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	<title>IdeasCategory: Psychology &#124; Ideas &#124; TIME.com</title>
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	<description>Essential Insights. Great Debates. Informed Opinions.</description>
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		<title>IdeasCategory: Psychology &#124; Ideas &#124; TIME.com</title>
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		<title>Viewpoint: Stop Critiquing the DSM 5</title>
		<link>http://ideas.time.com/2013/05/21/viewpoint-stop-critiquing-the-dsm-5/</link>
		<comments>http://ideas.time.com/2013/05/21/viewpoint-stop-critiquing-the-dsm-5/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 21 May 2013 10:35:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Arthur Caplan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Health & Science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[APA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[DSM 5]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ideas.time.com/?p=32647</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The newly revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association—DSM 5—has just been released at the Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco.  Not since the critics uniformly declared Adam Sandler’s Jack and Jill ‘the worst movie ever made’ long before it actually was shown in a theater has something not yet put out in public gotten such full-throated critical panning. Consider some of the current headlines: “DSM 5: A Manual Run Amok&#8221; and my personal favorite, “Psychiatry&#8217;s New Diagnostic Manual: &#8220;Don&#8217;t Buy It. Don&#8217;t Use It. Don&#8217;t Teach It.&#8220; It does not end there. There are also a flood of new books critical of the DSM 5, such as Gary Greenberg’s The Book of Woe: The Making of the DSM-5 and the Unmaking of Psychiatry; Saving Normal: An Insider&#8217;s Revolt Against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis by Allen Frances; and Allan V. Horwitz and Jerome C. Wakefield’s All We Have to Fear: Psychiatry&#8217;s Transformation of Natural Anxieties into Mental Disorders, just to name a few. (MORE: Mental Health Researchers Reject Psychiatry&#8217;s New Diagnostic Bible) The critics are going way too far. The DSM is often described as &#8220;the bible of the mental health field&#8221;—an unfortunate misnomer that leaves it open to attack. It should really be called &#8220;The best we know so far about mental disorders&#8221; or perhaps &#8220;Our best effort to properly classify complicated human behavior.&#8221; But a bigger problem is that the editors don&#8217;t know how to defend against the attacks. They keep saying that they are attentive to critics, that the process has been transparent and that they have posted draft versions online. But noting that anyone and everyone could comment on the drafts of DSM 5—and that more than 10,000 comments were received—makes the book sound more like a popularity contest than a scientific endeavor. Perhaps out of fear that the DSM 5 will not be seen as objective, the editors have stumbled in their defense of their work. But that doesn&#8217;t mean that a rationale doesn&#8217;t exist for what they have done. The most common criticism is that the book<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=ideas.time.com&#038;blog=27622548&#038;post=32647&#038;subd=timeopinions&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Psychology</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://ideas.time.com/category/health-science/psychology/</primary_category_link><letterbox>1</letterbox><featured_image>http://timeopinions.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/dsm.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Psychiatric medications</media:title>
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		<title>How to Perform in a Clutch</title>
		<link>http://ideas.time.com/2013/05/08/how-to-perform-in-a-clutch/</link>
		<comments>http://ideas.time.com/2013/05/08/how-to-perform-in-a-clutch/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 08 May 2013 14:19:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Annie Murphy Paul</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Health & Science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[affirmation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[self-affirmation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[stress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[values]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[willpower]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ideas.time.com/?p=32091</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Life is full of vulnerable moments — occasions when we feel off-balance, unsure of ourselves and our abilities — and in these moments we are likely to perform less well than we might. Social psychologists have developed a simple activity, called a values affirmation, that can intervene in such situations to restore our sense of equilibrium. Here&#8217;s how it works: Make a list of the values that matter most to you, or for 10 minutes, write in-depth about a value that is central to your life. Perhaps it&#8217;s your close relationship with your family, or your skill with a camera or in the kitchen, or your strong religious faith. What matters is that it&#8217;s your value, your identity. (MORE: How Powerful People Think) It&#8217;s a quick and simple exercise, but numerous studies have shown that it can have tremendous effects. Some of the things a values affirmation can do: 1. Tamp down stress. A study led by psychologist Traci Mann of UCLA found that participants who affirmed their values had significantly lower cortisol responses to stress compared with control participants. &#8220;These findings suggest that reflecting on personal values can keep neuroendocrine and psychological responses to stress at low levels,&#8221; Mann and her coauthors write. 2. Strengthen willpower. In a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2009, researchers found that affirming one&#8217;s values can replenish willpower when it&#8217;s been depleted by repeated acts of self-control. The researchers conclude: &#8220;Self-affirmation holds promise as a mental strategy that reduces the likelihood of self-control failure.&#8221; (MORE: How to Use the “Pygmalion Effect”) 3. Increase openness. Joshua Correll of the University of Chicago found that a values-affirmation exercise allowed subjects in his study to objectively evaluate information that would otherwise evoke a defensive reaction. The participants became less biased in favor of their own position, and more discriminating in evaluating the strength or weakness of arguments made by others. 4. Improve accuracy. In a study published in the journal Psychological Science in 2012, researcher Michael Inzlicht of the University of Toronto and his<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=ideas.time.com&#038;blog=27622548&#038;post=32091&#038;subd=timeopinions&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Brilliant: The Science of Smart</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://ideas.time.com/category/health-science/brilliant-the-science-of-smart/</primary_category_link>
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		<title>Learning From Mistakes Is Harder Than We Think</title>
		<link>http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/29/learning-from-mistakes-is-harder-than-we-think/</link>
		<comments>http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/29/learning-from-mistakes-is-harder-than-we-think/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:35:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Annie Murphy Paul</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Health & Science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[beliefs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cognitive dissonance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[learning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[misconceptions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mistakes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reality]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[refutation]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ideas.time.com/?p=31849</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;Often mistaken, never in doubt.&#8221; That wry phrase describes us all more than we&#8217;d like to admit. The psychological study of misconceptions shows that all of us possess many beliefs that are flawed or flat-out wrong — and also that we cling to these fallacies with remarkable tenacity. As a result, just hearing the correct explanation isn&#8217;t enough. Most methods of instruction and training assume that if you provide people with the right information, it will replace any mistaken information listeners may already possess. But especially when our previous beliefs (even though faulty) have proved useful to us, and when they appear to be confirmed by everyday experience, we are reluctant to let them go. Donna Alvermann, a language and literacy researcher at the University of Georgia, notes that in study after study, &#8220;students ignored correct textual information when it conflicted with their previously held concepts. On measures of free recall and recognition, the students consistently let their incorrect prior knowledge override incoming correct information.