Learning! Roundup: Tea Benefits, Heartbeats, Talking to Kids About Race, and More!

Did you know that drinking tea regularly is good for your brain activity? Learn more about that and other current research in this week's Learning! Roundup
Photo by Jason Leung.

Tea Benefits

Tea drinkers, rejoice with me! Habitually drinking tea throughout your life is good for your brain! Specifically, it positively impacts the connectivity of our brains, making them more efficient over time.

In a Heartbeat

Here's a wild one: if an obstacle appears on the road at the same moment that your heart beats, you may be more likely to have an accident. Turns out that the effort our hearts put into squeezing blood out can actually impair our reaction time and even memory!

Talking to Kids About Race

If you've got kids in your life and are wondering at what age to talk to them about race, the answer is from the beginning. Here is a great slideshow summarizing our current knowledge of what children perceive about race at different developmental stages. For example, babies almost instantly start preferring people with the same skin colour as their caregivers, and by 2.5 years old kids start using race to choose their playmates.

Lying Under Pressure

When asked a question under pressure, you are more likely to tell the person what they want to hear over what you actually believe to be true. We tend to think that we get more honest responses when we pressure someone to answer quickly, but apparently, they are more likely to just appease us or give a more socially desirable response.

Statistical Significance

Apparently, most undergraduate psychology textbooks define statistical significance incorrectly, leading to 100% of undergrads and 80% of methodology professors and 90% of scientific psychologists to also define it incorrectly. So if no one knows what statistical significance is, what is it really?


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