Psychology
edyong | March 12, 2010This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science.
For all the millions that are poured into electoral campaigns, a voter's choice can be influenced by the subtlest of signals. Israeli scientists have found that even subliminal exposure to national flags can shift a person's political views and even who they vote for. They managed to affect the attitudes of volunteers to the Israeli-Palestine conflict by showing them the Israeli flag for just 16 thousandths of a second, barely long enough for the image to consciously register.
These results are…
edyong | March 8, 2010Ever wonder if acts of kindness or malice really do ripple outwards? If you give up a seat on a train to a stranger, do they go onto "pay it forward" to others? Likewise, if you steal someone's seat, does the bad mood you engender topple over to other people like a set of malicious dominoes? We'd all probably assume that the answers to both questions were yes, but James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis think they have found experimental evidence for the contagious nature of cooperation and cheating.
The duo analysed data from an earlier psychological experiment by Ernst Fehr and Simon Gachter…
milhayser | March 7, 2010
On The Frontal Cortex, Jonah Lehrer explores the cognitive consequences of depression and happiness, explaining that the way we feel has a huge impact on the way we think. First, Jonah shares an article he wrote for the New York Times Magazine, in which he says the blues can be "a clarifying force, focusing the mind on its most essential problems." For the notoriously down-in-the-dumps Charles Darwin, depression "may actually have accelerated the pace of his research, allowing him to withdraw from the world and concentrate entirely on his work." Jonah answers critiques of his article,…
omnibrain | March 4, 2010Here's a snippet of some of the relevant text from the article describing the model below:
show attribute/state-oriented functions.
Type7. [Useful Attribute/State]: 2.3) Change of structure or object
directly make a useful "attribute" including "ability".
Type8. [Attribute/State]à Interactionà [Useful State]: 2.4) Change of
structure or object makes interaction between its "attribute/state" and the
other "attribute/state" which makes up a useful "state".
show
And now for the actual model:
Any guesses? Head past the break for the big reveal. Trust me - you'll be surprised.
Got it yet?
No?…
grrlscientist | March 3, 2010tags: neuroscience, happiness, experience, memory, colonoscopy, vacation, well-being, income, Daniel Kahneman, TEDTalks, streaming video
Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman reveals how our "experiencing selves" and our "remembering selves" perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics, public policy -- and our own self-awareness.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers…
omnibrain | March 3, 2010I have lots of work to do, including my preliminary dissertation defense tomorrow, but I'm justifying a nap because of this:
If you see a student dozing in the library or a co-worker catching 40 winks in her cubicle, don't roll your eyes. New research from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that an hour's nap can dramatically boost and restore your brain power. Indeed, the findings suggest that a biphasic sleep schedule not only refreshes the mind, but can make you smarter.
Now if I fail I can blame science!
Not Exactly Pocket Science - panic aboard the Titanic, the rise of polar bears and emasculated frogs
edyong | March 2, 2010I'm trying something new. Right from the start, I've always tried to write fairly long and detailed write-ups of new papers but this means that on any given week, there are always more stories than time and my desktop gets littered with PDFs awaiting interpretation.
So, I'm going to start doing shorter write-ups of papers that don't make the cut, linking to more detailed treatments on other quality news sources. This is something that I hope science journalists will do more of. It stems from a Twitter conversation where I asked if I should (a) write up short versions of these stories, (b)…
edyong | February 28, 2010We've all experienced the agonising wait for feedback, whether it's for exam grades, news from a job interview, or results from a grant application. These verdicts can have a massive influence in our lives but they can often take weeks or even months to arrive. And that's a big problem, according to Keri Kettle and Gerald Häubl from the University of Alberta.
They have found evidence that we do better at tasks the sooner we expect news about our performance. If we think we'll be evaluated quickly, the threat of a negative appraisal looms ever larger. And this greater sense of danger…
razib | February 24, 2010Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent:
The origin of values and preferences is an unresolved theoretical question in behavioral and social sciences. The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis, derived from the Savanna Principle and a theory of the evolution of general intelligence, suggests that more intelligent individuals may be more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values and preferences (such as liberalism and atheism and, for men, sexual exclusivity) than less intelligent individuals, but that general intelligence may have no effect on the acquisition and espousal…
edyong | February 23, 2010I grew up in the days of the SNES and the Sega Megadrive. Even then, furious debates would rage about the harm (or lack thereof) that video games would inflict on growing children. A few decades later, little has changed. The debate still rages, fuelled more by the wisdom of repugnance than by data. With little regard for any actual evidence, pundits like Baroness Susan Greenfield, former Director of the Royal Institution, claim that video games negatively "rewire" our brains, infantilising us, depriving us of our very identities and even instigating the financial crisis.
