Today, these tests are more beloved and far-reaching than ever, especially on websites like BuzzFeed and Facebook.

These tools and typologies are based on powerful, enduring myths about what personality is and how we can measure it. Here are five. Continue reading in Washington Post

Their call has been echoed by Papua's Peace Network (JDP) coordinator.

Father Neles Tebay says that prioritising only infrastructure will not be enough in developing Papua and must be balanced with the empowerment of its human resources.

He said that without skilled human resources, the Papuan people would only become "spectators" of various economic achievements happening in their own home.

"In some areas, locals can only watch economic activities happening in [other] villages, because they don't have access to ongoing development or cannot get involved because they don't have skills. They are alienated from activities in their kampung," Neles said.

"If this continues, the government's efforts to develop Papua will be fruitless […] This is what President Jokowi must pay attention to," he added.

Jakarta has recently unveiled plans for major roads, rail and hydro-development in Papua and West Papua.

"We appreciate the infrastructure development initiated by the President [Joko ‘Jokowi' Widodo]."

"We also feel he has given a lot of attention to Papua. It is only President Jokowi who has visited Papua twice a year, something that was never done by our previous presidents," Neles said in Jayapura meeting with Jokowi along with 12 other Papuan leaders.

Despite its rich resources, Papua is among the poorest regions in Indonesia and shootings of civilians is very common, activists say.

According to the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence, there have been 16 shootings in Papua since August last year — none of the perpetrators have been caught.

The latest was on 1 August in which one person was killed and seven injured.

Source

• Jakarta Post
• Scoop
• RNZ
• UCLA
• UCA News
• IMAGE: West Papua Daily

They drive at high speeds.

They stand around outside loud parties and smoke weed in front of the cops.

They guzzle liquor. They insult their parents - or lie to them - and feel no remorse, because, of course, their parents are idiots.

It is easy to blame peer pressure or wilfulness, but scientific studies suggest that at least some of this out-there behaviour has a physiological tie-in: brain mapping technologies show that the average teenager's brain looks slightly different from an adult's.

The biggest differences lie in the prefrontal cortex - a part of the brain associated with reasoning - and in the networks of brain cells that link the cortex to regions of the brain that are less about reasoning and thinking and more about emotion.

Using such tools as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET), scientists have peered into teen brains and found that typically, until a person hits his early to mid-20s, his prefrontal cortex is still rapidly changing.

So are the cell endings and chemical connections that link the cortex to parts of the brain associated with gut impulses.

When people are around 15 or 16 years old, many brain cells in the cortex die off while others are created, and new connections form among them.

A lot of the basic cognitive abilities - advanced reasoning, abstract thinking, self-consciousness - rapidly expand during this time, says Laurence Steinberg, a Temple University psychology professor.

"The connections within the brain don't fully branch out until age 22 or so.

"The kinds of capabilities that connectivity contributes to - emotion regulation and impulse control - probably plateau in the early to mid-20s." Continue reading

Sources

• The Guardian
• Image: Stuff

Bullying has displaced their concerns about the environment and the importance of healthy eating or owning a computer.

This is surprising since the incidence of bullying does not seem to be increasing.

Definitions of bullying

Perhaps the meaning of the word bullying has expanded in our community.

Taking psychological or medical words which have specific definitions and incorporating them into our everyday speech is widespread.

Nobody is sad anymore, we are depressed; if someone is neat and tidy they have OCD; nobody gets a cold anymore, it's the flu.

Perhaps bullying is now so broadly defined and even carelessly used that it has lost the specific meaning it had.

So what is bullying? That depends on who you ask.

Researchers' definitions

Researchers say bullying is a complex social relationship problem, which is deeply embedded in our society.

The behaviour of the person bullying has to have three fundamental properties.

First, the person must intend to harm the victim; bullying can't be accidental.

Some researchers even go as far as saying that the person must feel harmed; if not, it is not bullying.

Second, the bullying behaviour is usually repeated.

A one-off spiteful remark would not be called bullying, but if it is constantly repeated, it would be.

Third, bullying is not fighting among equals; there is a power imbalance in the relationship.

Kids', teachers' and parents' definitions

In one study I did I asked groups of kids and parents and teachers what they thought bullying was.

All three groups said that an imbalance of power was central to saying what bullying was, different from fighting. Continue reading

Source

• Marilyn Campbell in The Conversation

Marilyn Campbell is Professor in the Faculty of Education, School of Cultural and Professional Learning at Queensland University of Technology.

Her perspective has a lot of intuitive appeal in an era where millions of women have children outside of marriage, serve as breadwinner moms to their families, or are raising children on their own. Dads certainly seem dispensable in today's world.

What this view overlooks, however, is a growing body of research suggesting that men bring much more to the parenting enterprise than money, especially today, when many fathers are highly involved in the warp and woof of childrearing. As Yale psychiatrist Kyle Pruett put it in Salon: "fathers don't mother."

Pruett's argument is that fathers often engage their children in ways that differ from the ways in which mothers engage their children. Yes, there are exceptions, and, yes, parents also engage their children in ways that are not specifically gendered. But there are at least four ways, spelled out in my new book, Gender and Parenthood: Biological and Social Scientific Perspectives (co-edited with Kathleen Kovner Kline), that today's dads tend to make distinctive contributions to their children's lives:

The Power of Play "In infants and toddlers, fathers' hallmark style of interaction is physical play that is characterized by arousal, excitement, and unpredictability," writes psychologist Ross Parke, who has conducted dozens of studies on fatherhood, including a study of 390 families that asked mothers and fathers to describe in detail how they played with their children. By contrast, mothers are "more modulated and less arousing" in their approach to play. Continue reading

Sources

• The Atlantic
• Image: We Made