&#8221; (MORE: Born to Be Bright: Is There a Gene for Learning?) It&#8217;s what our mothers called &#8220;in one ear and out the other.&#8221; We have to actively disabuse ourselves or others of erroneous conceptions, and research from cognitive science and psychology points the way. Although much of this research concerns misguided notions of how the physical world works, the techniques it has produced can be used to correct any sort of deficient understanding. Here, three ways to make that new information push out the old: Highlight the mistaken notion. The simplest way to correct mistaken notions is to point them out as the accurate information is being presented. In a 2010 article in the International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, researcher Christine Tippett offers an example from a science book for children: &#8220;Some people believe that a camel stores water in its hump. They think that the hump gets smaller as the camel uses up water. But this idea is not true. The hump stores fat and grows smaller only if the camel has<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=ideas.time.com&#038;blog=27622548&#038;post=31849&#038;subd=timeopinions&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Psychology</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://ideas.time.com/category/health-science/psychology/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeopinions.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/wrong.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">wrong</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">timeideasbrilliant</media:title>
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		<title>How Powerful People Think</title>
		<link>http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/22/how-powerful-people-think/</link>
		<comments>http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/22/how-powerful-people-think/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:05:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Annie Murphy Paul</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Health & Science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[job interviews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[leaders]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[leadership]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[management]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[power]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[powerful people]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ideas.time.com/?p=31598</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Successful leaders often seem to have sharper minds than the rest of us — isn&#8217;t that how they got to the top in the first place? While we often assume that people become powerful because of their superior thinking skills, research shows that the relationship flows in the other direction as well: Power changes the way a person thinks, making them better at focusing on relevant information, integrating disparate pieces of knowledge, and identifying hidden patterns than people who are powerless. People who feel powerful also show improved &#8220;executive functioning&#8221;: They are better able to concentrate, plan, inhibit unhelpful impulses and flexibly adapt to change. (MORE: The 2013 TIME 100) A sense of power &#8220;has dramatic effects on thought and behavior,&#8221; writes Adam Galinsky, a professor at Columbia Business School, in a 2011 article in the journal Psychological Science. Indeed, &#8220;being in a high-power role transforms people psychologically.&#8221; The good news is that we don&#8217;t have to wait until we&#8217;re the boss to reap the mental rewards of powerfulness. Here, three ways to take advantage of the power of power: 1. Find a role in which you feel powerful. All of us can identify some area of life in which we&#8217;re able to take the lead — and once we do so, changes in how we think and act will follow. &#8220;The social roles people inhabit can change their most basic cognitive processes,&#8221; notes Pamela Smith, a social psychologist at Radboud University in the Netherlands. Studies show that when people are assigned to the manager role (in a real organization or in one simulated in the lab), they immediately become more likely to act decisively, to take risks, to persist on tasks they take up, and to think more abstractly and optimistically. This has implications for how we treat others — students, employees, offspring — as well, suggesting that we should reverse the usual practice of waiting until individuals prove themselves worthy of holding power. Empowering people now, by giving them more control and autonomy, will lead them to think and<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=ideas.time.com&#038;blog=27622548&#038;post=31598&#038;subd=timeopinions&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Psychology</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://ideas.time.com/category/health-science/psychology/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeopinions.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/powerful.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Business man looking out window of corner office</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">timeideasbrilliant</media:title>
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		<title>How to Stimulate Curiosity</title>
		<link>http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/15/how-to-stimulate-curiosity/</link>
		<comments>http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/15/how-to-stimulate-curiosity/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 15 Apr 2013 16:18:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Annie Murphy Paul</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Health & Science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[communication]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[curiosity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[information gap]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[learning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[motivator]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ideas.time.com/?p=31311</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Curiosity is the engine of intellectual achievement — it&#8217;s what drives us to keep learning, keep trying, keep pushing forward. But how does one generate curiosity, in oneself or others? George Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, proposed an answer in the classic 1994 paper, &#8220;The Psychology of Curiosity.&#8221; Curiosity arises, Loewenstein wrote, &#8220;when attention becomes focused on a gap in one&#8217;s knowledge. Such information gaps produce the feeling of deprivation labeled curiosity. The curious individual is motivated to obtain the missing information to reduce or eliminate the feeling of deprivation.&#8221; Loewenstein&#8217;s theory helps explain why curiosity is such a potent motivator: it&#8217;s not only a mental state but also an emotion, a powerful feeling that impels us forward until we find the information that will fill in the gap in our knowledge. (MORE: Secrets of the Most Successful College Students) Here, three practical ways to use information gaps to stimulate curiosity: 1. Start with the question. Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham notes that teachers — along with parents, managers, and leaders of all kinds — are often &#8220;so eager to get to the answer that we do not devote sufficient time to developing the question,&#8221; Willingham writes in his book, Why Don&#8217;t Students Like School? Yet it&#8217;s the question that stimulates curiosity; being told an answer quells curiosity before it can even get going. Instead of starting with the answer, begin by posing for yourself and others a genuinely interesting question — one that opens an information gap. (MORE: How to Raise a Group&#8217;s IQ) 2. Prime the pump. In his 1994 paper, George Loewenstein noted that curiosity requires some initial knowledge. We&#8217;re not curious about something we know absolutely nothing about. But as soon as we know even a little bit, our curiosity is piqued and we want to learn more. In fact, research shows that curiosity increases with knowledge: the more we know, the more we want to know. To get this process started, Loewenstein suggests, &#8220;prime the pump&#8221; with some intriguing but incomplete<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=ideas.time.com&#038;blog=27622548&#038;post=31311&#038;subd=timeopinions&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Psychology</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://ideas.time.com/category/health-science/psychology/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeopinions.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/curiosity.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Curiosity</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">timeideasbrilliant</media:title>
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		<title>Viewpoint: Good Guys Can Win at Work</title>
