The Science Of Consequences

Actions have consequences--and the ability to learn from them revolutionized life on earth. While it's easy enough to see that consequences are important (where would we be without positive reinforcement?), few have heard there's a science of consequences, with principles that affect us every day. Despite their variety, consequences appear to follow a common set of scientific principles and share some similar effects in the brain--such as the "pleasure centers." Nature and nurture always work together, and scientists have demonstrated that learning from consequences predictably activates genes and restructures the brain. Applications are everywhere--at home, at work, and at school, and that's just for starters. Individually and societally, for example, self-control pits short-term against long-term consequences. Ten years in the making, this award-winning book tells a tale ranging from genetics to neurotransmitters, from emotion to language, from parenting to politics, taking an inclusive interdisciplinary approach to show how something so deceptively simple can help make sense of so much.

Facing the Consequences presents a perspective on US mathematics and science education that is developed from data gathered as part of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). TIMSS is the most extensive and far-reaching cross-national comparative study of mathematics and science education ever attempted. It includes comparing official curricula, textbooks, teacher practices, and student achievements for many countries (from 20 to 50 countries, depending on the particular comparison). Thousands of official documents and textbooks were analyzed. Thousands of teachers, principals, and other experts responded to survey questionnaires. A sample of mathematics teachers in three countries had their lessons videotaped. Hundreds of thousands of children in almost 50 countries were tested in mathematics and science. This report presents a closer look at US mathematics and science education through careful examination of TIMSS data. The authors believe this investigation shows how deceptive many often unquestioned assumptions about American education can be. Drawing upon many new analyses not previously reported and integrating these with previous analyses of TIMSS data, the authors develop and illustrate the argument that what happens to American students is the consequence of American beliefs that shape educational practice and the accretion of a myriad educational choices made in mathematics and science education.

This book examines the origins, presence, and implications of scientistic thinking in psychology. Scientism embodies the claim that only knowledge attained by means of natural scientific methods counts as valid and valuable. This perspective increasingly dominates thinking and practice in psychology and is seldom acknowledged as anything other than standard scientific practice. This book seeks to make this intellectual movement explicit and to detail the very real limits in both role and reach of science in psychology. The critical chapters in this volume present an alternative perspective to the scholarly mainstreams of the discipline and will be of value to scholars and students interested in the scientific status and the philosophical bases of psychology as a discipline.

This book advances understanding of the manifestations, causes, and consequences of generosity. Synthesizing the findings of the 14 research projects conducted by the Science of Generosity Initiative and offering an appendix of methods for studying generosity, this comprehensive account integrates insights from disparate disciplines to facilitate a broader understanding of giving—ultimately creating a compendium of not only the latest research in the field of altruistic behaviors, but also a research roadmap for the future. As the author sequentially explores the manifestations, causes, and consequences of generosity, Patricia Snell Herzog here also offers analyses ranging from the micro- to macro-level to paint a full picture of the individual, interpersonal and familial, and collective (inter)actions involved in altruism and generosity. The author concludes with a call to stimulate further interdisciplinary generosity studies, describing the implications for emerging scholars and practitioners across sociology, economics, political science, religious studies, and beyond.

An eye-opening book that reveals crucial information every woman taking hormonal birth control should know This groundbreaking book sheds light on how hormonal birth control affects women--and the world around them--in ways we are just now beginning to understand. By allowing women to control their fertility, the birth control pill has revolutionized women's lives. Women are going to college, graduating, and entering the workforce in greater numbers than ever before, and there's good reason to believe that the birth control pill has a lot to do with this. But there's a lot more to the pill than meets the eye. Although women go on the pill for a small handful of targeted effects (pregnancy prevention and clearer skin, yay!), sex hormones can't work that way. Sex hormones impact the activities of billions of cells in the body at once, many of which are in the brain. There, they play a role in influencing attraction, sexual motivation, stress, hunger, eating patterns, emotion regulation, friendships, aggression, mood, learning, and more. This means that being on the birth control pill makes women a different version of themselves than when they are off of it. And this is a big deal. For instance, women on the pill have a dampened cortisol spike in response to stress. While this might sound great (no stress!), it can have negative implications for learning, memory, and mood. Additionally, because the pill influences who women are attracted to, being on the pill may inadvertently influence who women choose as partners, which can have important implications for their relationships once they go off it. Sometimes these changes are for the better . . . but other times, they're for the worse. By changing what women's brains do, the pill also has the ability to have cascading effects on everything and everyone that a woman encounters. This means that the reach of the pill extends far beyond women's own bodies, having a major impact on society and the world. This paradigm-shattering book provides an even-handed, science-based understanding of who women are, both on and off the pill. It will change the way that women think about their hormones and how they view themselves. It also serves as a rallying cry for women to demand more information from science about how their bodies and brains work and to advocate for better research. This book will help women make more informed decisions about their health, whether they're on the pill or off of it.

