Useful Science

Misconceptions, math anxiety, and healthy personalities

Episode Summary

This week we learn about the effect of old misconceptions on learning new concepts, painful math anxiety, and healthy personalities.

Episode Notes

http://www.usefulscience.org/podcast/8

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This week we learn about the effect of old misconceptions on learning new concepts, painful math anxiety, and healthy personalities.

Show Notes

• Students’ difficulties in grasping physics concepts are rooted in the incorrect assumptions the student develops before entering a physics course ( e.g. “motion implies a force” ). When these preconceptions are not addressed, fundamental physics concepts are likely to be misperceived or distorted to fit existing beliefs.
• People with high math-anxiety activate pain networks in their brains when anticipating doing math, but not while actually performing math.
• Story Spoilers Don’t Spoil Stories
• Personality traits are associated with expression levels of genes that regulate inflammation and therefore may be biologically linked to how well people fight disease.
• Big Five personality traits, OCEAN/CANOE