- how do we develop trust?
- why do we have beliefs?
- how can we prevent them from turning into bias?
- what are effective methods for managing our trust and beliefs in daily life?
Boosting Self-esteem Can Backfire In Decision-making - ScienceDaily - Apr 4, 2008 (News Report) Smart business leaders understand that confidence affects decision-making and ultimately a company's earnings. But giving employees positive feedback in the hopes of promoting better decisions sometimes can backfire, suggests new research from the psychology department and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the London Business School. -- Some types of positive feedback actually can escalate perceived threats to the ego and increase... More »
How Stereotyping Yourself Contributes to Your Success (or Failure) - Scientific American - By S. Alexander Haslam, Jessica Salvatore, Thomas Kessler, Stephen D. Reicher - Apr 3, 2008 (Review) People's performance on intellectual and athletic tasks is shaped by awareness of stereotypes about the groups to which they belong. New research explains why-- and how we can break free from the expectations of others -- You tried so hard. But you failed. You did not pass the test, you performed poorly in the interview or you missed your project goal at the office. Why? Is it that you were not capable? Or could something more subtle--and worrisome--also be at work? -- As it turns out, research shows that such performance failures cannot always be attributed simply to inherent lack of ability or incompetence. Although some have jumped to the highly controversial conclusion that... More »
The science of religion - Where angels no longer fear to tread - Economist - Mar 27, 2008 (Review) By the standards of European scientific collaboration, E2m ($3.1m) is not a huge sum. But it might be the start of something that will challenge human perceptions of reality at least as much as the billions being spent by the European particle-physics laboratory (CERN) at Geneva. The first task of CERN's new machine, the Large Hadron Collider, which is due to open later this year, will be to search for the Higgs boson--an object that has been dubbed, with a... More »
Why Great (and Not So Great) Minds Think Alike - Scientific American - By Nikhil Swaminathan - Mar 19, 2008 (Review) Have you ever wondered why you seem to understand some people--even if you know relatively little about them? It turns out there may be a biological reason why it's easier to walk a mile in some people's shoes but not in others'. Researchers report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA that brain scans suggest people project their own values and feelings onto others if there is even the slightest evidence that the pair have something in common. More »
Predictably Irrational - New York Times - By David Berreby - Mar 16, 2008 (Review) Another sign that times are changing is "Predictably Irrational," a book that both exemplifies and explains this shift in the cultural winds. Here, Dan Ariely, an economist at M.I.T., tells us that "life with fewer market norms and more social norms would be more satisfying, creative, fulfilling and fun." By the way, the conference where he had this insight wasn't sponsored by the Federal Reserve, where he is a researcher... More »
The cost of superstition - Chicago Tribune - By Lisa Anderson - Mar 14, 2008 (Review) A word of warning to those who believe in lucky numbers, auspicious colors and star-crossed dates: Beware. The Ides of March are upon us. Only those familiar with history or William Shakespeare's play "Julius Caesar" readily may recognize the reference to March 15, the day of Caesar's assassination in 44 B.C. The Roman calendar designated monthly Ides, or midpoint, days that fell either on the 13th or 15th day, depending on the month. More »
The Political Psychology of Race and Gender - Newsweek - By Andrew Romano - Mar 12, 2008 (Interview) Talk about good timing. A week ago, Cornell law student Gregory S. Parks emailed me a law review article that he had just coauthored with university professor Jeffrey Rachlinski. The subject? "Unconscious race and gender bias in the 2008 election." In addition to their legal studies, both Parks and Rachlinski (whose academic efforts have focused on the influence of human psychology on decision-making by courts, administrative agencies and regulated... More »
Respecting the Religious (or the A-Religious) - ScienceBlogs.com - Mar 11, 2008 (Blog Post) Discussion of a paper titled "Respect and Religion," by Simon Blackburn, is making its way through the blogosphere, and sparking some interesting discussion (particularly over at Crooked Timber, but this is a good read too). The key quote from Blackburn's article is this: We can respect, in the minimal sense of tolerating, those who hold false beliefs. We can pass by on the other side. We need not be concerned to change them, and in a liberal... More »