How data science and the analysis of networks help us solve the puzzle of unintended consequences. Social life is full of paradoxes. Our intentional actions often trigger outcomes that we did not intend or even envision. How do we explain those unintended effects and what can we do to regulate them? In Decoding the Social World, Sandra González-Bailón explains how data science and digital traces help us solve the puzzle of unintended consequences—offering the solution to a social paradox that has intrigued thinkers for centuries. Communication has always been the force that makes a collection of people more than the sum of individuals, but only now can we explain why: digital technologies have made it possible to parse the information we generate by being social in new, imaginative ways. And yet we must look at that data, González-Bailón argues, through the lens of theories that capture the nature of social life. The technologies we use, in the end, are also a manifestation of the social world we inhabit. González-Bailón discusses how the unpredictability of social life relates to communication networks, social influence, and the unintended effects that derive from individual decisions. She describes how communication generates social dynamics in aggregate (leading to episodes of “collective effervescence”) and discusses the mechanisms that underlie large-scale diffusion, when information and behavior spread “like wildfire.” She applies the theory of networks to illuminate why collective outcomes can differ drastically even when they arise from the same individual actions. By opening the black box of unintended effects, González-Bailón identifies strategies for social intervention and discusses the policy implications—and how data science and evidence-based research embolden critical thinking in a world that is constantly changing.

The integrity of knowledge that emerges from research is based on individual and collective adherence to core values of objectivity, honesty, openness, fairness, accountability, and stewardship. Integrity in science means that the organizations in which research is conducted encourage those involved to exemplify these values in every step of the research process. Understanding the dynamics that support â€" or distort â€" practices that uphold the integrity of research by all participants ensures that the research enterprise advances knowledge. The 1992 report Responsible Science: Ensuring the Integrity of the Research Process evaluated issues related to scientific responsibility and the conduct of research. It provided a valuable service in describing and analyzing a very complicated set of issues, and has served as a crucial basis for thinking about research integrity for more than two decades. However, as experience has accumulated with various forms of research misconduct, detrimental research practices, and other forms of misconduct, as subsequent empirical research has revealed more about the nature of scientific misconduct, and because technological and social changes have altered the environment in which science is conducted, it is clear that the framework established more than two decades ago needs to be updated. Responsible Science served as a valuable benchmark to set the context for this most recent analysis and to help guide the committee's thought process. Fostering Integrity in Research identifies best practices in research and recommends practical options for discouraging and addressing research misconduct and detrimental research practices.

This book argues that new technologies and society's response to them have created a relatively new phenomenon, "knowledge politics." Nico Stehr describes Western society's response to a host of new technologies developed only since the 1970s, including genetic experiments, test-tube human conception, recombinant DNA, and embryonic stem cells; genetically engineered foods; neurogenetics and genetic engineering; and reproductive cloning and the reconstruction of the human ancestral genome. He looks also at the prospective fusion of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, transgenic human engineering, and cognitive science whose products may, as its boosters claim, some day cure disease, slow the aging process, eliminate pollution, and generally enhance human performance. Knowledge Politics shows how human civilization has reached a new era of concern about the life-altering potentials of new technologies. Concerns about the societal consequences of an unfettered expansion of (natural) scientific knowledge are being raised more urgently and are moving to the center of disputes in society-- and thus to the top of the political agenda. Stehr explains the ramifications of knowledge politics and the approaches society could take to resolve difficult questions and conflicts over present and future scientific innovation.