How effective are those make-your-baby-smarter DVD’s?
bsp; They are quite effective... at making your kid stupider. Via The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How: A 2007 University of Washington study found that, for children aged eight to sixteen months, each hour spent per day viewing “brain science” baby DVDs decreased vocabulary acquisition by 17 percent. And when you think about it in terms of the myelin model, this makes perfect sense. Baby-brain DVDs don't work because they don't create deep practice— in fact,…
1 min read
When taking a test, should you change that answer or stick with what you put down first?
bsp; No debate here: Change it. Via Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average: Most people tend to stick with their first answers. Three out of four college students, for instance, believe it is better to stick with their initial answer on a test rather than change it to one they think might be correct. Many college professors believe this as well. In one…
2 minutes
Is there a quick and easy way to find out whether your relationship has a future?
llow @bakadesuyo John Gottman (the noted relationship researcher featured in Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink") says "I have found that nothing foretells a marriage's future as accurately as how a couple retells their past." Via Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts: "I have found that nothing foretells a marriage's future as accurately as how a couple retells their past," John Gottman observes. Rewriting history begins even before a couple is aware…
2 minutes
Is “I was busy watching porn at the time” the best alibi?
llow @bakadesuyo People who used scandalous alibis (like watching porn) "were rated as more honest, open, and less likely to be guilty." We examined how alibi strength and a suspect's claim of engaging in salacious alibi activities impact alibi believability. Specifically, we investigated whether an alibi of watching an X-rated movie versus watching a regular movie caused differences in alibi believability, perceived likelihood of guilt, and ratings of various character traits. Undergraduates read a crime description and a mock transcript…
2 minutes
Are we more productive under deadline or when there’s no time pressure?
ither. Heavy time pressure kills creativity and morale. On the other hand, having no deadlines was not optimal either. Much like with stress, low-to-moderate time pressure produces the best results. Via The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work: Time pressure is one of the most interesting forces we studied. Although occasional time pressure for short periods can be exhilarating, using extreme time-pressure to stimulate positive inner work life, for weeks on end or…
1 min read
Is there a dark side to becoming the best?
s. To many it's good news that we're rarely limited by natural talent. Spend 10,000 hours constantly challenging yourself and you too can be an expert. But what does that mean if you want to be the best? The amount of practice and devotion required can pass into the realm of the pathological. Harvard's Howard Gardner studied a number of creative geniuses (among them Freud, Einstein, Picasso) and found that to reach those heights requires enormous sacrifice in other areas…
2 minutes
Would you learn more from this post if it were longer?
bsp; No. Via Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average: Summaries of information, for instance, often work as well as—and sometimes even better than—longer versions of the same material. In a series of experiments, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University compared five-thousand word chapters from college textbooks with one-thousand-word summaries of those chapters. The textbooks varied in subject: Russian history, African geography, macroeconomics. But the…
1 min read
What’s more important: body language, tone of voice, or what you actually say?
bsp; Body language. Via The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches Us About Being Alive: Language is an odd thing. We hear communication experts telling us time and again about things like the “7-38-55 rule,” first posited in 1971 by UCLA psychology professor Albert Mehrabian: 55 percent of what you convey when you speak comes from your body language, 38 percent from your tone of voice, and a paltry 7 percent from the words you choose. Join 25K+ readers.…
1 min read
