Joshua Goodman, an associate professor of education and economics at Boston University, found a similarly striking effect at the college level. Goodman looked at a data set of students whose SAT scores were right on the margin of a cutoff point established for admission to what he called “target colleges.” The candidates were essentially equivalent,…
When Lyubomirsky arrived at graduate school for social psychology at Stanford in 1989, academic research on happiness was only beginning to gain legitimacy. Ed Diener, a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who would eventually be known for his work in the field, waited until he was granted tenure before tackling the subject,…
The American conservative movement has long worked to put the nuclear family at the center of cultural and economic life. Lately, it has added a twist. It wants to make those families bigger. As fertility rates have declined, a “pronatalist” cluster on the right wing has been making the argument that public policy should encourage…
It was the site of the worst aviation disaster on South Korean soil. Now the terminal at Muan International Airport serves as a community center for grieving relatives of the 179 people who perished in the crash. Families gather here to talk, eat together — some even stay overnight in tents. It was in that…