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How Science Shows The Damaging Effects of Ego on Career Success

A successful former colleague of mine is someone who publicly, is without any airs. Privately, she believes she should be in an even bigger position than the one she’s in. She acknowledges she’s doing great work and receiving recognition for it. But like any person with a burning passion and desire, she wants much more.

Joyce Ehrlinger.
Ehrlinger

Ego can lead to overconfidence. Being overly-confident often leads to mistakes. Dr. Joyce Ehrlinger, assistant professor of psychology at Washington State University, in a combined study with professors from Stanford and Florida State University, found overconfidence can lead to poor decisions:

“A little bit of overconfidence can be helpful,” said Ehrlinger, “but larger amounts of overconfidence can lead people to make bad decisions and to miss out on opportunities to learn.”

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Medium

The Ladders

Using photography to help combat racial and social injustice

Sharing the complete picture of humanity, especially the hard topics, so that one-day she can affect positive change.

Protesters for social justice demonstrate in Pasco, Wash., photo by Madison Rosenbaum
Protest in Pasco on May 31. Photo by Madison Rosenbaum

That’s the reason photographer and Washington State University Tri-Cities alumna Madison Rosenbaum first picked up a camera. Shedding light on difficult social issues and providing a voice for the unheard is also what led her to document local protests following the death of George Floyd in Minnesota.

During her senior year, Rosenbaum was invited by digital technology and culture professor Peter Christenson to participate in the “Women artists from the Columbia Valley” exhibition, which featured 64 contemporary female artists and their work. As part of her submission for the exhibition, Rosenbaum collaborated with two other artists on images of mental health, and specifically her personal journey with depression.

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WSU Insider

Ancient technology for today

Long fascinated by early civilizations, Robert Ullerich signed up for a class in ancient art and culture at Washington State University expecting to gain new insights to human history but not ancient skills – surely nothing he could apply in his 21st-century life.

Hallie Meredith.
Meredith

This spring, Ullerich and his classmates in Hallie G. Meredith’s “Arts of Ancient Greece and Rome” course were conducting research and preparing workshops to teach Pullman and Spokane community members about ancient technology and how to create books the way early people did, including binding pages and making their own ink, styluses and paint brushes.

Meredith, a clinical assistant professor of fine arts, designed the workshops to coincide with an exhibition of artifacts from the lost Roman city of Pompeii at Spokane’s Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture (MAC), where some 500 people were expected to participate.

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WSU Insider

Police training programs have a pseudoscience problem

As Black Lives Matter protests continue to be held throughout the US following the death of George Floyd, many people are evaluating the role of policing in society.

Lisa Fournier.
Fournier

In recent years, police departments in New York and Ohio have backed out of trainings with Bill Lewinski, and his work has been criticized by Lisa Fournier, a Washington State University psychology professor and an “American Journal of Psychology” editor.

But Fournier told Insider that the work of Lewinski’s that she has evaluated often lacked control groups, and drew conclusions without the support from data. She said she had issues with Lewinski’s peer-review processes, and said she didn’t believe enough scientists were involved.

“It’s amazing to me that the Force Science Institute gets away with this stuff,” she told Insider.

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Insider

Business Insider India

Simplifying board game instructions for translation into other languages

Go Fish. Life. Apples to Apples. Checkers. These are games that bring people to together for the purpose of family and friend bonding. But for some new to the English language, translating how to play the games into a structure that is easy to understand can be difficult, considering the complexity of some instructions.

Vanessa Cozza.
Cozza

“Board games are great ways to spend time with families, and they wanted a way to make their game nights not only more inclusive, but more accessible by a variety of individuals locally in the Tri-Cities,” said Vanessa Cozza, clinical assistant professor of English. “This is a fun project for students to use the skills they learn and develop in an English class to make a difference in their local community.”

“These are great opportunities for students to not only develop their skills in the English language, but also give back to a local organization that will have a real-world impact,” Cozza said.

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WSU Insider