Emotional creativity :: exploration via creativity tasks, mood manipulation and self-report.

Thesis (M.S.

Mathematics performance and underperformance : effects of gender and confidence.

Boys and men tend to do better in math class and to have higher math confidence than their female classmates. It has been hypothesized that low confidence is a precursor to poor performance. Because of this, a great deal of effort has been expended on raising our students\u27 confidence. As a result of this, students in the United States are more confident of their math ability than students anywhere else in the world. Despite this, math performance remains low, for both male and female students. American students seem to interpret this low performance as an indication of limited ability. To change this interpretation, I told some students in introductory calculus classes that their prior math failures were due to low effort and that increased effort should lead to success in college. To make this information more believable, it was embedded in a personality profile that had been generated specifically for the student, and given a scientific sounding name: Talent/Motive Disjunction (TMD). Students who were told that they had TMD did significantly better in calculus than students who were not told they had TMD. This increase in performance was not the result of increased confidence. Students in the TMD condition were no more confident at the end of the semester than students in the No TMD condition. This suggests that changing attributions about success and failure may be effective in improving our students\u27 performance even if confidence raising is not

Navigating Great Power Competition: Maximizing Japan’s Position Between the U.S. and China

In the 21st-century world order, Japan finds itself trapped between two major powers, the United States and China. The United States is Japan’s most important ally, providing crucial security for Japan while sharing a mutually beneficial economic relationship. China likewise represents a key economic partner and potential collaborator for Japan. However, China’s increasing influence in the Indo-Pacific region presents several security and economic concerns for Japan. Furthermore, the United States’ increasingly tumultuous relationship with China puts Japan in a precarious position where it must balance appeasing its long-term ally while also accommodating to China’s rising presence in the region. The decline of the United States and the rise of China have thus forced Japan to rethink and reposition itself between the two powers. Japan must address how to best serve its national interests while adjusting to the shifting global order