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I suppose it's not a surprise, we push our kids so much.  But did you know that kids praised for being smart, well, cheat more?  According to newswise.com, " An international team of researchers reports that when children are praised for being smart not only are they quicker to give up in the face of obstacles they are also more likely to be dishonest and cheat. Kids as young as age 3 appear to behave differently when told 'You are so smart' vs 'You did very well this time.'” I wrote not long ago that I was shocked to learn that kids in my son's honor classes cheat all the time, especially when the teacher is not very alert (they look things up on their smart phones).  "Everybody cheats.  It's because of the competition for good grades," my son said. Isn't it wrong to push our kids so much? The study, co-authored by Gail Heyman of the University of California San Diego, Kang Lee of the University of Toronto, and Lulu Chen and Li Z...

Are you quick to boast about your successes at work to a new person you're dating? Point out that you were voted "best-looking" in high school?  That you drive an Audi RS 5 Cabriolet? If you do, you're doomed.  Or so says a new study .   Newswise.com reports that r esearchers have discovered that prospective dating partners who were more humble were viewed as more attractive candidates for a romantic relationship than those less humble. In long-distance relationships, partners who are viewed as humble tended to recover more quickly after offenses than their less humble counterparts. "Researchers at Hope College, Georgia State University and the University of North Texas asked respondents to look over a fake dating profiles and rate them on a seven point scale on likability, friendliness, number of friends, fun, attraction, likelihood of going on a date and potential satisfaction with dating," the Web site says. In one study, respondents were asked to t...

How smart do you think you are?  If you are like most, probably 'way smarter than you really are. smartplanet.com says 40% of us think we're in the top 5% (in my city, the gifted child program was dropped because too many parents with kids in the top 25% insisted their kids be part of it).  The Web site quotes David Dunning, who says that, "not only are we terrible at seeing how stupid we are, but we're also too dumb to recognize genius right in front of us." Here's another stunning fact he's come across.  Incompetence can mask the awareness of one’s incompetence. The phenomenon is now called the Dunning-Kruger Effect, according to smartplanet.com. Dunning reportedly based this on a bank robber who squirted lemon juice all over his face and thought he was invisible because in a photo he took with a Polaroid, his image mysteriously disappeared.  But that story's for another day. The bottom line:  he didn't even know what an idiot he was.   ...

Video games can grow the human brain?  So says a headline at smartplanet.com. Let's look into this. "Playing video games could make the grey matter in your brain bigger," writes David Worthington. When volunteers played Mario 64 on Nintendo’s portable DS system daily for two month, he reports, researchers "observed growth in the bilateral hippocampus and some regions of the right prefrontal cortex." Those parts of the brain are thought to have a role in memory, navigation, processing visual information, and problem solving. “Video game training augments GM in brain areas crucial for spatial navigation, strategic planning, working memory and motor performance going along with evidence for behavioral changes of navigation strategy,” the study abstract says, as Worthington notes. He acknowledges that, while playing video games may not make you smart(er), the new study "demonstrates the direct causal link between video gaming and a volumetric brain incr...