Into the Brain of a Liar - National Public Radio - By Robert Krulwich, Jad Abumrad - Mar 7, 2008 (Special Report) We all lie -- once a day or so, according to most studies. But usually we tell little lies, like "your new haircut looks great!" And most of us can control when we lie or what we lie about. But some people lie repeatedly and compulsively, about things both big and small. -- In 2005, a study published in The British Journal of Psychiatry provided the first evidence of structural differences in the brains of people with a history of persistent lying... More »
Television Shows Can Affect Racial Judgments - ScienceDaily - Mar 7, 2008 (Review) A new study reveals that viewers can be influenced by exposure to racial bias in the media, even without realizing it. Led by Dana Mastro of the University of Arizona, the study exposed participants to television clips where Latinos were portrayed in both flattering and unflattering ways. More »
Friday, April 4, 2008
Monday, March 31, 2008
Community Picks for March 2008
The Science of Raising Happy Kids - Greater Good - By Christine Carter, Kelly Corrigan - Mar 1, 2008 (Podcast) Videos to help busy parents raise happy and emotionally literate kids. From UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, an interdisciplinary research center devoted to the scientific understanding of happy and compassionate individuals, strong social bonds, and altruistic behavior. More »
The Power Paradox - Greater Good - By Dacher Keltner - Mar 2, 2008 (Special Report) Guided by centuries of advice like Machiavelli's and Greene's, we tend to believe that attaining power requires force, deception, manipulation, and coercion. Indeed, we might even assume that positions of power demand this kind of conduct--that to run smoothly, society needs leaders who are willing and able to use power this way. -- As seductive as these notions are, they are dead wrong. More »
What Kids Learn During Dinner - Greater Good - By Christine Carter - Mar 18, 2008 (Blog Post) Of everything I'll discuss on Half Full, having dinner as a family is one of the most important things. Think of it as concentrated dose of nurture and nourishment, two of the greatest and most fundamental human needs. -- The powerful effects of family mealtimes come from two things: 1) Modeling: the dinner table is a place where kids learn important social and emotional skills that they might not have the opportunity to learn elsewhere... More »
Notes from The Seven Things Everyone Wants: What Freud and Buddha Understood (and We're Forgetting) about Online Outreach - Have Fun Do Good - By Britt Bravo - Mar 22, 2008 (Blog Post) Think about the last time you did something for a cause. Maybe you gave them money. Maybe you did a walk. Maybe you signed a petition. -- Why did you do it? -- That's the question the Nonprofit Technology Conference session, "The Seven Things Everyone Wants: What Freud and Buddha Understood (and We're Forgetting) about Online Outreach," tried to answer. I thought I'd share some of my notes with you from the session. More »
Tal Ben-Shahar Answers Questions on Happiness at Work, Right vs. Wrong Expectations, and Idealism as the Purest Form of Realism - Project Creative Vision - By Izabella Tabarovsky - Mar 22, 2008 (Blog Post) My recent posts on happiness have turned out among the most popular on this blog. (See here and here.) So I thought I'd drop Tal Ben-Shahar, author of Happier, a note and probe a little deeper into what makes for a happier work experience. Tal was kind enough to answer my questions. More »
When Emotional Intelligence Does Not Matter More Than IQ - Daniel Goleman - By Daniel Goleman - Mar 25, 2008 (Blog Post) The sub-title of my 1995 book Emotional Intelligence reads, "Why It Can Matter More Than IQ." That subtitle, unfortunately, has led to misinterpretations of what I actually say - or at least it seems to among people who read no further than the subtitle. I'm appalled at how many people misread my work and make the preposterous claim, for instance, that "EQ accounts for 80 percent of success." More »
'Multiple Intelligences' at 25 - Inside Higher Ed - By Scott Jaschik - Mar 25, 2008 (News Report) The push toward group assignments. The rise of portfolios to document student progress. The backlash against the SAT and standardized testing, and the push to consider new ways that colleges might judge students' creativity and knowledge. The idea that IQ isn't destiny. -- These and many other trends are intellectual offspring of the "multiple intelligences" movement that Howard Gardner launched 25 years ago with the publication of Frames of Mind:... More »
