If you want people to change the current system, or status quo, first you have to get them to notice what’s wrong with it. That’s the idea behind a new study to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, which finds that people pay attention to negative information about the system when they believe the status quo can change.

“Take America’s educational system. You could find some flaws in that system,” says India Johnson, a graduate student at Ohio State University who did the new study with Professor Kentaro Fujita. “But we have to live with it every day, so people tend to focus on the positive and reinforce the system. Sometimes, though, people are motivated to change things—that’s what brought about the U.S. civil rights movement and the changes in Tunisia and Egypt this year, for example.

“In order to actually change the system, you’ve got to know what’s wrong with it,” Johnson says. So she wondered, “How can we get people to stop looking at the positive information and kind of shift gears and focus on the negative information?” Psychological scientists have found that people who want to change—to do better at work, for example—are willing to take the short-term pain of hearing negative information about themselves, if they actually believe that bearing this pain will actually help them improve in the long run. Johnson wondered if the same was true for thinking about the whole social system. [continue reading…]

Although passion and widespread sympathy for bullying victims is natural and admirable, those who want to stop bullying abuse need to act in ways that reflect good science and proven research if they want to contribute to a culture that does not condone this behavior, according to the director of the University at Buffalo’s anti-bullying center.

“There is such a tension right now around the issue of bullying. A lot of people have passion and want to make a difference,” says Amanda B. Nickerson, the director of UB’s Dr. Jean Alberti Center for the Prevention of Bullying Abuse and School Violence in the Graduate School of Education.

“But I’m worried that passion is not coupled with good science and theory behind it,” Nickerson says. “So one of the things the Alberti Center can do is conduct research and also look closely at what we know about the research to guide the efforts.”

National attention and concern with bullying continues to be one of the most discussed and debated social issues of the year. Most recently, singer Lady Gaga started a new nonprofit foundation to promote “self-confidence and anti-bullying.” The entertainer has often cited the suicide of 14-year-old Williamsville high school student Jamey Rodemeyer. Her new “Born This Way” foundation came about after she recently met with President Obama to discuss ways to combat youth bullying.
Given the attention and outcry over this tragedy — and the steady stream of media attention to the implications of Rodemeyer’s death — Nickerson addressed related topics, from the tell-tale signs your child is being bullied to Nickerson’s mission at UB’s Alberti Center.

Source:University at Buffalo

How can we begin to understand the way the brain works? The same way we begin to understand a city: by making a map. In this visually stunning talk, Allan Jones shows how his team is mapping which genes are turned on in each tiny region, and how it all connects up.

Source: TED Talks