Pacific Standard July-August 2013 Cover

What Are the Teens Up to Nowadays?

May 21, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
teens

Teens! We never know what they're doing, do we? (Oh, jeez. Do you #FollowATeen?) Teens are just so mysterious—like those weird deep-sea fish that have flashlights growing from their faces. We know they're fish, but are they really even fish? One day they're watching cartoons and the next day they're playing paddleball behind a school, except the rubber ball they're playing with is filled with drugs and the paddle is actually a stale pancake stolen from a local Denny's. Oh, and they're not actually behind a school; it's a "cyber cafe," probably. The point is: teens are crazy. Teens are ... Read More

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Your Child’s Brain on Math

May 3, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Parents whose children are struggling with math often view intense tutoring as the best way to help them master crucial skills, but a new study released on Monday suggests that for some kids even that is a lost cause. According to the research, the size of one key brain structure and the connections between it and other regions can help identify the eight- and nine-year-olds who will hardly benefit from one-on-one math instruction. "We could predict how much a child learned from the tutoring based on measures of brain structure and connectivity," said Vinod Menon, a professor of ... Read More

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We Aren’t the World

February 25, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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IN THE SUMMER of 1995, a young graduate student in anthropology at UCLA named Joe Henrich traveled to Peru to carry out some fieldwork among the Machiguenga, an indigenous people who live north of Machu Picchu in the Amazon basin. The Machiguenga had traditionally been horticulturalists who lived in single-family, thatch-roofed houses in small hamlets composed of clusters of extended families. For sustenance, they relied on local game and produce from small-scale farming. They shared with their kin but rarely traded with outside groups. While the setting was fairly typical for an ... Read More

More like this: Cover Story, March-April 2013
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Numerology Doesn’t Know the Score

January 26, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Numerology Doesn’t Know the Score

We entered the new year with all sorts of expectations and excitement, but I’m sure none compared to the chills from realizing 2012 will see the last major numerical date event — using the Gregorian calendar — for almost another century: December 12, 2012 — better represented as 12/12/12. I know, just a few months ago, we achieved 11/11/11. But not until 2101 will we be able to write 01/01/01, just as we did on that numerically glorious day of January 1, 2001. Disappointing I know, but should we celebrate or cower? Is this the end of the world, as the Mayans sort-of predicted? No, ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Skeptic's Café
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Women Eye Dance Moves to Find Thrill Seekers

January 24, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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It turns out the information women seek isn’t in a man’s kiss — it’s in his dance moves. Evidence of this nonverbal messaging system comes from a group of European researchers, led by the University of Göttingen’s Nadine Hugill, which videotaped 50 men and their moves. Sixty women watched the recordings and judged the hunkiness of each hoofer. Before hitting the dance floor, the men completed a survey measuring their propensity to engage in new and risky behaviors, including their penchant for “thrill and adventure seeking.” Their willingness to flaunt rules and take ... Read More

More like this: Culture, January-February 2012, The Cocktail Napkin
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Full Moon Myths Leave Skeptics Howling

December 16, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

A stock image of the holiday season is a night scene of Santa and his reindeers silhouetted across a full moon, his sleigh packed with presents ready to be delivered throughout the evening. While this joyous image fits some of our romantic notions of being moonstruck, it contradicts some widely held beliefs about the negative effects of full moons. (And never mind that the odds of experiencing a full moon on Christmas Eve itself are very small: the last one was in 2007 and the next may not appear until 2026.) A teacher I know, complaining about her students’ boisterous behavior in the ... Read More

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How to Keep the Devil From Getting More Than His Due

October 29, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The February 2011 issue of Currents in Biblical Research should have a calming effect on anyone who had to hide behind the sofa when watching the scary scenes in The Exorcism of Emily Rose. In “The Devil in the Details,” Derek R. Brown, a doctoral candidate at the University of Edinburgh, discusses the different ideas about demons and Satan in ancient religious texts. The ideas range from the “original” concept of Satan as he is described in the Old Testament, as an adversarial angel who is a member of God’s divine council, to the “new” Satan of the New Testament Gospels, ... Read More

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‘Do Not Litter’ Signs Can Be Counterproductive

September 26, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Do Not Litter. Keep Off the Grass. Clean Up After Your Dog. Sternly worded signs adorn our parks, plazas and playgrounds, reminding visitors to follow certain codes of conduct. But a newly published study finds that, under certain circumstances, these admonitions seem to have the opposite effect. Researchers in the Netherlands present evidence that if certain rules are clearly spelled out, and you note that others have been disregarding them, you're more likely to break them as well. What's more, you are also more likely to ignore an entirely different directive. Writing in the ... Read More

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Reading Fiction Impacts Aggressive Behavior

September 7, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

A popular, narrative-driven form of entertainment — one that can be easily accessed via a variety of electronic devices — has been linked to aggressive behavior. Violent video games? Well, sure. But newly published research points a finger at a much older art form: the written word. “Reading aggression in literature can influence subsequent aggressive behavior, which tends to be specific to the type of aggression contained in the story,” a Brigham Young University research team led by Sarah M. Coyne writes in the British Journal of Social Psychology. The study does not show ... Read More

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Boredom Can Fuel Hostility Toward Outsiders

August 16, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

It’s all too easy to divide the world into people like us and outsiders. Newly published research points to a surprising factor that exacerbates this unfortunate tendency: Boredom. Writing in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, University of Limerick psychologists Wijnand van Tilburg and Eric Igou report boredom increases the value we place on groups we feel a part of and decreases the value of those who feel alien to us. They describe five experiments that provide evidence backing up this idea. Their basic thesis is that boredom is more than a simple lack of ... Read More

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