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Nature, nurture both affect kids’ self-control
Futurity: Being able to delay gratification—often considered a predictor of a child’s future success—is as much a question of environment as innate ability, a new study shows. For the past four decades, the “marshmallow test”
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Craving an Ice-Cream Fix
The New York Times: The notion that food can be addictive has been debated for some time and largely rejected by both nutrition and addiction researchers. But this spring, the secretary of health, Kathleen Sebelius
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Improving Willpower: How to Keep Self-Control from Flagging
TIME: Why does willpower often seem to fail us, just when we need it most? Some researchers argue that willpower is a limited resource that wears out, like a muscle exhausted by overuse. Other experts
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Slow Thinking Is Wise Thinking
Nobel Prize-winning psychological scientist Daniel Kahneman called US President Barack Obama a “slow thinker.” That may sound like an insult, but it’s actually high praise. In his latest book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman describes
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The Coattails Phenomenon: Getting Character From Others
My high school classmate Tom Gordon was everyone’s choice for least-likely-to-succeed. He drank too much and drove too fast, and got busted for petty theft again and again. He skipped school as often as he
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Self-Control May Not Be a Limited Resource After All
So many acts in our daily lives – refusing that second slice of cake, walking past the store with the latest gadgets, working on your tax forms when you’d rather watch TV – seem to
