I was interviewed recently for this article that appeared in the New York Times.
It was a vivid and important look at how young people around the world assess their potential for success in life and what they think is necessary for achieving it.
Perhaps surprisingly, young people in poorer countries were generally more optimistic about their chances of future success than those in more economically developed countries like the United States.…
I’m not sure I’ve ever felt as blessed as I did this Thanksgiving. It was a day of almost complete harmony among my wife and I and our three daughters.
Our day began with a simple exercise of writing down the many people and things we were grateful for this year, in spite of all that has engulfed our nation and impaired our daily lives.
Under different circumstances, this request could have been met with eye rolls and pleas to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade.…
Consider this. If you voted in the Presidential election, then regardless of its outcome, there would be 70 million people who disagreed with you. These are not 70 million idiots, socialists, extremists, racists, or rioters. They are your fellow Americans who have different lived experiences, concerns and priorities than you. People who receive their information from different sources than you and are often surrounded by similar folks that reinforce their opinions, knowledge and biases.…
I lay in bed trying to fall asleep, my mind struggling to process the hour of bad news I had just watched. At a loss, I wondered what would happen if I just forced myself to smile. I imagine if anyone had seen me, it would have looked quite ridiculous, as I stared at the ceiling trying to hold a forced smile as long as I could.
The first five seconds were legitimately challenging, perhaps evidence that these muscles had atrophied a bit during these last several months. Eventually, as…
To hear this term is to presume something positive. It implies that things fit with one another, get along, are nice.
Yet in the field of psychology, complementary behavior may not always be as helpful as it sounds. It means you respond back to someone in the same way they did to you. For example, if someone yells at you, you yell at them.
By comparison, non-complementary behavior is responding to someone in a different way from which they acted towards you. …
Yesterday was a mother’s day unlike any other. Under normal circumstances this would be a day where mothers would either be lavished with gifts, taken out to dinner, or maybe just given a break.
No doubt children and families did their best to try and cobble something together along those lines despite our current limitations.
To repeat a well-worn cliche, now more than ever, mom’s deserve the recognition that too often gets taken for granted.…
One of the defining American debates is the ongoing question of Public vs. Private. Another way to think of it is — what is mine vs. what is ours? This question runs through issues related to economics, rights, education, health, property and so on.
Some see these ideas of public and private mostly at odds. An example of zero-sum thinking (see here for a great summary of research on how this thinking plays out politically). …
In the face of our current challenges, I’ve heard many echo my own feelings that our personal actions have been insufficient. This is especially true when we compare ourselves to others whose roles are deemed essential and actions heroic.
This sentiment at times comes when people reflect on their relative good fortune or privilege. But it is not limited to the lucky.
I’ve also spoken to those directly impacted by events.…
In the the film, And Justice for All, Al Pacino gives an impassioned speech about the meaning of justice and its pursuit. He is defending a judge he knows to be guilty of a heinous crime and is part of a system he knows to be imperfect if not corrupt. He laments that justice is not the aim of a court proceeding, winning is.
Ultimately he must choose whether to pursue this objective or to sacrifice ego and reward. …
In this interview, Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters, recounted what attributes are common among musicians. One that resonated was the idea of musicians having especially patterned minds. The term refers to the ability to remember and think in patterns. In music this comes in especially handy in remembering chord progressions, lyrics etc. For an average person, we might be able to recite the words to a song we know only if we begin at a familiar place, like the beginning or at the chorus.…
“That is very kind of you” I said to the man on the train who offered up his seat so I could sit next to my mother. I’m not sure why I used that somewhat antiquated phrase. Perhaps it is because I have been thinking of kindness a lot lately.
It began last month when my wife and I took our three daughters to see Little Women.…
This powerful question comes from Rom Mokak, Australia’s first Indigenous Policy Evaluation Commissioner. It is a question that the Yawuru people ask when a major decision is to be made for their community.
When I first heard this question, it made me think of what kind of steward I am for not just my children’s future but for their children and their children and so on. I…
If you’re like me, until recently you never even heard of ERI, let alone know if you suffer from it.
The term, coined by Johannes Siegrist, senior professor at the University of Dusseldorf, stands for Effort/Reward Imbalance.
