North Korea and Penn State
In an excellent talk last week about North Korea — linked to his book The Cleanest Race — Brian Myers, a professor in South Korea, said that people don’t fear dying, they fear dying without...
View ArticleWidespread Loneliness
I’m fond of arguing that the Ten Commandments was a very political document. Notice it’s aimed at men? Notice that women aren’t protected, much less children? That’s because men had all the power. No...
View ArticleBoring + Boring = Pleasant!?
Fact 1: For the last few weeks, I’ve been studying Chinese using a flashcard program called Anki. It’s an excellent program but boring. I’ve never liked studying — maybe no one does. Fact 2: I’ve had a...
View ArticleMood and Attentiveness
In Jonah Lehrer’s article about the benefits of depression, nothing seemed solid until I came across this: [Joe] Forgas [an Australian psychology professor] placed a variety of trinkets, like toy...
View ArticleAssorted Links
the I Practice My Own Methods Developed From Self-Experimentation group. Which, when this was written, had one member. She has Parkinson’s Disease and found that yoga helps. “I started watching yoga...
View ArticleThe Silver Lining of a Cloud of Volcanic Ash
A New York Times article on the volcanic ash preventing air travel ended like this: Leo Liao, a Hong Kong businessman who was stranded at the Frankfurt airport, was cheerful and philosophical....
View ArticleThe Hockey Stick Illusion
Recently a WSJ columnist told this story: I was chatting with a friend who, over the years, has helped her kids slog through the obligatory science-fair projects. “The experiments never turned out the...
View ArticleLucky Charms Can Work
Speaking of good-luck charms, a study at the University of Cologne found in four different experiments with four different tasks that people did better when they believed that they somehow had Lady...
View ArticlePower Makes You More Dismissive
An excellent essay by Jonah Lehrer describes a pair of studies I didn’t know about: In a recent study led by Richard Petty, a psychologist at Ohio State, undergraduates role-played a scenario between a...
View Article“That’s Why You’re So Easy to Hate”
This is what one bloggingheads commentator said to the other. Was the speaker-listener combo (a) man to man, (b) man to woman, (c) woman to man, or (d) woman to woman? As you can guess, woman to woman....
View ArticleHealth Care Stagnation
In December, the Los Angeles Times reported — very briefly — that from 2007 to 2008, life expectancy in the United States declined by 0.1 year. It should have been the lead story of every newspaper in...
View Article“We are Heroes, They are Villains”: My Brilliant Students
At Tsinghua University, which is like a Chinese MIT, I am teaching a small class (25 students) called Frontiers of Psychology. It is required of freshmen psychology majors. There are a few students...
View ArticleDanny Kahneman’s Decision Making
A lovely article by Michael Lewis about Daniel (“Danny”) Kahneman, my former Berkeley colleague, emphasizes his indecision whether to write a popular book about his work. Should I or shouldn’t I? He...
View ArticleAssorted Links
A “safe starch” lowers HDL. DIY clinical trials omega-3 content versus mercury content of fish: a handy guide. Predictions of climate models versus reality. I have only seen careful...
View ArticleThe Value of a Diagnosis of Asperger’s
In a recent post I said Marcia Angell was too hard on psychiatric diagnosis. Long before perfection, diagnoses can be useful. For example, Alexandra Carmichael recently found out she has something...
View ArticleWillat Effect Experiments With Tea
The Willat Effect is the hedonic change caused by side-by-side comparison of similar things. Your hedonic response to the things compared (e.g., two or more dark chocolates) expands in both directions....
View ArticleThis American Life Retracts Daisey Show
This American Life has retracted the Mike Daisey show it did a few months ago because it turns out several details — not trivial ones — were wrong. Daisey knew this, and kept the TAL producers from...
View ArticleOccupational Specialization as Far Back as the Bronze Age
Linear B is an ancient form of Greek, used around 1500 BC (the Bronze Age) in Mycenean Greece. Stuff written in Linear B gives us one of our oldest views of human life and can reveal things that other...
View ArticleMyopia Increases Innovation
Big public works projects inevitably cost far more than the original budget. I heard a talk about this a few years ago. The speaker gave many examples, including Boston’s Big Dig. His explanation was...
View ArticleWhat is Teaching?
Russ Roberts says: Great teaching is more than passing on information. For that you can read a book or watch a video. A great teacher provokes and takes you on a journey of understanding. That requires...
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