Seeking social status is a central human motivation. Whether it’s buying designer clothing, working the way up the job ladder, or making a conspicuous donation to charity, humans often seek and signal social status. Human cooperation and competition aren’t mutually exclusive, they are two sides of the same coin. Christopher von Rueden from the University...
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Novel School Improvement Program Can Raise Teaching Quality While Reducing Inequality
A multi-national European study, looking at over 5,500 students, has found that a novel school intervention program can not only improve the mathematics scores of primary school children from disadvantaged areas, but can also lessen the achievement gap caused by socioeconomic status. Known as the Dynamic Approach to School Improvement (DASI), the program is based...
Questions During Shared Book Reading with Preschoolers Need to Be More Challenging
When it comes to challenging young minds to grow language, asking how and why during shared book reading to preschoolers can be more beneficial, according to new research at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth). An analysis of the questions preschool teachers asked during shared reading to their classes revealed that...
Black Students Receive Fewer Warnings from Teachers About Misbehavior
A new study of racial and ethnic disparities in school discipline found that black middle school students were significantly less likely than their white peers to receive verbal or written warnings from their teachers about behavioral infractions. “While at first glance, disparities in teacher warnings seem less concerning than being expelled or sent to the...
‘Mommy Bloggers’ Study Reveals Factors That Drive Success in Social Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is extremely widespread, yet ineffective. Eighty-six percent of companies use it as part of their social media strategy, but effectiveness remains low. For an influencer on Facebook, the average engagement rate per post is 0.37 percent; on Twitter, it is even lower at 0.05 percent. New research from the University of Notre Dame...
It Pays to Explore in Times of Uncertainty
When making choices, people tend either to go with what they know or try something new. We experience this trade-off every day, whether choosing a route to work or buying breakfast cereal. But does one strategy have an advantage over another? Researchers decided to examine this question by looking at fishing boat captains, who face...
Larger Ethnic Communities Help New Refugees Find Work, Stanford Research Shows
Ethnic enclaves are often viewed as a negative for the integration of immigrants with natives in their new country. But it turns out that ethnic communities can help newly arrived refugees find work, according to a new Stanford study that analyzed a cohort of asylum seekers in Switzerland. Researchers at the Stanford Immigration Policy Lab...
Study Considers Sensory Impacts of Global Climate Change
Studies of how global change is impacting marine organisms have long focused on physiological effects–for example an oyster’s decreased ability to build or maintain a strong shell in an ocean that is becoming more acidic due to excess levels of carbon dioxide. More recently, researchers have begun to investigate how different facets of global change...
Study Examines How Picture Books Introduce Kids to Politics
Politics have been known to put adults to sleep, but political engagement could be part of children’s bedtime stories as well. Lessons about the importance of politics could be part of their early education. A new University of Kansas study analyzed political messages in the most popular picture books of the last several years to...