Foundations of Cooperation in Young Children - Greater Good - Mar 26, 2008 (Review) Considerable research in the field of moral development has established that children as young as one year of age engage in kind, helpful-or "pro-social"-behavior. But only recently have psychologists started to look at the conditions that help foster this kind of behavior in children. -- In a soon-to-be-published article in Cognition, noted Harvard University developmental psychologist Elizabeth Spelke and her graduate student Kristina Olson show... More »
We Have Ways to Make You Happy - New York Times - By John Tierney - Mar 27, 2008 (Blog Post) Your pursuit of happiness is always our paramount concern here at the Lab, but this week we're making a special effort. We've been talking about how to nudge people into making better decisions, and also about a report in Science that spending money on others can make you happier than spending it on yourself. Clearly we have an opportunity for synergy here: How can people be nudged into making themselves happy by giving away money? More »
Meditate on This: You Can Learn to Be More Compassionate - Scientific American - By David Biello - Mar 27, 2008 (Review) Like athletes or musicians, people who practice meditation can enhance their ability to concentrate--or even lower their blood pressure. They can also cultivate compassion, according to a new study. Specifically, concentrating on the loving kindness one feels toward one's family (and expanding that to include strangers) physically affects brain regions that play a role in empathy. -- "There is such a thing as expertise when it comes to complex emotions or... More »
The science of religion - Where angels no longer fear to tread - Economist - Mar 27, 2008 (Review) By the standards of European scientific collaboration, E2m ($3.1m) is not a huge sum. But it might be the start of something that will challenge human perceptions of reality at least as much as the billions being spent by the European particle-physics laboratory (CERN) at Geneva. The first task of CERN's new machine, the Large Hadron Collider, which is due to open later this year, will be to search for the Higgs boson--an object that has been dubbed, with a... More »
Brain Rules: science and practice - Sharp Brains - By John Medina - Mar 28, 2008 (Blog Post) Interested a good, non-technical, summary of the implications of recent brain science in Brain Rules-John Medinaour daily lives? Biologist John Medina offers that in his article below (as part of our Author Speaks Series) and in his new book: Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School. More »
The joys of parenthood - Why conservatives are happier than liberals - Economist - Mar 28, 2008 (Review) Happily for the reader, his book, "Gross National Happiness", is not a memoir. It is a subtle and engaging distillation of oceans of data. When researchers ask parents what they enjoy, it turns out that they prefer almost anything to looking after their children. Eating, shopping, exercising, cooking, praying and watching television were all rated more pleasurable than watching the brats, even if they don't bite. As Mr Brooks puts it: "There are... More »
Morality and Religion - Bloggingheads.tv - By Paul Bloom, Joshua Knobe - Mar 30, 2008 (Interview) Is morality hardwired into us? (11:41) Could we learn truly arbitrary moral rules? (05:04) The big booming voice inside you that says God exists (12:12) The mind-body dualism of children (10:07) Do you need to have a body to get pissed off? (09:01) The morality of killing gods and robots (06:46) More »
The Power Paradox - Greater Good - By Dacher Keltner - Mar 2, 2008 (Special Report) Guided by centuries of advice like Machiavelli's and Greene's, we tend to believe that attaining power requires force, deception, manipulation, and coercion. Indeed, we might even assume that positions of power demand this kind of conduct--that to run smoothly, society needs leaders who are willing and able to use power this way. -- As seductive as these notions are, they are dead wrong. More »
Positive Psychology - It's so much more than happiness - Positive Psychology News Daily - By Sherri Fisher - Mar. 5 (Review) - The recent backlash against the "Happiness Movement", as many journalists call it, presents a fine opportunity to note the differences between self-help and Positive Psychology. You may have noticed that what you read, hear or see in mass media seems to suggest that Positive Psychology is a general term for any "you need to be happier" approach. It isn't. More »
Genes and Happiness, or Free Will Revisited - Neuroscientifically Challenged - By Marc Dingman - Mar 7, 2008 (Blog Post) A team of researchers from the University of Edinburgh and the Queensland Institute of Medical Research recently conducted a study to investigate how much our subjective sense of happiness is dependent upon our genetic makeup (and thus personality style). Is our ability to be happy solely up to us ("us" being defined as hypothetical beings with complete free will), or is it constrained by the type of person we are, which is determined to a large... More »