		<link>http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/10/viewpoint-nice-guys-can-win-at-work/</link>
		<comments>http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/10/viewpoint-nice-guys-can-win-at-work/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Apr 2013 09:45:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Adam Grant</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business & Tech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Health & Science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Life & Style]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[corporate success]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[generosity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[givers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[takers]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ideas.time.com/?p=30602</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[We all know successful people who are self-serving at work, who take more than they offer. In a cutthroat, competitive world, they tend to dominate givers, colleagues who happily contribute without necessarily expecting anything in return. According to conventional wisdom, being a giver means leaving ourselves vulnerable to exhaustion — and exploitation by takers. Offer a client a one-time discount, and you might get stuck with it for a decade. Volunteer to help colleagues solve problems, and you’ll end up burning the midnight oil, running out of time and energy to get your own work done. Advise and champion a high-potential mentee, and you could very well be passed over for your next promotion. (MORE: Sheryl Sandberg: Why I Want Women to Lean In) Recognizing the perils of generosity, many of us protect ourselves by waiting until we achieve success, and then start giving back professionally. Along the way, we reserve our giving for families, friends, charity, and volunteer activities outside the workplace. On the job, we’re careful to live our lives in the middle. We become matchers, striving to maintain an equal balance of giving and getting. A matcher is helpful enough to be a good person, but not so generous to be a sucker and sacrifice his or her own success. But after studying these dynamics for the past decade, I&#8217;ve uncovered a paradox. Yes, there are a lot of givers who have low promotion and productivity rates, but givers also rise to the top. For example, studies show that although the engineers with the lowest productivity are givers, so are the engineers with the highest productivity. The same pattern emerges across a wide range of occupations. In medical school, the givers are the students with both the lowest grades and the highest grades. In my own research with hundreds of sales people, I’ve found that those who generate the lowest revenue are givers, as are those who generate the highest. The takers and matchers are more likely to land somewhere in between. And across many industries, from banking<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=ideas.time.com&#038;blog=27622548&#038;post=30602&#038;subd=timeopinions&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Business &amp; Tech</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://ideas.time.com/category/business-tech/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeopinions.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/57539411.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">timecontributor</media:title>
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		<title>What Celebrities Can Teach Us About Death</title>
		<link>http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/10/what-celebrities-can-teach-us-about-death/</link>
		<comments>http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/10/what-celebrities-can-teach-us-about-death/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Apr 2013 09:45:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Erica Brown</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Arts & Entertainment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Life & Style]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Society]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Art Buchwald]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[celebrity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[death]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Roger Ebert]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terry Pratchett]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Valerie Harper]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ideas.time.com/?p=30632</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Only a day before Roger Ebert&#8217;s death, the film critic, who had thyroid cancer since 2002, announced publicly that he was “taking a leave of presence.” This was clever, but most of us were unprepared for the news. Contrast this with Valerie Harper’s proactively transparent approach. “I don’t think of dying. I think of being here now,” Harper said in a recent People interview. Harper, who was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, has been refreshingly open about her illness. “I feel so much better not hiding,” she said in an interview on NBC. Although she excused celebrities who want to stay private, she felt really good being open, saying, “If you die, you are not a failure. You’re just somebody who had cancer.” It used to be that Hollywood stars seem to last forever until, suddenly, they disappear. That’s what Gary Cooper did in the 1960s. He had cancer for almost a year, but his adoring fans only realized something was wrong when Jimmy Stewart picked up his Oscar for him that spring in tears. (MORE: Roger Ebert: Farewell to a Film Legend and a Friend) It&#8217;s understandable that people who build their reputations on images have a hard time being straight with us about their final days. But we can learn a lot more from celebrities who buck the trend and, having spent a lifetime in the public eye, do not shy away from it in death. Take Art Buchwald. When he suffered a stroke and subsequent amputation, he told Diane Rehm on the radio from his hospice bed that it was time to go. He discussed his living will on CNN. Then he went into hospice living long enough to write another book, Too Soon to Say Goodbye. When he did finally die in January 2007, his son posted a video of him the following day, saying: “Hi. I’m Art Buchwald, and I just died.” Buchwald did us a public service by helping us talk about what no one wants to talk about: we will all die, eventually, and to the<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=ideas.time.com&#038;blog=27622548&#038;post=30632&#038;subd=timeopinions&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Society</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://ideas.time.com/category/life-style/society/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeopinions.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/bdbf5d19490f4f609c00221ef76ab5cc-0.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Roger Ebert</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">timecontributor</media:title>
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		<title>Viewpoint: ADHD Isn&#8217;t A Metaphor</title>
		<link>http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/09/viewpoint-adhd-isnt-a-metaphor/</link>
		<comments>http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/09/viewpoint-adhd-isnt-a-metaphor/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Apr 2013 09:45:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Judith Warner</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Children]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Family]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Health & Science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Life & Style]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medical Insider]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Public Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ADHD]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CDC]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicated Child]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ideas.time.com/?p=30570</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Let’s say that rates of ADHD diagnoses among kids in America are continually rising. Let’s say that stimulant medication use — both prescribed by doctors, and as the result of illegal trade with friends —  is on the rise, too. What do we make of that information? What do we do with it? In particular, how do we use it to improve children’s and teenagers’ lives? The answers speak volumes about where we are as a society and where we ought to be headed. The default response, every time we get news about any sort of uptick in the diagnosis and treatment of children’s mental disorders, is to issue condemnations of bad parents, bad doctors, bad teachers, and bad schools. (Not to mention big bad pharma, of course, which, it seems, will never rise from the bed of nails it has built for itself  over the years.) A more thoughtful response would be to ask what the rise means. Are more children with the disorder who previously went unnoticed — girls, African Americans, Latinos, notably — now being identified and counted? We know that’s true, and it accounts for some of the rise. Does the increased social acceptability of the ADHD diagnosis mean that it’s the “label” doctors are most likely to stick on kids who, in addition to distractibility, have a whole host of more scary-sounding problems, in the hope of getting reluctant parents to sign on for some sort of treatment? Does the decreased stigma surrounding ADHD (the commonly-heard, “everyone has it, so it’s no big deal” view) mean that parents who’ve been told their kids have “attention issues” in addition to, say, a learning disability or a mood disorder, will cling to — and report to survey-wielding researchers — just the banal-sounding ADHD label? (MORE: The Myth of the Overmedicated American Teen) And, much more troublingly, are children who don’t have the disorder now being diagnosed and treated for it? And, if so, where is this happening, how is it happening, and why? The raw, unanalyzed, not-yet-peer-reviewed numbers that the New York Times, bizarrely, led<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=ideas.time.com&#038;blog=27622548&#038;post=30570&#038;subd=timeopinions&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Public Health</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://ideas.time.com/category/health-science/public-health/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeopinions.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/ca33551.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">ADHD</media:title>
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		<title>How to Raise a Group&#8217;s IQ</title>
		<link>http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/08/how-to-raise-a-groups-iq/</link>
		<comments>http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/08/how-to-raise-a-groups-iq/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Apr 2013 09:45:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Annie Murphy Paul</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Brilliant: The Science of Smart]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Business & Tech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Health & Science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Small Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anita Williams Wooley]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[group]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[IQ]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[project]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sandy Pentland]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ideas.time.com/?p=30558</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What makes a group intelligent? That is: What enables a team of people to effectively solve problems and produce solutions? You might think a group&#8217;s IQ would be simply the average intelligence of the group&#8217;s members, or perhaps the intelligence of the team&#8217;s smartest participant. But researchers who study groups have found that this isn&#8217;t so. (MORE: Four Ways to Give Good Feedback) Rather, a group&#8217;s intelligence emerges from the interactions that go on within the group. A team&#8217;s intelligence can be measured, and like an individual&#8217;s IQ score, it can accurately predict the team&#8217;s performance on a wide variety of tasks. And just as an individual&#8217;s intelligence is malleable and expandable, a group&#8217;s intelligence can also be increased. Here are five suggestions on how to guide the development of smart teams: 1. Choose team members carefully. The smartest groups are composed of people who are good at reading one another&#8217;s social cues, according to a study led by Carnegie Mellon University professor Anita Williams Woolley and published in the journal Science. (Woolley and her collaborators also found that groups that included a greater number of women were more intelligent, but the researchers think this is because women tend to be more socially sensitive than men.) (MORE: Why I Want Women to Lean In, by Sheryl Sandberg) 2. Talk about the &#8220;how.&#8221; Many members of teams don&#8217;t like to spend time talking about &#8220;process,&#8221; preferring to get right down to work — but Woolley notes that groups who take the time to discuss how they will work together are ultimately more efficient and effective. 3. Share the floor. On the most intelligent teams, found Woolley et al., members take turns speaking. Participants who dominate the discussion or who hang back and don&#8217;t say much bring down the intelligence of the group. Alex &#8220;Sandy&#8221; Pentland, an MIT professor who studies group dynamics, has found that in smart teams, members connect directly with one another — not just with the team leader — and they&#8217;re constantly engaging in &#8220;back channel&#8221; or side conversations that supplement the main discussion. (MORE: Highlighting Is<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=ideas.time.com&#038;blog=27622548&#038;post=30558&#038;subd=timeopinions&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Small Business</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://ideas.time.com/category/business-tech/small-business/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeopinions.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/159613584.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Group IQ</media:title>
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		<title>Viewpoint: We Need to Rethink Rehab</title>
		<link>http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/03/we-need-to-rethink-rehab/</link>
		<comments>http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/03/we-need-to-rethink-rehab/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Apr 2013 09:45:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>David Sheff</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Family]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Health & Science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Life & Style]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[AA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[addiction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[American Society of Addiction Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Beautiful Boy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[evidence-based treatment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nic Sheff]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rehab]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rehab programs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[twelve-step]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ideas.time.com/?p=30243</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When my son Nic became addicted to methamphetamine and other drugs, I was panicked, overwhelmed and desperate to save his life but had no idea what to do. I’d heard about rehab, where you send people with drug problems, but I soon learned that there’s no standard definition of it; instead it’s a generic word for a wide variety of treatments, including some that are outrageous. Past-life therapy? Exorcism? Tough-love programs in which patients are made to scrub bathroom tiles with a toothbrush or cut grass with scissors? Even in more-typical rehabilitation programs, patients are not seen by licensed practitioners — no doctors or psychologists — only self-anointed “experts” with no training or credentials, unless you count their own recoveries from addiction to heroin, alcohol or other drugs. (MORE: Q&#38;A with Anne Fletcher: What Really Goes On in Drug Rehab) I chose a rehab center for Nic that was recommended by a friend who had sent her son there. The program lasted 28 days, after which he relapsed. Over the next six years, he was admitted to six residential treatment programs and four outpatient programs. He would do better for a while, but then relapse. Each relapse was crushing. I thought he might die. Every year in the U.S., 120,000 people die of addiction. That&#8217;s 350 a day. I&#8217;ve already written about my experience with Nic, but for my new book, Clean, I wanted to understand why so many suffer and die. So I undertook an investigation of the treatment system that so often fails. I learned that no one actually knows how often treatment works, but an oft-quoted number of those who abstain from using for a year after rehab is 30%. Even that figure is probably high. “The therapeutic community claims a 30% success rate, but they only count people who complete the program,” according to Joseph A. Califano Jr., founder of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse and a former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. “Seventy to eighty percent drop out in three to<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=ideas.time.com&#038;blog=27622548&#038;post=30243&#038;subd=timeopinions&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Psychology</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://ideas.time.com/category/health-science/psychology/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeopinions.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/pills.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Prescription pills</media:title>
