Are 80% of Harvard students first-born children?
is video is from "Justice", one of the most popular classes in Harvard's history. 23 minutes into the video, professor Michael Sandel asks students who are first-born to raise their hand -- and an eye-popping number do. Admittedly, this is a less-than-scientific survey but apparently Sandel's done this many many many times over the years and consistently come up with a similar result. Of course, there are possible confounds (upper class families who send their kids to Harvard have fewer…
1 min read
Will watching Shrek turn your kid into a creative genius?
ay, it won't turn your kid into Picasso but recent research says it has two things going for it. Green stimulates creativity: According to newly published research, innovative thinking seems to be stimulated by the color green. A research team led by University of Munich psychologist Stephanie Lichtenfeld reports the color of limes and leaves “has implications beyond aesthetics.” Specifically, a glimpse of green appears to activate “the type of pure, open (mental) processing required to do well on creativity…
2 minutes
Why do grandmom’s cookies taste better than anyone else’s?
tentions change how we experience things. Kindness does soothe pain and increase pleasure. Via Eurekalert: A nurse's tender loving care really does ease the pain of a medical procedure, and grandma's cookies really do taste better, if we perceive them to be made with love - suggests newly published research by a University of Maryland psychologist. The findings have many real-world applications, including in medicine, relationships, parenting and business. "The way we read another persons intentions changes our physical experience…
1 min read
Are there easy ways to improve your next vacation?
ristian Jarrett has a long interesting piece on vacations in The Psychologist. There are a number of interesting highlights, including the optimal length of a trip: ...people on mid-length holidays of between three to six days tended to report more positive mood than those on shorter or longer trips. ‘Possibly a two- to six-day holiday trip is long enough to enjoy (unlike a two-day trip),’ Nawijn surmised, ‘but short enough to minimise arguments with partner, family or friends.’ There's often…
3 minutes
Does guilting people really work?
minding people of their transgressions causes them to improve their behavior: People’s desires to see themselves as moral actors can contribute to their striving for and achievement of a sense of self-completeness. The authors use self-completion theory to predict (and show) that recalling one’s own (im)moral behavior leads to compensatory rather than consistent moral action as a way of completing the moral self. In three studies, people who recalled their immoral behavior reported greater participation in moral activities (Study 1),…
1 min read
Is nepotism more common than you think?
om a post by Miles Corak, via the Twitter feed of Tim Harford, author of the excellent book "Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure": The bottom line is that about 40% of us have at some point worked for exactly the same firm that at some point also employed our fathers. But if dad’s earnings put him in the top 25% these chances are above average, they start taking off if dad was in the top 5%, and reach…
1 min read
How do siblings shape your personality?
borah Kotz has an interesting piece in the Boston Globe that highlights research findings from the new book The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us: Firstborns and only-children, for example, have a 3-point higher IQ on average compared with those born second, according to 2007 Norwegian study cited in the book, and second children are about a point ahead of those born third... And: Parents can devote 100 percent of their child-raising resources to the first child until they must…
2 minutes
Children Don’t Make Us Happier
can't think of many things that go more against popular opinion but the research says no: This meta-analysis finds that parents report lower marital satisfaction compared with nonparents (d=-.19, r=-.10). There is also a significant negative correlation between marital satisfaction and number of children (d=-.13, r=-.06). The difference in marital satisfaction is most pronounced among mothers of infants (38% of mothers of infants have high marital satisfaction, compared with 62% of childless women). For men, the effect remains similar across ages…
2 minutes
