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When It Comes To Romantic Attraction, Real Life Beats Questionnaires
NPR: Dating sites claim to winnow a few ideal suitors out of a nigh-infinite pool of chaff. But the matches these algorithms offer may be no better than picking partners at random, a study finds. Researchers asked about 350 heterosexual undergrads at Northwestern University to fill out questionnaires assessing their personalities and romantic preferences.
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New Research From Psychological Science
A sample of new research exploring cost-benefit arbitration and reinforcement learning, race and weight-based stereotypes, and testosterone and cognitive reflection.
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How To Use Games To Improve Performance At Work
Forbes: Earlier this year I wrote about the motivational power games can play in the workplace. A new study, published in Psychological Science, underlines the power of having targets to aim for, even if the targets themselves are largely meaningless. The only caveat is that your scores have to be improving. “We all know that people like high scores, but what is less known is how to give scores,” the authors say.
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The Myths That Persist About How We Learn
Science Friday: Do you consider yourself a visual learner? When you see something, do you commit it to memory? Or do you perhaps learn faster by hearing new information? The idea of “learning styles” has been around since the 1950s, and the theory is still widely believed by educators and the public, according to a recent study in Frontiers in Psychology. But there’s not much evidence that indicates the theory is true. “If it were true, this should be really easy to find in the laboratory,” says Daniel Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. “And we don’t see it.” Read the whole story: Science Friday
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How to Recognize Burnout Before You’re Burned Out
The New York Times: Emma Seppala was working as an intern at The International Herald Tribune (the past iteration of The International New York Times) one summer in college in Paris, shuttling between the newsroom writers and editors on the second floor and the workers at printing presses in the basement. Ms. Seppala, the science director at the Stanford Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, mulls the difference between the two starkly different atmospheres in her 2016 book “The Happiness Track”: One floor was raucous and full of laughter, the other floor was solemn and quiet. Can you guess which one she enjoyed being in more?
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Link Between Positive Emotions and Health Depends on Culture
Positive emotions are often seen as critical aspects of healthy living, but new research suggests that the link between emotion and health outcomes may vary by cultural context.
