Marshmallow Test with a twist: 3- and 4‑year-olds kids display more self-control when their reputation is at stake

Chil­dren Will Wait to Impress Others—Another Twist on the Clas­sic Marsh­mal­low Test (Asso­ci­a­tion for Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence): If you asked peo­ple to name a famous psy­chol­o­gy study, the “marsh­mal­low test” would prob­a­bly come out near the top of the list. In this task, young chil­dren are told they can imme­di­ate­ly get a small reward (one marshmallow)…

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Why Agile Minds Deploy Both Rational and Intuitive Problem-Solving

A rare aha moment in 2011 set me chas­ing new prob­lem-solv­ing research. The study Ratio­nal Ver­sus Intu­itive Prob­lem-Solv­ing: How Think­ing ‘Off the Beat­en Path’ Can Stim­u­late Cre­ativ­i­ty pub­lished in Psy­chol­o­gy of Aes­thet­ics, Cre­ativ­i­ty, and the Arts stung me out of a spot of intel­lec­tu­al arro­gance. From my per­spec­tive, John Dewey’s 19th cen­tu­ry step-wise 

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Brain Fitness Update: Why We Need Walking Book Clubs

Here you are have the twice-a-month newslet­ter with our most pop­u­lar blog posts. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, sim­ply by sub­mit­ting your email at the top of this page. News CNN: Aging boomers fuel ‘brain fit­ness’ explo­sion: An excel­lent arti­cle via Asso­ci­at­ed Press explor­ing why the brain fit­ness market…

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Why Smart Brains Make Stupid Decisions

It hap­pens. Often. Why? We just secured an inter­view with Ori Braf­man, co-author of Sway: The Irre­sistible Pull of Irra­tional Behav­ior (Dou­ble­day Busi­ness, 2008), to dis­cuss our Dark Side (well, he calls it “dif­fer­ent hid­den forces” and “psy­cho­log­i­cal under­cur­rents”). While read­ing some reviews about his book, I par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoyed find­ing, after the usu­al impres­sive long collection…

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