The idea is that we all make a mental calculation when it comes to work. How does what I’m putting in compare to what I’m getting out of it?…
Every minute there are over 3,000,000 pieces of content posted online via social media. That’s doesn’t even include texts or emails like this one.
Most people keep what they see to themselves. Only 18% of people share more than one piece of content a day.
When we do share content, the number one reason is to entertain our friends (insert cat video joke here). Conversely, only 13% of people share something for the purposes of making their friends “feel something.”…
I read the New York Times and watch MSNBC because they reinforce my existing beliefs (confirmation bias).
I remember bad things done to me more than good things done for me (negativity bias).
I think that the country will ultimately be ok (optimism bias).
I didn’t think the poll results were accurate leading up to the midterms (pessimism bias).
I believe that if I flip a coin five times and get heads each time, the next flip will be tails (the gambler’s fallacy).…
As I write this, my two-year old Cairn terrier mix, Scout, is sitting on my lap. Occasionally, he rests his head on my right forearm, making the act of typing a more delicate matter.
The benefits of dog ownership are well documented. They improve both our physical and mental health, reduce stress, increase our sociability, confidence and sense of responsibility and generally just make us happier. But…
My six year old daughter stepped off the bus with a very long face. “Daddy, you’re going to be so mad at me. I did something awful at school today.”
Embarrassed, upset and ashamed, it took twenty minutes for her to work through her tears and tell me that she got in trouble for talking in gym class. A crime that was punishable by sitting alone on the stage at the front of the gym. A…
In general, people believe that their own actions are more important than the environments in which they live. It’s a belief that’s so powerful its name is Fundamental Attribution Bias.
At the same time, the decision of where to live, work, go to school or raise our kids is among the most important and serious ones we will make in our lives.
If you’re curious to know how much where you live may impact your life, check out these two tools:
The first from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation uses CDC data to estimate life expectancy down to the census track level.…
Yes, you are bananas!
I mean this not in a figurative sense, like you’re crazy – but literally.
Anne Wojcicki is a co-founder of the genetics company 23andMe. In her recent “The Big Ideas” essay in the New York Times, she shared a pretty remarkable fact about how much of our genetic foundation, we share with bananas.
Instinctively, I would have imagined 5 or 10% would have been a good guess. …
| It is one of the most influential social science research studies ever conducted. For the past thirty years, it has served as a foundation for most work on the subjects of willpower and grit. The Marshmallow Test, as it is referred, was a simple experiment that offered kids a marshmallow to eat. However, if they could wait 15 minutes – while sitting alone in a room with the marshmallow in front of them – they would earn a second marshmallow. |
A recent study observed groups of people in public settings. They recorded that every ninety seconds someone does something for someone else. Hold a door. Pass the salt. Fulfill a random request.
Interestingly, only one in every six instances included someone saying thank you.
Some would say this is a classic example of some people who are selfish or ungrateful. While others are by nature are more selfless and altruistic.…
I have been blessed in many ways. One of which has been the presence of wonderful friendships throughout my life. Over the course of the last month, I’ve had three separate occasions when I’ve been able to spend hours talking to three of my oldest friends. People who have literally known me most of my life.
Each of these conversations was a reminder of how valuable our oldest friends are for our past, present and future selves.…
In Tom vs. Time, the new docu-series on Facetime Watch, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady gives us a glimpse into his rarified world.
In the second episode, Brady laments, “Every time you say yes, you’re saying no to something else. We only have so much time.”
In his case, this means that when he says yes to football he is saying no to his family.…
The phrase goes back to the 1600’s, predating the field of genetics by almost 300 years.
The idea that how we act is literally running through our veins is often seen in expressions of negative emotions like animosity (bad blood), anger (my blood is boiling.), fear (blood run cold), cruel (cold blooded) and vengeful (out for blood).
Beyond colorful idioms, there is more truth to the idea than we may realize.…
Research shows that anger is the most viral emotion.
We see it online in social media, standing impatiently inline and stuck in confined spaces – like our car driving my family across the state of Pennsylvania yesterday.
One person’s anger spreads to another with surprising speed and efficiency.
It’s hard to break this cycle once it begins. Its effects are corrosive both personally and to the entire community in which it has taken place.…