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		<title>How To Use the &#8220;Pygmalion&#8221; Effect</title>
		<link>http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/01/how-to-use-the-pygmalion-effect/</link>
		<comments>http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/01/how-to-use-the-pygmalion-effect/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:01:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Annie Murphy Paul</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Health & Science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[expectations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[learner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[learning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pygmalion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pygmalion effect]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ideas.time.com/?p=30270</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In the story told by the Roman poet Ovid, Pygmalion is a sculptor who falls in love with a statue he has created. George Bernard Shaw borrowed the theme for his play Pygmalion — later turned into the musical My Fair Lady — in which Professor Henry Higgins makes over the Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle, becoming besotted with her even as he teaches her how to speak proper English (&#8220;The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain&#8230; &#8220;). Psychologists, too, have picked up the motif, researching what they call the &#8220;Pygmalion effect&#8221;. The finding, as social psychologist Robert Rosenthal puts it, is &#8220;that what one person expects of another can come to serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy.&#8221; Rosenthal and his coauthor Lenore Jacobson coined the term to describe the striking results of an experiment they carried out in a California school in 1965. Students took a test that was said to be able to identify &#8220;growth spurters,&#8221; or those who were poised to make strides academically. Teachers were given the names of pupils who were about to bloom intellectually — and sure enough, these students showed a significantly greater gain in performance over their classmates when tested again at the end of the year. (MORE: How to Increase Your Stamina to Learn) But here&#8217;s the thing: the &#8220;spurters&#8221; were actually chosen at random. The only difference between them and their peers, Rosenthal writes, &#8220;was in the mind of the teacher.&#8221; And yet the expectations held in the mind of the teacher — or the parent, or the manager, or the coach — can make an enormous difference. Research conducted since Rosenthal and Jacobson&#8217;s original study has determined that the Pygmalion effect applies to all kinds of settings, from sports teams to the military to the corporate workplace. Just how do elevated expectations promote greater achievement? It&#8217;s not some magical act of inspiration. Rather, Rosenthal and others have found that higher expectations lead teachers (or other authority figures) to act differently in regard to the learner, in four very<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=ideas.time.com&#038;blog=27622548&#038;post=30270&#038;subd=timeopinions&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Psychology</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://ideas.time.com/category/health-science/psychology/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeopinions.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/studentteacher.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Teacher assisting student</media:title>
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		<title>Can &#8216;Mindfulness&#8217; Really Help You Focus?</title>
		<link>http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/27/can-mindfulness-help-you-focus/</link>
		<comments>http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/27/can-mindfulness-help-you-focus/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Mar 2013 09:45:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Annie Murphy Paul</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Health & Science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ACT]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[exams]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[GRE]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[LSAT]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mindfulness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SAT]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[test-taking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tests]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[working memory]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ideas.time.com/?p=30172</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If there&#8217;s any time when we should be paying close attention to what we&#8217;re doing, it&#8217;s when we&#8217;re under pressure to perform — whether taking a test like the SAT or on a deadline at work. But too often, our minds wander even in these crucial moments — distracted by a ticking clock or consumed with worries about how well we&#8217;re doing or how much time we have left. Jonathan Schooler, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, wondered if instruction in mindfulness — the capacity to focus on the here and now — could help. In a forthcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, he and his co-authors describe an experiment in which 48 undergraduates were randomly assigned to either a mindfulness class or a nutrition class. Both classes met for 45 minutes, four times a week, for two weeks. During the mindfulness class, participants sat on cushions in a circle; they were asked to pay focused attention to some aspect of sensory experience, like the sounds of their own breathing. They practiced distinguishing between the simple thoughts that naturally arise in our minds (I have a test tomorrow) and the thoughts that become &#8220;elaborated&#8221; with emotion (I&#8217;m really worried that I won&#8217;t do well, and if I fail it, I&#8217;ll have to take the class over, and then I won&#8217;t graduate on time). The undergrads enrolled in the mindfulness class were taught how to reframe these more emotional concerns as mere &#8220;mental projections,&#8221; and how to allow their minds to rest naturally, rather than trying to suppress or get rid of their thoughts. (MORE: How to Increase Your Stamina to Learn) All of the participants, who had completed a measure of working memory and a verbal-reasoning section from the GRE (an exam for grad school) before the classes started, took these tests again after the classes were over. Researchers also checked how frequently the students&#8217; minds wandered while working on the tests. Schooler and his colleagues found that participants who had received the mindfulness training improved their GRE<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=ideas.time.com&#038;blog=27622548&#038;post=30172&#038;subd=timeopinions&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Psychology</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://ideas.time.com/category/health-science/psychology/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeopinions.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/testing.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">testing</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">timeideasbrilliant</media:title>
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		<title>How to Increase Your Stamina to Learn</title>
		<link>http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/25/how-to-increase-your-stamina-to-learn/</link>
		<comments>http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/25/how-to-increase-your-stamina-to-learn/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 25 Mar 2013 11:30:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Annie Murphy Paul</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Brilliant: The Science of Smart]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[learning online]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[MOOCs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[stamina]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ideas.time.com/?p=30083</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A lot has been said lately about the phenomenon of MOOCs, or massive open online courses. But here&#8217;s one fact you may not have heard in all the hype: less than 10% of people who sign up for a MOOC actually complete it. That&#8217;s right: less than 10%. (MORE: Why the Online-Education Craze Will Leave Many Students Behind) This extraordinarily high attrition rate is a source of concern in the education world. A recent survey of chief academic officers at colleges around the country, for example, reported that the majority of them believe that &#8220;lower retention rates for online courses remain a barrier to the growth of online instruction.