Learning! Roundup: The gender pay gap is real and caused by sexism, yoga mats aren't hurting your fertility, and more!

Photo by Jordan Whitfield

The Gender Pay Gap is Real and Caused by Sexism

A wonderful New Zealand study, based on actual productivity and pay data, was recently executed. Their goal was to test for various explanations of the gender pay gap (that women are not as productive as men because we take time off for babies, that we don't negotiate as well, and that we choose lower-paying careers).

The results: about 12% of the pay gap could be explained by career choices, that at most 2% is explained with productivity differences between genders, and that there is no evidence different wage negotiation styles are a factor. They clearly found that women in the same industry as their male counterparts, making similar contributions, made 84 cents on the dollar.

Yoga Mats Are Okay Again

Apparently people thought yoga mats were messing with women's fertility. But they're not. Apparently. I didn't even know this was a thing.

Reliving Memories

I love memory theory! We don't really know much about how memories work (one of my favourite debates in my cognitive psychology class was whether we truly lose information from our brains when we forget things, or if we just can no longer access it), but now we've been able to watch memories as they are being created. Looks like, during rest after learning something new, our brains relive the information learned, lighting up those neural pathways again.

Robot Gamers

There is now a robot that can play Settler of Catan. Thought you should know.

Eye Scans for Alzheimer's

There is evidence that Alzheimer's may be detected in people using simple eye scans, long before symptoms appear. This could be fantastic, since early detection is the key to successful treatment.

Gendered Emotion

We already know that women are volatile bags of emotion, but now there is science on the subject! Turns out that women display more positive emotion and men are more likely to display anger or negative emotions. (Sounds a bit like the patriarchy and taught norms of masculinity are at play again, but hey, I could be wrong.)

Feel the Feels

If you watched Inside Out you already know this, but it's worth talking about again: you'll be happier if you let yourself feel bad. Suppressing negative emotions and clinging to positive ones is generally not super effective.


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