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Why Climate Change Threats Don’t Trigger An Immediate Response From Human Brains
AILSA CHANG, HOST: So I turned to Dan Gilbert. He's a psychologist at Harvard, and he focuses on the human mind, not climate change. But it turns out those two things are totally connected when it comes to explaining why people don't do more about the environment. He wrote about this all the way back in 2006, but what he said then still holds up today. Gilbert argued that climate change lacks four fundamental features that typically trigger an immediate response. And those features all start with the letter I, so bear with us. ... DAN GILBERT: The human brain, you've got to remember, is a fantastic threat detector. The problem is that the brain is especially attuned to threats from agents.
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New Research in Psychological Science
A sample of research on distortion in visual perception, how children learn spelling, and a replication of a study on predicting suicide attempts.
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Holiday Parties Make You Squirm? Here’s How To Conquer Social Anxiety
Whereas people with generalized anxiety experience fear-driven worries about life circumstances, those with social anxiety see themselves through a distorted lens of self-doubt, shame and a fear that others are scrutinizing and judging them harshly, researchers say. ... Research by clinical psychologist David Moscovitch, a professor at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada, suggests that social anxiety disorder's fears loosely fit into four broad categories: worries about perceived flaws in physical appearance, perceived flaws in social skills and behavior, perceived personality flaws, and a perceived inability to conceal all that anxiety.
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4 Common but Harmful Myths About how Your Brain Works
The brain is endlessly fascinating. Despite the amount of time we spend thinking, few of us learn much about the way our minds and brains work. As a result, there are some persistent myths about the brain. It is worth highlighting them, because you’ll think more effectively if you work with your brain rather than against it. ... A potential danger of labeling yourself as right-brained or left-brained is that you will ignore the information that you get from either your intuitive or effortful system.
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Aus Fehlern lernen? Da gibt es ein Problem
Den Spruch „Aus Fehlern lernt man“ hören wir unser Leben lang – von Kollegen, Familie, Freunden. Dass das stimmt, zweifelt eine Studie an: Nach eigenen Fehlern setzt vor allem ein Mechanismus ein. ... Von allen Seiten wird eine „Kultur des Scheiterns“ gefordert. Dabei tun uns Fehler überhaupt nicht gut - ganz im Gegenteil, zeigt eine Studie von Lauren Eskreis-Winkler und Ayelet Fishbach von der University of Chicago. „Unsere Gesellschaft feiert das Scheitern als lehrreichen Moment“, schreiben die Psychologinnen in dem Paper, das im Fachblatt Psychological Science veröffentlicht wurde. Das Ergebnis aus fünf Experimenten bietet jedoch eine andere Realität: Scheitern hemme den Lernprozess.
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What to Do About an Overtalker
Maybe the person sits near you at work. Maybe he or she is your second cousin-in-law, your Hinge date or your seatmate on a 19-hour flight to Sydney. Most of us have met a compulsive talker: A person who dominates discussions with nonmeaningful chatter and misses, or ignores, cues that listeners are scanning for the exit. It’s tempting to believe, when cornered by such a chatterer, that a chronic talker is a selfish egotist. Yet, it is often the opposite. Research has linked overtalking to anxiety, attention deficit disorder, being on the autism spectrum or to compulsive behavior on the lines of shopaholism or workaholism. ...