&#8221; Others point out that plenty of people drop out of traditional, in-person courses of instruction as well. This latter point only emphasizes the scope of the issue, however, which we can frame in this way: Why do we (and our children, and our students, and our employees) so often give up on learning? (MORE: How Friendship Makes You More Successful) Most of us have set out to learn something — a foreign language, a new sport, a skill that we need for work or one that we&#8217;d just like to have — only to fall well short of our goal. The rise of MOOCs (and of DIY sites, and how-to videos, and indeed all of the information-rich Internet) has shown that it&#8217;s technologically possible for us to learn anywhere, at any time. Now we&#8217;ve got to get to work on the psychological side of the equation. But a brute application of willpower isn&#8217;t the answer. We need to be clever in our cultivation of persistence, even &#8220;stealthy&#8221; (to borrow an apt term from a recent journal article on social-psychological interventions in education). We must outsmart our tendency to get too busy, too tired, too intent on catching the latest episode of Downton Abbey. Below, three ways to improve the odds that you&#8217;ll finish the learning you start. (MORE: Highlighting Is a Waste of Time: The Best and Worst Learning Techniques) Bring People With You Why do you think most college students go to class?<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=ideas.time.com&#038;blog=27622548&#038;post=30083&#038;subd=timeopinions&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Psychology</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://ideas.time.com/category/health-science/psychology/</primary_category_link>
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		<title>What Our Memories Tell Us About Ourselves</title>
		<link>http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/20/what-our-memories-tell-us-about-ourselves/</link>
		<comments>http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/20/what-our-memories-tell-us-about-ourselves/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Mar 2013 11:30:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Charles Fernyhough</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Health & Science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[created in present]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Elizabeth Loftus]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fiction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[imagination]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[memories]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[memory.]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[recollection]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virginia Woolf]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ideas.time.com/?p=29402</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Do you remember the time President Obama shook hands with Iranian president Ahmadinejad? If you took part in a recent psychological study, it’s possible that you will. More than 5,000 participants were presented with doctored photographs representing fabricated political events, with around half claiming to have memories for the false scenarios (Obama has, of course, never shaken hands with the Iranian president). Part of a decades-long program of research by psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, the latest study provides a neat demonstration of how our memories are created in the present rather than being faithful records of the past. (MORE: Does &#8220;Stress&#8221; Hide Deeper Social Problems?) The popular perception of memory shows a considerable lag with the new scientific consensus. The psychologists Daniel J. Simons and Christopher Chabris have conducted two large-scale surveys showing that roughly half of respondents thought that memory works like a video recorder. And although many people do recognize that their memories are fallible, there is much less understanding of precisely how and why they fail us. Memory is a system with many moving parts, and thus many processes that can go wrong. The various ‘sins of memory’ (in Daniel L. Schacter’s phrase) give us the best clues about how this complex mental function works. Psychologist and neuroscientists have taken advantage of these clues to explore the strong links between imagination and memory, to demonstrate how social factors influence our recollections, and to show how memory may actually have evolved to predict the future rather than keep track of the past. There is arguably little evolutionary advantage to being able to recall the past in vivid detail; it is much more useful to be able to use past experience to predict what comes next. (MORE: What Actors Can Teach Us About Memory and Learning) So why are we so attached to our idea of memories as fixed, unchanging possession?  There are many reasons, but one is that memories are foundational for our sense of self. This is particularly true for early childhood memories (which the scientists tell us are<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=ideas.time.com&#038;blog=27622548&#038;post=29402&#038;subd=timeopinions&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Psychology</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://ideas.time.com/category/health-science/psychology/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeopinions.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/memories.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Photo memories</media:title>
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		<title>Four Ways to Give Good Feedback</title>
		<link>http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/18/four-ways-to-give-good-feedback/</link>
		<comments>http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/18/four-ways-to-give-good-feedback/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 18 Mar 2013 13:29:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Annie Murphy Paul</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business & Tech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cognitive science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[feedback]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[motivation]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ideas.time.com/?p=29796</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When effectively administered, feedback is a powerful way to build knowledge and skills, increase skills, increase motivation, and develop reflective habits of mind in students and employees. Too often, however, the feedback we give (and get) is ineffectual or even counterproductive. Here, four ways to offer feedback that really makes a difference, drawn from research in psychology and cognitive science: 1. Supply information about what the learner is doing, rather than simply praise or criticism. In &#8220;The Power of Feedback,&#8221; an article published in the Review of Educational Research in 2007, authors John Hattie and Helen Timperley point out that specific information about how the learner is performing a task is much more helpful than mere praise or, especially, criticism. In particular, research by Hattie, Timperley, and others has found that feedback is most effective when it provides information on what exactly the learner is doing right, and on what he or she is doing differently (and more successfully) than in previous attempts.&#8217; (MORE: Secrets of the Most Successful College Students) 2. Take care in how you present feedback.  The eminent psychologist Edward Deci has identified several conditions under which feedback may actually reduce learners&#8217; motivation. When learners sense that their performance is being too closely monitored, for example, they may disengage from learning out of feelings of nervousness or self-consciousness. To counter this impression, the purpose of observing or supervising should be fully explained and learners’ consent obtained. Better yet, learners should be involved in collecting and analyzing data on their own performance, reducing the need for oversight by others. (And as the popularity of the &#8220;Quantified Self&#8221; movement has demonstrated, many people seem to enjoy keeping even minute records of their own behavior.) A second risk identified by Deci is that learners will interpret feedback as an attempt to control them — for example, when feedback is phrased as, &#8220;This is how you should do it.&#8221; Empower learners rather than controlling them by giving them access to information about their own performance and teaching them how to use<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=ideas.time.com&#038;blog=27622548&#038;post=29796&#038;subd=timeopinions&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Psychology</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://ideas.time.com/category/health-science/psychology/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeopinions.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/feedback.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">timeideasbrilliant</media:title>
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		<title>Does &#8220;Stress&#8221; Hide Deeper Social Problems?</title>
		<link>http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/13/does-stress-hide-deeper-social-problems/</link>