Punishing slackers and do-gooders - ScienceBlogs.com - By Ed Yong - Mar 7, 2008 (Blog Post) Humans have an extraordinary capacity for selflessness. We often help complete strangers who are unrelated to us, who we may never meet again and who are unlikely to be able to return the favour. More and more, we are being asked to behave in selfless ways to further the common good, not least in the race to tackle climate change. More »
The joy of boredom - Boston Globe - By Carolyn Y. Johnson - Mar 8, 2008 (Special Report) "If you think of boredom as the prelude to creativity, and loneliness as the prelude to engagement of the imagination, then they are good things," said Dr. Edward Hallowell, a Sudbury psychiatrist and author of the book "CrazyBusy." "They are doorways to something better, as opposed to something to be abhorred and eradicated immediately." More »
Happiness is in the Genes - U.S. News & World Report / HealthDay - By Steven Reinberg - Mar 9, 2008 (News Report) The right genetic mix might lead to a lifetime of happiness, a new British study suggests. -- "While it was known that around half the differences in happiness are related to genes, what we found was that those happiness-related genes are genes for personality, namely for being extroverted, emotionally stable and conscientious," said co-researcher Tim Bates, from the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at the University of... More »
The 2008 Progress Report on Brain Research - Dana Press Blog - Mar 9, 2008 (Special Report) Including essays on arts and cognition by Michael S. Gazzaniga and on deep brain stimulation by Mahlon R. DeLong and Thomas Wichmann. Published annually, the Progress Report describes the top findings in brain research during the previous year affecting areas such as disorders of development, aging, and movement, as well as mental and thought disorders. Each year an essay by a prominent neuroscientist discusses an important current issue in brain research. The Progress Report is the signature publication of the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives. More »
A Boy Named Sue, and a Theory of Names - New York Times - By John Tierney - Mar 11, 2008 (Review) During his 1969 concert at San Quentin prison, Johnny Cash proposed a paradigm shift in the field of developmental psychology. He used "A Boy Named Sue" to present two hypotheses: 1. A child with an awful name might grow up to be a relatively normal adult. 2. The parent who inflicted the name does not deserve to be executed. More »
'Against Happiness': What goes up should come down - International Herald Tribune - By Garrison Keillor - Mar 14, 2008 (Review) It is a short but laborious book, and it begins: "Ours are ominous times. Each nervous glance portends some potential disaster. Paranoia most mornings shocks us to wakefulness, and we totter out under the ghostly sun. At night fear agitates the darkness." It's a hilarious opening, and you smell parody here as the author ticks off the ominous things that shock him awake in the morning - the holes in the ozone , the extinction of animal species,... More »
Are You Happy? - The New York Review of Books - By Sue M. Halpern - Mar 15, 2008 (Review) Reviews (1) The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want by Sonja Lyubomirsky, (2) Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment by Tal Ben-Shahar, (3) Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, (4) Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, by Eric G. Wilson, (5) What Is Emotion?: History, Measures, and Meanings by Jerome Kagan More »
Brain Fitness Newletter: Mid-March edition - Sharp Brains - Mar 16, 2008 (Blog Post) Here you are have the bi-monthly Digest of our 10 most Popular blog posts. (Also, remember that you can subscribe to receive our blog RSS feed, or to our newsletter at the top of this page if you want to receive this digest by email) More »Genes and Happiness, or Free Will Revisited - Neuroscientifically Challenged - By Marc Dingman - Mar 7, 2008 (Blog Post) A team of researchers from the University of Edinburgh and the Queensland Institute of Medical Research recently conducted a study to investigate how much our subjective sense of happiness is dependent upon our genetic makeup (and thus personality style). Is our ability to be happy solely up to us ("us" being defined as hypothetical beings with complete free will), or is it constrained by the type of person we are, which is determined to a large... More »
Punishing slackers and do-gooders - ScienceBlogs.com - By Ed Yong - Mar 7, 2008 (Blog Post) Humans have an extraordinary capacity for selflessness. We often help complete strangers who are unrelated to us, who we may never meet again and who are unlikely to be able to return the favour. More and more, we are being asked to behave in selfless ways to further the common good, not least in the race to tackle climate change. More »