Of course, the fact…
edyong | February 15, 2010The social interactions that come naturally to most people are difficult for people with autism and Asperger syndrome. Simple matters like making eye contact, reading expressions and working out what someone else is thinking can be big challenges, even for "high-functioning" and intelligent individuals. Now, a preliminary study of 13 people suggests that some of these social difficulties could be temporarily relieved by inhaling a hormone called oxytocin.
The participants, who either had Asperger or high-functioning autism, experienced stronger feelings of trust, showed stronger social…
terrasig | February 14, 2010Valued commenter wc just left us a link to one of the most insightful articles to date on Dr. Amy Bishop, the University of Alabama in Huntsville biology professor charged in the shooting deaths of three colleagues where two other professors and an administrative assistant were injured.
In today's Decatur Daily, staff writer Eric Fleischauer has an extended interview with UAH psychology professor Eric Seemann. You really should read the whole thing because it provides an inside view of Bishop's personality and relationships. But here is a critical passage:
Despite her excellent research…
grrlscientist | February 12, 2010tags: employment, creative thinking, motivation, career, rewards, inspiration, science, psychology, Daniel Pink, TEDTalks, streaming video
Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. If you think about it, the rewards described in this video are the very things that motivate blog writer to provide their content for free.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading…
milhayser | February 11, 2010
Good things are great, but too much of a good thing can be bad. Especially when you can't get enough. On The Frontal Cortex, Jonah Lehrer introduces us to ChatRoulette, a website that allows you to get "rejected, propositioned and yelled at" by other live strangers with webcams. With a single click, users can dump whomever they're looking for a new face, hopefully. Jonah says it "reminds me of Vegas, where people are willing to endure big losses for the occasional thrill of a surprising gain." Of course, if chocolate is your choice compulsion, gain is to be expected. Jessica Palmer on…
edyong | February 8, 2010The English language is full of metaphors linking moral purity to both physical cleanliness and brightness. We speak of "clean consciences", "pure thoughts" and "dirty thieves". We're suspicious of "shady behaviour" and we use light and darkness to symbolise good and evil. But there is more to these metaphors than we might imagine. The mere scent of a clean-smelling room can take people down a virtuous road, compelling them to choose generosity over greed and charity over apathy. Meanwhile, the darkness of a dimmed room or a pair of sunglasses can compel people towards selfishness and…
edyong | February 2, 2010In Western films, the gunslinger that draws first always gets shot. This seems like a standard Hollywood trope but it diverted the attention of no less a scientist that Niels Bohr, one of history's greatest physicists. Taking time off from solving the structure of the atom, Bohr suggested that it takes more time to initiate a movement than to react to the same movement. Perversely, the second gunslinger wins because they're responding to their opponent's draw.
Now, Andrew Welchman from the University of Birmingham has found that there's something to Bohr's explanation. People do indeed have…
milhayser | January 29, 2010
We inspire each other with our everyday actions and attitudes--monkey see, monkey do. On The Frontal Cortex, Jonah Lehrer describes an experiment in which individuals who observed their peers choosing carrots over cookies were more likely to make the same thoughtful choice themselves. Jonah explains that self-control "contains a large social component" and plays a very important role in our development. But what can you do when everyone beats their heads against the same wall? On Aardvarchaeology, Martin Rundkvist recounts the "tragicomical" history of bog reclamation, which has…
razib | January 19, 2010Heritability of the Specific Cognitive Ability of Face Perception:
What makes one person socially insightful but mathematically challenged, and another musically gifted yet devoid of a sense of direction? Individual differences in general cognitive ability are thought to be mediated by "generalist genes" that affect many cognitive abilities similarly without specific genetic influences on particular cognitive abilities. In contrast, we present here evidence for cognitive "specialist genes": monozygotic twins are more similar than dizygotic twins in the specific cognitive ability of face…
edyong | January 12, 2010For something intangible, a glance can be a powerful thing. It can carry the weight of culture and history, it can cause psychological harm, and it can act as a muzzle. Consider the relatively simple act of a man staring at a woman's body. This is such a common part of modern society that most of us rarely stop to think of its consequences, much less investigate it with a scientific lens.
Tamar Saguy is different. Leading a team of Israeli and US psychologists, she has shown that women become more silent if they think that men are focusing on their bodies. They showed that women who were…