emotion
dr. dolittle | September 30, 2016 By Uroš Novina from Semič, Slovenia - Bee close up, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50974889
A new study was designed to test whether bees can experience some kind of primordial "emotions". In the study bees were trained to associate a tunnel marked with a blue flower with a sugar water treat at its end. In contrast, a green flower meant no reward at the end of the tunnel. However, when bees were exposed to flowers with both hues, they either chose not to enter the tunnel or took a long time to choose to enter. But, when half of the bees were given a sugar water…
dr. dolittle | February 14, 2016New research published in Biology Letters suggests that, similar to dogs, horses may understand our facial expressions. In a quote published in Discovery News, study author Amy Smith (University of Sussex) said, "It's possible that horses developed this ability during their 6,000-year co-evolution with humans, or indeed that individual horses learn it during their lifetimes."
To examine this question, the research team showed images of men with negative or positive facial expressions to 28 horses:
Sources:
AV Smith, L Proops, K Grounds, J Wathan, K McComb. Functionally relevant responses to…
dr. dolittle | December 27, 2015
If you own a dog you may agree that it seems as if they understand our feelings. While some may call this anthropomorphizing, you know ascribing human emotions to animals, new research may vindicate the feelings of many pet owners. A study recently published in Royal Society Open Science provides evidence to suggest that dogs can mimic the emotional state of their owners as well as their canine friends, a process similar to empathy called emotional cognition. The research team recorded the behavior of animals at a dog park in Palermo, Italy and noticed that the animals copied the expressions…
dmunger | January 4, 2010The TV show Lie To Me focuses on the exploits of an expert in lie-detection as he solves perplexing crimes in his high-tech Washington laboratory. It's actually fun to watch, especially since it appears to make some effort to get the science right (a real-life expert on lie-detection, Paul Ekman, serves as a science adviser on the show).
One of the show's premises is that only highly-trained experts (most importantly, its protagonist, Cal Lightman) are capable of sniffing out a well-schooled liar. This too is based in fact. Most of us are very bad at spotting liars, taking their seemingly…
sb admin | December 24, 2009Television can have a huge influence on our lives. But the most important influences may be the ones we don't even notice. I discuss several fascinating studies about television in my latest column on Seedmagazine.com. Here's a snippet:
Travis Saunders, a PhD student at the University of Ottawa who studies the impact of sedentary lifestyles, questions whether a little exercise can make up for hours of inactivity. He refers to a study led by G.F. Dunton of the University of Southern California and published in October in the International Journal of Obesity. The researchers conducted a phone…
dmunger | December 10, 2009I attended an unusual middle school. It was designed on an "open concept," with the idea that there should be no walls between classrooms. Social pressure would keep the noise levels down, because if kids got too loud, then their peers in other classes would encourage them to hush up. This actually worked most of the time, but one day one of the English teacher's classes was getting out of hand, and after trying several ways to get their attention, she resorted to something a big more dramatic. In a very loud voice, she simply said
SEX!
Her class, and several classes nearby, instantly stared…
dmunger | November 26, 2009In celebration of Thanksgiving in the U.S., I'm reposting this piece, originally posted in April, 2008.
How often do you take time to reflect on the things you're grateful for? Once a month? Once a week, at church, perhaps? Maybe you say "grace" at mealtime every day. But even prayers that do express gratefulness, such as a traditional mealtime prayer, are often expressed by rote. Growing up, my family wasn't very religious, but when we had dinner with family or friends, we'd usually say grace. I was probably well into my teens before I understood what "…
dmunger | October 29, 2009Take a look at this face:
Does it look more angry or fearful? It may be rather difficult to tell: About fifty percent of adults say faces like this are angry and fifty percent say it's fearful. However, for children, the story is different. Researchers have found that small children aren't as good as adults at recognizing emotions in faces. Young children would see this picture as more fearful than angry. However, most research has suggested that kids are just about as good as adults by the time they're five years old.
But neuroscientists have consistently found that the portions of the…
dmunger | October 14, 2009I've just read an engrossing report about some very promising research in a an exciting field. The researchers combined fMRI research with genetic analysis to see if they could identify a genetic basis for anger. And they actually found something quite interesting.
If I was writing for the New York Times, the headline might read something like this: "Researchers identify gene responsible for regulating anger." For the Washington Post, it could be "Is there an anger gene?" For the New York Post, perhaps simply "RAGE GENE FOUND."
But those headlines, while they are in some ways accurate, don't…
dmunger | October 8, 2009Classical Indian dancing is a tradition that extends back 2,000 years. Unlike much Western dance, it is intended to express specific emotions and tell detailed stories. The Natyasastra, a text from the first or second century A.D., offers instructions for how to depict nine primary emotions, and these rules continue to be followed in Indian Classical dance today. This movie demonstrates one form of Indian Classical dance:
As you can see, each gesture has a highly-specific meaning, which, to my eyes, at least, isn't obvious. Yet much research has shown that many emotions share "universal"…
dmunger | October 6, 2009I think I've mentioned here before that I'm a big fan of chocolate. I get upset when coffee shops in my area only bring out the chocolates in the afternoon. Who says you can't have a chocolate chip cookie for breakfast?
