Does manual labor boost happiness?

a post by Derek Beres for the Big Think blog

The neurochemistry of working with your hands.

• Working with your hands affects brain chemistry in a positive way.
• Automation technologies can strip away a sense of agency and meaning in our lives.
• Using your hands connects you with your environment in a way that most technologies cannot.

Violence has become such a part of the fabric of American society that many stories pass without much commentary. Mass shootings need to be bigger and grander than ever to stay in the headlines; solo homicides rarely receive a glance. We pass over news about increasing suicide rates as if it is to be expected.

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There’s some interesting links and a video to watch!

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The science behind why our brains make us cooperate (or disagree)

a post by the Charles Foch Foundation for the Big Think blog

Studies from neuroscience highlight how the brain both helps with and prevents collaboration.

• Neuroscientists identify the parts of the brain that affect our social decision-making.
• Guilt has a large affect on social interactions, find the researchers.
• To find ways to cooperate, people need to let go of fear and anxiety, suggest studies

Why do we decide to work on a project or pursue a goal with someone? Or why do we treat some people like there's no way we can find any common language? Neuroscience says that the human brain contains underlying causes to all human cooperation and social decision-making.

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Sex differences in spatial cognition: advancing the conversation

an article by Susan C. Levine, Alana Foley, Stella Lourenco, Stacy Ehrlich and Kristin Ratliff (University of Chicago, USA) published in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science Volume 7 Issue 2 (March/April 2016)

Abstract

The existence of a sex difference in spatial thinking, notably on tasks involving mental rotation, has been a topic of considerable research and debate.

We review this literature, with a particular focus on the development of this sex difference, and consider four key questions:

1. When does the sex difference emerge developmentally and does the magnitude of this difference change across development?
2. What are the biological and environmental factors that contribute to sex differences in spatial skill and how might they interact?
3. How malleable are spatial skills, and is the sex difference reduced as a result of training? and
4. Does ‘spatializing’ the curriculum raise the level of spatial thinking in all students and hold promise for increasing and diversifying the STEM pipeline? 

Throughout the review, we consider promising avenues for future research.

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