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

Follow us @usefulsci or email us at podcast@usefulscience.org.

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