren't always better than one, at least when it comes to memory. People who memorize facts in groups remember less than solo students do, according to a newly published overview of memory research. The group as a whole remembers more than any single memorizer would have, but the people in the group fail to live up to their full memory potential, each recalling less than if they'd studied alone. On the other hand, according to study researcher Suparna Rajaram, a psychologist at Stony Brook University in New York, other people's memories can enrich our own, as can be attested by anyone who suddenly recalls a long-ago event when another person starts telling a story.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Asymmetry in Resting Intracortical Activity as a Buffer to Social Threat Katrina Koslov, Wendy Barry Mendes, Petra E. Pajtas, and Diego A. Pizzagalli People respond to social rejection differently. To investigate whether differences in resting cortical brain activity could be responsible for different responses to social rejection, 84 women were asked to write a brief speech then read it in front of two other people. The individuals watching the speech would either frown and act like they hated the speech (threat condition) or provide positive feedback and encouragement (evaluation condition).
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The Rewards of Doing “Something”
People don't really care what they're doing — just as long as they are doing something. That's one of the findings summarized in a new review article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. When psychologists think about why people do what they do, they tend to look for specific goals, attitudes, and motivations. But they may be missing something more general - people like to be doing something. These broader goals, to be active or inactive, may have a big impact on how they spend their time.
