{"id":1815,"date":"2017-03-25T08:00:44","date_gmt":"2017-03-25T08:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=1815"},"modified":"2017-12-28T21:18:32","modified_gmt":"2017-12-28T21:18:32","slug":"the-misleading-headline-of-the-week-and-what-to-do-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/the-misleading-headline-of-the-week-and-what-to-do-about-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The Misleading Headline of the Week…and What to Do About It"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AdobeStock_101033907_Credit\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Scientific American Mind has entitled this brief piece<\/a> “Too Much Emotional Intelligence is a Bad Thing.”<\/p>\n

Given the content of the article — and common sense — a more accurate title would be\u00a0“In very particular circumstances, the ability to read others’ emotions well might raise cortisol levels for\u00a0some people while they speak in public.”<\/p>\n

That alternate title isn’t as clickable…but, it also doesn’t substantially misstate the point of the research it summarizes.<\/p>\n

The Larger Point<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even reputable magazines can overstate researchers’ conclusions — especially<\/span> in headlines.\u00a0For this reason, we should always look closely at the particulars of any research paradigm before we make decisions about relying on an article.<\/p>\n

For example: if I wanted readers to click on a headline, I might summarize Ina Dobler’s study<\/a> this way:<\/p>\n

“Asking Students to Remember<\/strong> Causes Them to Forget<\/strong>!”<\/em><\/p>\n

Believe it or not, “retrieval-induced forgetting” is a thing, and — in particular\u00a0circumstances — might be a problem in classrooms.<\/p>\n

(I wrote about retrieval-induced forgetting last year; you can read that article here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

However, as you know if you’ve attended recent LaTB conferences; or read Scott’<\/a>s or Ian’s<\/a> entries on this blog; or read\u00a0make it stick<\/em>\u00a0by Brown, Roediger, & McDaniel; or\u00a0How We Learn<\/em> by Benedict Carey, asking students to generate answers to questions<\/span> is most often a highly beneficial way to help them consolidate memories.<\/p>\n

In other words, my headline — by sloppily overgeneralizing Dobler’s conclusions — could badly mislead casual readers.<\/p>\n

To quote a recent Scientific American headline: “Overreliance on Magazine Headlines is a Bad Thing…”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scientific American Mind has entitled this brief piece “Too Much Emotional Intelligence is a Bad Thing.” Given the content of the article — and common sense — a more accurate title would be\u00a0“In very particular circumstances, the ability to read others’ emotions well might raise cortisol levels for\u00a0some people while they speak in public.” That […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":1817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[38,19],"class_list":["post-1815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-emotion","tag-skepticism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1815"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1820,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1815\/revisions\/1820"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}