Brian bauer

There’s a strong prejudice in our society against romantic couples with a considerable age difference. Tabloids were abuzz when actor George Clooney announced he was marrying Amal Alamuddin, who is 17 years his junior. And when Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France, many eyebrows were raised as it came to light that his wife Brigitte was 24 years older than him. When the topic of age-gap relationships comes up, someone is bound to mention the “half your age plus seven” rule. According to this rule, you take the age of the older person, divide it in half, and then add 7 to determine the youngest age of a person that they can be romantically involved with. There’s nothing scientific about this rule, but it does reflect the general consensus that age gaps are more important at younger than older ages. For instance, an 18-year-old high school senior can date a 16-year-old sophomore, but a 21-year-old college student should only date those 18 and older. But the rule also … [Read more...] about Why Do People Look Down on Age-Gap Romances?

Source: Siphotography/Deposit Photos Metacognition is a high order thinking skill that is emerging from the shadows of academia to take its rightful place in classrooms around the world. As online classrooms extend into homes, this is an important time for parents and teachers to understand metacognition and how metacognitive strategies affect learning. These skills enable children to become better thinkers and decision-makers. Metacognition: The Neglected Skill Set for Empowering Students is a new research-based book by educational consultants Dr. Robin Fogarty and Brian Pete that not only gets to the heart of why metacognition is important but gives teachers and parents insightful strategies for teaching metacognition to children from kindergarten through high school. This article summarizes several concepts from their book and shares three of their thirty strategies to strengthen metacognition. What Is Metacognition? Metacognition is the practice of being aware … [Read more...] about What Is Metacognition? How Does It Help Us Think?

It’s doubtless fitting that the opening of Woody Allen’s latest film, Irrational Man, nearly coincided with the anniversary of my first year as a Psychology Today blogger. Last year, in Woody–Mia  Redux , I wrote about how, twenty-two years after I covered their bitter custody fight for this magazine, I'd largely sympathized with Mia Farrow. At the hearing's end, I felt so disillusioned by testimony about Woody Allen's reported lack of regard for most of Mia's adopted children, his over-involvement with their one young, jointly adopted daughter, Dylan, and the morally unseemliness of his wooing (and later wedding,) Mia's older, adopted South Korean daughter, Soon-Yi, I'd vowed never to attend another film of his.  But as a life-long Woody Allen fan, my resolution lasted less than a year. I soon found my way back into movie theaters where again, I could not help laughing at, and enjoying - even if, on a somewhat different, diminished level  - the film maker's cinematic wit and … [Read more...] about Woody, Again – Irrational Man

On October 4, 2020, President Donald Trump left his hospital bed at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington and entered an SUV driven by Secret Service agents. Wearing a mask and waving to supporters, he did what some called a "drive-by." Many were outraged at what they saw as Trump's disregard for others' safety. Was he, in fact, impaired? Michele Dauber, a law professor at Stanford, recently wrote about Trump’s ride—and her own experience on the drug dexamethasone, which Trump was reportedly given at Walter Reed. "We are lucky," she tweeted, "if he doesn't start a war. He's incapacitated." Is it time, wrote David Frum in The Atlantic , to invoke the 25th Amendment? For years, psychiatrists have been grappling with their proper role in presidential disability. Some, like Bandy Lee of Yale University, argue that a psychiatric disability already exists in Trump and see their duty as warning the country about the danger. Others, like Jeffrey Lieberman of Columbia … [Read more...] about Donald Trump and the 25th Amendment: Time to Invoke It?

The last time you sent your friend a link to a video, did you think about why? You probably looked at many stories that day; what made that one worth sharing? Philosophers have grappled with similar questions for millennia. Aristotle suggested that persuasive ideas shared three traits: They must be credible , elicit emotion , and make sense . More recently, marketers and psychologists have studied why certain videos and articles get passed along on the Internet while others get passed over. Aristotle probably wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that articles that excite a reader and have a positive message are more likely to reach the New York Times website's most-emailed list. Only in the past few years, however, have we had the chance to get a glimpse of the neural underpinnings that drive us to watch silly cat videos . At a recent talk, Stanford neuroeconomist Brian Knutson mentioned a study that examined whether brain activity can offer clues about how … [Read more...] about The Science of Viral Videos