The joy of boredom - Boston Globe - By Carolyn Y. Johnson - Mar 8, 2008 (Special Report) "If you think of boredom as the prelude to creativity, and loneliness as the prelude to engagement of the imagination, then they are good things," said Dr. Edward Hallowell, a Sudbury psychiatrist and author of the book "CrazyBusy." "They are doorways to something better, as opposed to something to be abhorred and eradicated immediately." More »
Happiness is in the Genes - U.S. News & World Report / HealthDay - By Steven Reinberg - Mar 9, 2008 (News Report) The right genetic mix might lead to a lifetime of happiness, a new British study suggests. -- "While it was known that around half the differences in happiness are related to genes, what we found was that those happiness-related genes are genes for personality, namely for being extroverted, emotionally stable and conscientious," said co-researcher Tim Bates, from the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at the University of... More »
The 2008 Progress Report on Brain Research - Dana Press Blog - Mar 9, 2008 (Special Report) Including essays on arts and cognition by Michael S. Gazzaniga and on deep brain stimulation by Mahlon R. DeLong and Thomas Wichmann. Published annually, the Progress Report describes the top findings in brain research during the previous year affecting areas such as disorders of development, aging, and movement, as well as mental and thought disorders. Each year an essay by a prominent neuroscientist discusses an important current issue in brain research. The Progress Report is the signature publication of the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives. More »
A Boy Named Sue, and a Theory of Names - New York Times - By John Tierney - Mar 11, 2008 (Review) During his 1969 concert at San Quentin prison, Johnny Cash proposed a paradigm shift in the field of developmental psychology. He used "A Boy Named Sue" to present two hypotheses: 1. A child with an awful name might grow up to be a relatively normal adult. 2. The parent who inflicted the name does not deserve to be executed. More »
'Against Happiness': What goes up should come down - International Herald Tribune - By Garrison Keillor - Mar 14, 2008 (Review) It is a short but laborious book, and it begins: "Ours are ominous times. Each nervous glance portends some potential disaster. Paranoia most mornings shocks us to wakefulness, and we totter out under the ghostly sun. At night fear agitates the darkness." It's a hilarious opening, and you smell parody here as the author ticks off the ominous things that shock him awake in the morning - the holes in the ozone , the extinction of animal species,... More »
Are You Happy? - The New York Review of Books - By Sue M. Halpern - Mar 15, 2008 (Review) Reviews (1) The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want by Sonja Lyubomirsky, (2) Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment by Tal Ben-Shahar, (3) Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, (4) Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, by Eric G. Wilson, (5) What Is Emotion?: History, Measures, and Meanings by Jerome Kagan More »
What Kids Learn During Dinner - Greater Good - By Christine Carter - Mar 18, 2008 (Blog Post) Of everything I'll discuss on Half Full, having dinner as a family is one of the most important things. Think of it as concentrated dose of nurture and nourishment, two of the greatest and most fundamental human needs. -- The powerful effects of family mealtimes come from two things: 1) Modeling: the dinner table is a place where kids learn important social and emotional skills that they might not have the opportunity to learn elsewhere... More »
Notes from The Seven Things Everyone Wants: What Freud and Buddha Understood (and We're Forgetting) about Online Outreach - Have Fun Do Good - By Britt Bravo - Mar 22, 2008 (Blog Post) Think about the last time you did something for a cause. Maybe you gave them money. Maybe you did a walk. Maybe you signed a petition. -- Why did you do it? -- That's the question the Nonprofit Technology Conference session, "The Seven Things Everyone Wants: What Freud and Buddha Understood (and We're Forgetting) about Online Outreach," tried to answer. I thought I'd share some of my notes with you from the session. More »
Tal Ben-Shahar Answers Questions on Happiness at Work, Right vs. Wrong Expectations, and Idealism as the Purest Form of Realism - Project Creative Vision - By Izabella Tabarovsky - Mar 22, 2008 (Blog Post) My recent posts on happiness have turned out among the most popular on this blog. (See here and here.) So I thought I'd drop Tal Ben-Shahar, author of Happier, a note and probe a little deeper into what makes for a happier work experience. Tal was kind enough to answer my questions. More »