Chocolate, combined with a cup of coffee, helps me work all the way through to the end of the day, when I'd otherwise be tempted to call it quits in the late afternoon. So naturally I was excited when Greta found a research report on the effect of chocolate on mood. Could there be scientific confirmation that chocolate helps you get through the day?
There has been plenty of…
dmunger | September 29, 2009Imagine you learned your romantic partner was unfaithful to you. Would you be more upset if he or she had sex with someone else, or if they had fallen in love with someone else? Several studies have found that the answer to that question depends on the your gender. Women say they would be more upset if their partner was in love with someone else, but men say they would be more upset if their partner was having sex with someone else.
Why the difference? There are a couple explanations. One relies on natural selection: It's important to men to know their genes are being passed on, so sexual…
dmunger | September 8, 2009Imagine a critical witness being grilled in preparation for a high-profile murder case. The prosecuting attorney wants to make sure she has every angle covered, so she questions the witness over and over to double- and triple-check that he has his story right. When he finally takes the stand, he remembers every detail she asked him about. But when the defense attorney cross-examines him, she takes an unexpected new tactic, asking about details the prosecutor hadn't prepared him for. He stumbles over some of the answers, contradicting other witnesses, and now all his testimony seems suspect.…
dmunger | September 1, 2009Jim and Nora each attended summer camps that they enjoyed tremendously this past summer. When we picked up Nora from her camp, she was completely exhausted. Why? She and her new friends had only gotten 30 minutes of pretend sleep the night before. This was to fool their counselors before sneaking into a pre-determined room for a vigil during their precious last few hours together. Jim, it turned out, had stayed up all night his last night too, but without the pretense of tricking the counselors, who had by that time pretty much given up on enforcing a curfew.
Despite their exhaustion, we…
dmunger | August 20, 2009We've discussed attentional blink several times on CogDaily. It's a fascinating phenomenon: if you see a series of images flashing by rapidly, you can normally pick out one of the images (for example, a banana in series of pictures of familiar objects). But if a second such image (another piece of fruit, like an apple) appears shortly after the first, you'll probably miss it. The one exception in many cases is faces. This video illustrates the point:
Click here to play the movie
You probably spotted both the piece of fruit and the face in the second sequence, but you may have missed the watch…
dmunger | August 11, 2009Last year Nora and I went on a hike in the remote Pasayten Wilderness in northern Washington state. Parts of the hike were extremely grueling, while other parts were quite easy and fun. I made this short video to try to capture the differences:
The music was added as an afterthought, but in the end I think it's what makes the video so charming: without it, it would just be an ordinary walk in the woods. For each section of the trail, I chose a music clip that I thought expressed our feelings as we made our way along. Most people who watch the video agree: the music is totally appropriate to…
dmunger | May 28, 2009Take a look at this video. Your job: decide which person speaks first:
Click to view Video 1 (QuickTime required)
Let's make this a poll:
Which person in Video 1 speaks first?(web poll)
Now, try another one. Once again, decide which person speaks first:
Click to view Video 2 (QuickTime required)
Make your response here:
Which person in Video 2 speaks first?(opinion polls)
David Rose and Tanya Clark showed videos like this to 17 student volunteers, and asked the same question: who spoke first in each video? The videos are point-light displays, which show movements of particular points on…
ddobbs | April 28, 2009Leave it to Vaughn Bell to find this stuff: emotional maps of different cities. Got to get a hold of this -- and as Vaughn explains, you and I can, with free download. (But leave the author some $. It's the right thing to do.)
Nold came up with the idea of fusing a GSR machine, a skin conductance monitor that measures arousal, and a GPS machine, to allow stress to be mapped to particular places. He then gets people to walk round and creates maps detailing high arousal areas of cities.
The biomapping website has some of the fantastic maps from the project.
His book, called Emotional…
dmunger | April 23, 2009Imagine the following scenario:
Matthew is playing with his new kitten late one night. He is wearing only his boxer shorts, and the kitten sometimes walks over his genitals. Eventually, this arouses him, and he begins to rub his bare genitals along the kitten's body. The kitten purrs, and seems to enjoy the contact. How wrong is it for Matthew to be rubbing himself against the kitten?
Or how about this one:
You find a wallet with several hundred dollars in cash, along with credit cards including an American Express Gold Card and ID locating the owner's home in the richest neighborhood in town…
purepedantry | April 14, 2009I don't think I am alone in saying that I often feel a little envy and schadenfreude towards my peers. Science is a particularly competitive business with few remunerative rewards, so a lot of my self-worth is tied to comparisons with my peer's successes and failures. I won't deny being envious when someone gets a Science paper. And while seeing the abject failure of my peers isn't high on my list of priorities, I won't deny the small satisfaction that I get when someone who breezed through their PhD gets taken down a peg.
These aren't happy-joy-joy emotions. They don't make me swell with…