Four Mertonian norms
The four Mertonian norms (often abbreviated as the CUDOS-norms) can be summarised as: communalism: all scientists should have common ownership of scientific goods (intellectual property), to promote collective collaboration; secrecy is the opposite of this norm. universalism: scientific validity is independent of the sociopolitical status/personal attributes of its participants disinterestedness: scientific institutions act for the benefit of a common scientific enterprise, rather than for t...Longest Ever Personality Study Finds No Correlation Betwe...
There is evidence for differential stability in personality trait differences, even over decades. The authors used data from a sample of the Scottish Mental Survey, 1947 to study personality stability from childhood to older age. The 6-Day Sample (N = 1,208) were rated on six personality characteristics by their teachers at around age 14. In 2012, the authors traced as many of these participants as possible and invited them to take part in a follow-up study. Those who agreed (N = 174) complet...Suggests that we are not the same person as adults as we were as a youth in any way.
Busyness Correlated with Improved Cognitive Performance
Sustained engagement in mentally challenging activities has been shown to improve memory in older adults. We hypothesized that a busy schedule would be a proxy for an engaged lifestyle and would facilitate cognition. Here, we examined the relationship between busyness and cognition in adults aged 50–89. Participants (N = 330) from the Dallas Lifespan Brain Study (DLBS) completed a cognitive battery and the Martin and Park Environmental Demands Questionnaire (MPED), an assessment of busyness...Standing Desks Improve Student Engagement
The research looked at the results of an experiment in which 282 participants in grades 2-4 were observed in the fall and spring during one school year. Student engagement was monitored by actions such as answering a question, raising a hand, or participating in discussion, while off-task behaviors included talking out of turn. Engagement of the "treatment" classrooms was compared with the engagement of "control" classrooms. The researchers noted that both groups showed "general increases in...Reading a Novel Causes a Temporary Boost in Brain Power
We sought to determine whether reading a novel causes measurable changes in resting-state connectivity of the brain and how long these changes persist. Incorporating a within-subjects design, participants received resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scans on 19 consecutive days. First, baseline resting state data for a “washin” period were taken for each participant for 5 days. For the next 9 days, participants read 1/9th of a novel during the evening and resting-state dat...Study finds that reading an engaging novel that puts the reader in the perspective of another person creates new brain connections that last for days, but the effect is not reproduced in ebooks.
The Point of Argument
The point of a good argument isn’t for one person to simply win over the other. It’s ideally for both to come away with cognitive gains. Even if the goal of an argument is to reach a decision, the goal isn’t to win, the goal is to define the parameters for a good decision and then make the best possible decision with that in mind. I’ve come to believe that when two reasonably smart people disagree on a subject, at the core, it is often because one of the following: One or both of the ...The goal should be to define the parameters of where everyone can agree.
Social Networks Limit Interaction to "Autistic" Levels
It is hardly surprising that many participants find social interactions on Friendster formulaic. The social structure is defined by a narrow set of rules that do little to map the complexities and nuances of relationships in other contexts. Formula-driven social worlds require everyone to engage with each other through a severely diminished mediator—what I have else- where called autistic social software, as a metaphor to signal the structured formula that autistic individuals learn to nego...Because of the limited kinds of interactions possible within a Social Network.
Studies Link Wealth to Unethical Behavior Pt II
Study 6. Study 6 extended these findings to actual cheating behavior. Participants played a “game of chance,” in which the computer presented them with one side of a six-sided die, ostensibly randomly, on five separate rolls. Participants were told that higher rolls would increase their chances of winning a cash prize and were asked to report their total score at the end of the game. In fact, die rolls were predetermined to sum up to 12. The extent to which participants reported a total ...Studies 6 and 7.
Studies Link Wealth to Unethical Behavior
Studies 1 and 2. Our first two studies were naturalistic field studies, and examined whether upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals while driving. In study 1, we investigated whether upper-class drivers were more likely to cut off other vehicles at a busy four-way intersection with stop signs on all sides. As vehicles are reliable indicators of a person's social rank and wealth (15), we used observers’ codes of vehicle status (make, age, and appearance)...Results of seven studies find the wealthy are more likely to cheat and break the law.
Questioning the Milgram Experiment
It appeared that sixty-five percent of people would torture someone to death, if pressured to do so. The results made their way into both psychology and cocktail party conversation. But were they correct? At least one woman doesn't think so. Gina Perry, for her book, Behind the Shock Machine, traced as many participants in the Milgram experiment as she could, and re-examined the notes of the experiment. Milgram claimed that seventy-five percent of the participants believed in the reality of t...These questions raise an even greater objection to the validity of the experiment. If the results cannot be reproduced, because the experiment was unethical, then we shouldn't cite it a evidence of anything every. Science demands reproducible results, and without replication we do not have evidence.