When Emotional Intelligence Does Not Matter More Than IQ - Daniel Goleman - By Daniel Goleman - Mar 25, 2008 (Blog Post) The sub-title of my 1995 book Emotional Intelligence reads, "Why It Can Matter More Than IQ." That subtitle, unfortunately, has led to misinterpretations of what I actually say - or at least it seems to among people who read no further than the subtitle. I'm appalled at how many people misread my work and make the preposterous claim, for instance, that "EQ accounts for 80 percent of success." More »
'Multiple Intelligences' at 25 - Inside Higher Ed - By Scott Jaschik - Mar 25, 2008 (News Report) The push toward group assignments. The rise of portfolios to document student progress. The backlash against the SAT and standardized testing, and the push to consider new ways that colleges might judge students' creativity and knowledge. The idea that IQ isn't destiny. -- These and many other trends are intellectual offspring of the "multiple intelligences" movement that Howard Gardner launched 25 years ago with the publication of Frames of Mind:... More »
Foundations of Cooperation in Young Children - Greater Good - Mar 26, 2008 (Review) Considerable research in the field of moral development has established that children as young as one year of age engage in kind, helpful-or "pro-social"-behavior. But only recently have psychologists started to look at the conditions that help foster this kind of behavior in children. -- In a soon-to-be-published article in Cognition, noted Harvard University developmental psychologist Elizabeth Spelke and her graduate student Kristina Olson show... More »
We Have Ways to Make You Happy - New York Times - By John Tierney - Mar 27, 2008 (Blog Post) Your pursuit of happiness is always our paramount concern here at the Lab, but this week we're making a special effort. We've been talking about how to nudge people into making better decisions, and also about a report in Science that spending money on others can make you happier than spending it on yourself. Clearly we have an opportunity for synergy here: How can people be nudged into making themselves happy by giving away money? More »
Meditate on This: You Can Learn to Be More Compassionate - Scientific American - By David Biello - Mar 27, 2008 (Review) Like athletes or musicians, people who practice meditation can enhance their ability to concentrate--or even lower their blood pressure. They can also cultivate compassion, according to a new study. Specifically, concentrating on the loving kindness one feels toward one's family (and expanding that to include strangers) physically affects brain regions that play a role in empathy. -- "There is such a thing as expertise when it comes to complex emotions or... More »
The science of religion - Where angels no longer fear to tread - Economist - Mar 27, 2008 (Review) By the standards of European scientific collaboration, E2m ($3.1m) is not a huge sum. But it might be the start of something that will challenge human perceptions of reality at least as much as the billions being spent by the European particle-physics laboratory (CERN) at Geneva. The first task of CERN's new machine, the Large Hadron Collider, which is due to open later this year, will be to search for the Higgs boson--an object that has been dubbed, with a... More »
Brain Rules: science and practice - Sharp Brains - By John Medina - Mar 28, 2008 (Blog Post) Interested a good, non-technical, summary of the implications of recent brain science in Brain Rules-John Medinaour daily lives? Biologist John Medina offers that in his article below (as part of our Author Speaks Series) and in his new book: Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School. More »
The joys of parenthood - Why conservatives are happier than liberals - Economist - Mar 28, 2008 (Review) Happily for the reader, his book, "Gross National Happiness", is not a memoir. It is a subtle and engaging distillation of oceans of data. When researchers ask parents what they enjoy, it turns out that they prefer almost anything to looking after their children. Eating, shopping, exercising, cooking, praying and watching television were all rated more pleasurable than watching the brats, even if they don't bite. As Mr Brooks puts it: "There are... More »
Morality and Religion - Bloggingheads.tv - By Paul Bloom, Joshua Knobe - Mar 30, 2008 (Interview) Is morality hardwired into us? (11:41) Could we learn truly arbitrary moral rules? (05:04) The big booming voice inside you that says God exists (12:12) The mind-body dualism of children (10:07) Do you need to have a body to get pissed off? (09:01) The morality of killing gods and robots (06:46) More »
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