Experts such as pianists, athletes, and surgeons acquire their skills through extensive practice. However, the neurophysiological and psychological mechanisms that underlie the problem of making mistakes due to psychological stress remain unexplored in the context of pressured situations such as in piano competitions or the Olympics. Training for preventing such mistakes also remain unexplored, in...
/credit-score-checking-d6115f7a65154cdcb80977341f5f2960.jpg "Does Checking Your Credit Score Help or Hurt?")
Key Takeaways: Consumer finance website users with decreasing credit scores are less likely to want to view their credit reports again. Exposure to negative information about consumers’ credit scores may contribute to further decreasing of their credit scores. Avoidance of information on negative credit scores may actually help in some cases. January is filled with...
Returning to college to earn a bachelor’s degree leads to both an immediate increase in annual income after graduation and an increase in annual income growth each year after graduation, according to a Kansas State University economics researcher. Amanda Gaulke, assistant professor of economics in the College of Arts and Sciences, found that students who...
A friend of mine – we will call him “Jay” – was working for IBM in New York City in the early ‘90s. He was a computer programmer and made a good salary. Occasionally, competitors and startups approached Jay to join their companies. He had an offer from an interesting but small organization in Seattle,...
Rocket scientists and brain surgeons are no smarter than the general population, suggests a study in the Christmas issue of The BMJ. Despite the commonly used phrases “It’s not rocket science” and “It’s not brain surgery” the findings show that both aerospace engineers and neurosurgeons have similar levels of intelligence to those in the general population. As such,...
Starting around 3,000 years ago, a wave of innovation began to sweep through human societies around the globe. For the next millennium the continued emergence of new technologies had a dramatic effect on the course of human history. This era saw the advancement of the ability to control horses with bit and bridle, the spread...
For my recently published book, “The Ledger and the Chain,” I visited more than 30 archives in over a dozen states, from Louisiana to Connecticut. Along the way, I uncovered mountains of material that exposed the depravity of the men who ran the largest domestic slave trading operation in American history and revealed the fortitude...
A Texas law that aims to eliminate almost all abortions in the state is part of a long-standing nationwide movement to restrict the right to abortion. The Texas law went into effect on Sept. 1, 2021, and severely limits the right to have an abortion in that state. But the anti-abortion movement is aiming more...
Every day, thousands of people are tortured in police stations, security offices and prisons around the world. Human rights organizations protest torture and advocate for survivors, but neither they nor the public knows much about the torturers themselves. Where do torturers come from? How can they do such terrible things? And most important, is there...
In 2021, an investigation revealed that home loan algorithms systematically discriminate against qualified minority applicants. Unfortunately, stories of dubious profit-driven data uses like this are all too common. Meanwhile, laws often impede nonprofits and public health agencies from using similar data – like credit and financial data – to alleviate inequities or improve people’s well-being....