		<comments>http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/13/does-stress-hide-deeper-social-problems/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 13 Mar 2013 11:00:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dana Becker</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Health & Science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Life & Style]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Society]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[social problems]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[stress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[the stress concept]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[walter cannon]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ideas.time.com/?p=29561</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Americans have been worrying about the negative health impact of our fast pace of life since the Industrial Revolution, but in the last few decades, the concept of &#8220;stress&#8221; has spread to almost every condition or situation imaginable — from obesity to terrorism to chipped nail polish. Stress is now a protean concept whose shape-shifting properties give it tremendous versatility as a vehicle for explaining human dilemmas. But the chameleon-like nature of the concept makes it possible to obscure or avoid addressing social problems by individualizing them. When Walter Cannon, Harvard physiologist and pioneer of stress research, first used the term &#8220;stress&#8221; in the 1920s, he was referring to what he called the “disturbing conditions” to which people react physiologically with a “fight or flight” response (adrenalin release; speeded-up heartbeat; elevated blood sugar). Today when we say we’re “stressed out,” what we’re typically referring to is a psychological or emotional state, and we worry that stress will compromise our immune system functioning, increasing our vulnerability to disease. (MORE: The Most Stressed Out Generation? Young Adults) Stress is now an inside job:  it’s feeling “stressed” that causes our problems, not the situations and conditions that make us feel “stressed out” in the first place. Instead of thinking about stress as something outside us, it&#8217;s now become integral to the self. So the problem of stress has become our own personal predicament to solve, and there’s no dearth of advice about how to do this:  eat more kale, get some therapy, take a yoga class. The message is:  change yourself, change your lifestyle, or learn to adapt to the stress. Consider what it means to accept this way of thinking about stress. If women believe that it’s our job to manage the stress of combining paid employment and family work, we’re more likely to “de-stress” by putting more bath oil in the bath and less likely to work toward changing family-unfriendly workplace policies or to agitate for universal daycare. If we view people who live below the poverty line the way Chief of Cardiology<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=ideas.time.com&#038;blog=27622548&#038;post=29561&#038;subd=timeopinions&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Society</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://ideas.time.com/category/life-style/society/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeopinions.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/stress1.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Stress</media:title>
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		<title>Want to Prevent Teen Pregnancy? Pay Teens Not to Get Pregnant</title>
		<link>http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/12/want-to-prevent-teen-pregnancy-pay-teens-not-to-get-pregnant/</link>
		<comments>http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/12/want-to-prevent-teen-pregnancy-pay-teens-not-to-get-pregnant/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:00:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Erika Christakis</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[American Cities]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Children]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Health & Science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Life & Style]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Public Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Society]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[U.S.]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bloomberg]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[public service campaign]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[smoking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[teen pregnancy]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ideas.time.com/?p=29509</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[New York City officials recently spent $400,000 on billboards featuring omniscient babies who remind potential mothers about deadbeat dads of the future: “Honestly, Mom, chances are, he won’t stay with you. What happens to me?” In another ad, a crying infant says, &#8220;I&#8217;m twice as likely NOT to graduate high school because you had me as a teen.&#8221; The shame-and-blame campaign almost immediately drew fire from Planned Parenthood and other health care providers who argued that the ads marginalize young women who are in need of services, not scarlet letters. But a spokesperson from Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office defended the public-service announcements on the grounds that they are but one component of a multifaceted approach that includes school clinics and sex education, noting, “It is well past time when anyone can afford to be value-neutral when it comes to teen pregnancy.” (MORE: The Argument You Don&#8217;t Hear About Birth Control in Schools) Fair enough. But if we want to get serious about values, we might try an approach with a much more successful track record of behavior change: paying teenagers not to get pregnant. For every person who makes it to age 21 without becoming pregnant or impregnating someone else, the government should dip into the funds we’d otherwise spend caring for infants and teen moms and instead pay a significant cash bonus directly to the young person. Sex and money have always been drivers of human behavior, but health officials rarely exploit this synergy to maximum benefit. Cash payments to teens could be doubly effective, reducing the number of teen pregnancies (which are declining nationwide but are still high relative to those of other developed countries) while producing what researchers call a &#8220;secondary outcome&#8221; by teaching self-regulation, patience and the ability to plan for the future—all valuable life skills. (MORE: Does Suspending Students Work?) The New York City ads serve a useful function only insofar as they reassure indignant taxpayers that something is being done about wayward teenagers. But it’s wishful thinking to imagine that snarky speculations about a baby’s future<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=ideas.time.com&#038;blog=27622548&#038;post=29509&#038;subd=timeopinions&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Society</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://ideas.time.com/category/life-style/society/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeopinions.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/wp-tp_poster_2.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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		<title>Why Insults Hurt—And Why They Shouldn&#8217;t</title>
		<link>http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/08/why-insults-hurt-and-why-they-shouldnt/</link>
		<comments>http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/08/why-insults-hurt-and-why-they-shouldnt/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 08 Mar 2013 12:30:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>William B. Irvine</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Psychology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[insulting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[insults]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Slap in the Face]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[social hierarchies]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ideas.time.com/?p=28962</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I became interested in the social function of insults while doing research on the Stoic philosophers, who spent a lot of time thinking about how best to deal with them. I thought this was an odd thing for philosophers to do, but ultimately realized that they were on to something. After all, one role of philosophy is to teach us how to have a good life, and insults—whether blatant, benign, or even backhanded—have the power to make us miserable. (MORE: Why Gadgets Are Great for Introverts) What I realized was that the pain caused by insults is really just a symptom of a far more serious ailment: our participation in the social hierarchy game. We are people who need to be among people. The problem is that once we are among them, we feel compelled to sort ourselves into social hierarchies. If we were wolves, we&#8217;d fight to establish the social order of the pack. But since we are humans with outsized brains and language, we use words instead. It is the social hierarchy game that makes insults sting. We are wired so that it feels bad to lose social status and feels good to gain it. That&#8217;s why a teasing jibe from a good friend isn&#8217;t painful—we haven&#8217;t lost status from it—but an unanswered email from our boss or a dilatory response to an invitation can diminish our sense of self-worth. Those playing the social hierarchy game try to score points by insulting others, who respond with counter-insults. Game-players also spend their days saying, doing, and even buying things calculated to gain the admiration of other people. Such attempts are likely to fail, though, since people rarely want only to admire, preferring instead to be admired. It is a recipe for social strife and personal misery. (MORE: How Friendship Makes You More Successful) The solution to this predicament is simple: withdraw from the social hierarchy game. In practical terms, this means becoming an insult pacifist: when insulted, you carry on as if nothing happened. Or if you do respond to<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=ideas.time.com&#038;blog=27622548&#038;post=28962&#038;subd=timeopinions&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Psychology</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://ideas.time.com/category/health-science/psychology/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeopinions.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/insult.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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		<title>Can Tough Competition Hinder Academic Performance?</title>
		<link>http://ideas.time.com/2013/02/22/can-tough-competition-hinder-academic-performance/</link>
		<comments>http://ideas.time.com/2013/02/22/can-tough-competition-hinder-academic-performance/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Feb 2013 13:00:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Annie Murphy Paul</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Health & Science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[academics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ashley Merryman]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[competition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NurtureShock]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[performance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Po Bronson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[stress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Top Dog]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ideas.time.com/?p=28541</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Top Dog, a new book by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman about &#8220;the science of winning and losing&#8221; is in large part a celebration of competition. The authors of the bestselling NurtureShock explore the benefits of what they call &#8220;competitive fire&#8221; — stories of Olympic swimmers, champion chess players, and upstart political candidates who reached the top by racing someone else. But just as interesting are the cases in which we do better without the element of competition. Sometimes, it turns out, competing against others can actually make our performance worse. Bronson and Merryman describe an experiment in which researchers gave 124 Princeton University underclassmen a test that drew its questions from the GRE, the graduate school admissions test. For some of the students, the investigators added to the stress of this difficult exam in two ways. First, the students were asked to report which high school they&#8217;d attended and how many of their high school classmates were also at Princeton. &#8220;This was intended to make most test-takers feel as if they were alone at Princeton, that they were lucky to be at Princeton, and that they had barely made the bar for admittance,&#8221; Bronson and Merryman explain. (MORE: Relax, It&#8217;s Only a Test) Second, researchers further added to students&#8217; stress by labeling the test as an &#8220;Intellectual Ability Questionnaire.&#8221; Bronson and Merryman again: &#8220;They wanted the test&#8217;s title to be threatening to the students, to make the students fear that, if they did poorly, the test would reveal they lacked the true ability to be at Princeton.&#8221; The other group of students answered the questions about high school only after taking the test, when it could no longer affect their performance, and their exam went by the less-threatening name &#8221;Intellectual Challenge Questionnaire.&#8221; The results? Students in the first group answered 72% of the questions correctly; those in the second group got 90% of their answers right. By subtly manipulating the competitive stress felt by the participants, Bronson and Merryman note, the researchers &#8220;were able to engineer an 18% difference in their test scores.&#8221; (MORE: Highlighting Is<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=ideas.time.com&#038;blog=27622548&#038;post=28541&#038;subd=timeopinions&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Psychology</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://ideas.time.com/category/health-science/psychology/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeopinions.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/academicperformance.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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		<title>How Friendship Makes You More Successful</title>
		<link>http://ideas.time.com/2013/01/16/how-friendship-makes-you-more-successful/</link>
		<comments>http://ideas.time.com/2013/01/16/how-friendship-makes-you-more-successful/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 16 Jan 2013 12:15:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Carlin Flora</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Health & Science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Life & Style]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Society]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Alcoholics Anonymous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Charles Duhigg]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[David Brooks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[friendship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[how people change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New Year's resolutions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nicholas Christakis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[social network]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Power of Habit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[weight loss]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ideas.time.com/?p=27245</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Back in college, my dorm-mate Sofia and I invented a ritual we called “Power Wednesdays.” Every week, we headed to the campus fitness center for a workout, and then to the library for four hours of hard studying. We would stride back to our dorm with a huge feeling of accomplishment. But that uplifting cocktail of virtuousness, productivity and sore muscles — rewarding as it was — wasn’t what kept us repeating Power Wednesdays. Our real motivation was each other&#8217;s company. I’ve been immersed in the study of friendship for the past several years, and among the many things I’ve learned, one idea stands out: If you truly want to change some aspect of your life, developing friendships with people who aspire to the same goals as you do — like I did with Sofia 15-plus years ago — can lead to more successful endeavors than embarking on solitary efforts. (MORE: A New Way to Think About New Year&#8217;s Resolutions) Shortly after we make a decision to change our behavior, we often sense a softening of what at first felt like ironclad conviction. We chastise ourselves for our inability to summon motivation and return to the poor habits we’re trying to break to comfort us, actively undermining our goals. What a disheartening cycle. But research shows that having friends with the same goal can interrupt that cycle. Researchers James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis have demonstrated that weight loss (and gain) spreads through friend groups, most likely via a process of altered norms. For example, if you meet your friends at an all-you-can-eat brunch every Sunday, but then one pal starts to beg off after starting a diet, you might suddenly question whether the practice is best for you. It’s not that you’ll necessarily adopt your friend’s new habits right away, but the seed will be planted. If you want to continue to feel close to her, you might even start tweaking your own routines (perhaps unconsciously) to align them more with hers. The same type of scenario is at play with<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=ideas.time.com&#038;blog=27622548&#038;post=27245&#038;subd=timeopinions&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Psychology</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://ideas.time.com/category/health-science/psychology/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeopinions.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/131172181.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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