Psychology

How we learned to love failure

How we learned to love failure

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A week of celebration in a Melbourne school helped mistake-wary students understand the power of getting things wrong.

“While playing soccer, I scored a goal for the opposition team!”

“When working at a vineyard, I accidentally cut off an entire vine, while the vineyard owner looked on in horror!”

“I was kicked out of ballet school!”

This was how Failure Week was launched at Ivanhoe Girls’ Grammar School in Melbourne. Without warning, during a weekly assembly, students bore witness to teachers declaring their personal failures. This sharing of stories started a week in which students were encouraged to follow their teachers’ lead by accepting, grappling with, and using their failures as a means to learn and build resilience.

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The time is right for critical thinking

The time is right for critical thinking

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Our fast-changing world will require new responses. Critical thinking will be important to ensure we can navigate the complexities of modern times. But what is it?

Organisations of all kinds now proclaim they value critical thinking. But this approach to assessing information and acting on it does not develop by chance.

The psychologist Diane Halpern, author of Thought and Knowledge: An Introduction to Critical Thinking, says universities and even workplaces need to school people in specific skills that will equip them to think carefully and well.

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Why contemplating death can help you live a happier life

Why contemplating death can help you live a happier life

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How do you feel about the idea of dying? Is it something you think about often? Or does it make you feel anxious? These are questions many of us have pondered in recent times. The pandemic has reminded us that death is always close by and is an event we will all face at some point.

Generally, though, death is a taboo subject. We’re taught that death is something we should shy away from and try to forget about. If we start contemplating our own mortality – so this traditional wisdom goes – we’ll become anxious and depressed.

Whereas our ancestors would have regularly watched people die and seen dead bodies, we’re shielded from death by modern medical practices. People usually die in hospitals rather than at home and soon after death, their bodies are taken to funeral homes, where we usually have to make an appointment to see them.

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How to narrow the gap between what universities produce and what employers expect

How to narrow the gap between what universities produce and what employers expect

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Higher education is usually seen as a way for individuals and families to improve their economic status. Research shows, though, that graduates can remain unemployed for up to a year. In developing countries, in particular, the labour force is often growing faster than the labour market.

Graduate unemployment remains a reality for many in South Africa. The most recent figures from Statistics South Africa put the graduate unemployment rate at 31% in the first quarter of 2019.

Among the reasons for the unemployment rate are the needs and expectations of the labour market and the quality of graduates leaving higher education institutions. Research into graduate work readiness has shown that there’s a gap between what universities produce in their graduates and what employers expect.

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How to make robots that we can trust

How to make robots that we can trust

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Self-driving cars, personal assistants, cleaning robots, smart homes – these are just some examples of autonomous systems.

With many such systems already in use or under development, a key question concerns trust. My central argument is that having trustworthy, well-working systems is not enough. To enable trust, the design of autonomous systems also needs to consider other requirements, including a capacity to explain decisions and to have recourse options when things go wrong.

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What economics has to say about same-sex marriage

What economics has to say about same-sex marriage

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Love and companionship make most people happy and generally represent two of the key reasons why couples marry.

In the economists’ view, love and companionship are a particular type of commodity: they cannot be purchased or traded on a market, but they can be produced by a household to generate happiness for its members.

There are potentially many other of these “household-produced” commodities, including raising children, preparing meals, caring for each other, and achieving economic stability.

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Introverts think they won’t like being leaders but they are capable

Introverts think they won’t like being leaders but they are capable

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Introverts often don’t think they will enjoy leadership roles and so are less likely to go for the top job, new research finds. In fact, introverts in our study thought they would be worried and distressed in leadership situations.

Whether or not someone is an introvert is usually measured by how much they exhibit the personality trait called “extraversion” – being outgoing and social. Compared to extraverts, introverts tend to be relatively passive, quiet and reserved.

Not surprisingly, someone’s level of introversion or extraversion is related to a range of important personal and professional outcomes. For example, research has found that extraverts are more likely than introverts to perform well in sales jobs. Introverts, on the other hand, are more likely to be honest or humble and are less likely to risk their own health and safety.

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Cat lovers rejoice: watching online videos lowers stress and makes you happy

Cat lovers rejoice: watching online videos lowers stress and makes you happy

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Watching cute cat videos and looking at their online pictures may not be a waste of time. A new study has found doing so could boost energy levels and increase feelings of happiness.

Published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior the study even suggests that watching internet cats could be used as a form of digital pet therapy or stress relief.

Internet data shows two million cat videos were posted on YouTube as of 2014, totalling nearly 26 billion views. Celebrity cats – such as Grumpy Cat and and Lil BUB – have also sprung up on social media, garnering mass followings.

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Getting serious about funny: Psychologists see humor as a character strength

Getting serious about funny: Psychologists see humor as a character strength

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Humor is observed in all cultures and at all ages. But only in recent decades has experimental psychology respected it as an essential, fundamental human behavior.

Historically, psychologists framed humor negatively, suggesting it demonstrated superiority, vulgarity, Freudian id conflict or a defense mechanism to hide one’s true feelings. In this view, an individual used humor to demean or disparage others, or to inflate one’s own self-worth. As such, it was treated as an undesirable behavior to be avoided. And psychologists tended to ignore it as worthy of study.

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Driverless cars could see humankind sprawl ever further into the countryside

Driverless cars could see humankind sprawl ever further into the countryside

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Self-driving cars will change how we live, in all sorts of ways. But they won’t just affect us humans – the coming revolution in autonomous transport has significant implications for wildlife as well. Nature conservationists and planners need to think hard about the impact of driverless vehicles, most notably in terms of renewed urban sprawl.

In some ways, wider developments in automotive technology bode well for the environment. Electric cars will increasingly replace the internal combustion engine, and that should, in theory, reduce carbon emissions and health-afflicting air pollution.

Through minimising traffic jams, driverless cars may also reduce overall energy use. Unlike human drivers, computers can avoid the “concertina” effect of needless acceleration and braking that exacerbates congestion, and won’t be tempted to “rubberneck” when passing an accident. And, as autonomous vehicles aren’t restricted by human reaction times, it may make sense to increase speed limits for them on major inter-city routes.

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Not just nice to have: nature in the workplace makes employees happier and healthier

Not just nice to have: nature in the workplace makes employees happier and healthier

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Bringing nature into the workplace can help reduce stress and increase creativity and focus, research shows.

Some researchers suggest humans have an innate need to be connected with nature. This is called biophilia. But as housing density, commute times, and office hours increase, we are spending less and less time in natural environments.

Workplace stress costs American businesses up to US$190 billion every year in healthcare costs alone. This is why bringing nature into the office can have such a big impact on employee wellbeing.

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