Research
dmunger | December 1, 2009If you're a regular reader of Cognitive Daily, you're relatively accustomed to seeing surprising things. Indeed, it's gotten to the point where you might even expect it. You've seen optical illusions and videos that baffle the imagination. Yet most participants in psychology research studies aren't aware of the many ways the mind can be "tricked." One of the most dramatic tricks, which we've discussed several times, is the phenomenon of Change Blindness. An object can change right before your eyes, and you're likely not to notice. When you're made aware of the change, you find it hard to…
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 | November 24, 2009Recently a woman had her sick leave benefits based on a diagnosis of clinical depression terminated because of a few pictures she posted on her Facebook page showing her smiling at a birthday party and enjoying a trip to the beach. Was this a fair assessment of her medical condition? Probably not--people with clinical depression can have moments of genuine joy or elation, and even sad people can fake a smile for a photo.
But regardless of whether a few photos posted online are sufficient evidence for a medical diagnosis, there is a larger question: Does a person's online persona match up to…
dmunger | November 19, 2009How does our visual system decide if something is a face? Some automated face-detecting software uses color as one cue that something is a face. For example Apple's iPhoto has no trouble determining that there are two faces in this color picture:
That's Nora in the back, and her cousin Ginger in front. In this picture, however, iPhoto can't identify a face:
That's a vintage black-and-white photo of Nora and Ginger's grandfather, but the computer can't find any faces in it. Do people, like computers, use color to help decide whether something they see is a face? Humans are excellent at…
dmunger | November 17, 2009Who's more "sociable," men or women? Common sense says it's women, right? And many research studies back this impression up: Women are more interpersonal, more connected, more interdependent than men. Women are more likely to share intimate information with each other than men. But is that really the whole story?
There is also research suggesting that men have larger social networks than women do, and that male-male friendships last longer than female-female ones.
A team led by Joyce Benenson conducted a set of three studies that may shed some light on the question. In their first study, they…
dmunger | November 12, 2009When we were getting ready to have our first child, I decided that I would quit my job, work out of home as a freelancer, and take care of our baby while Greta finished graduate school.
That worked well for about two years, but by the time Nora was born, we decided to hire a part-time nanny so I could finish a degree of my own. When Nora was one and Greta and I were starting new jobs in a new state, both kids entered full-time day care, and that was our child-care arrangement until they started kindergarten.
Naturally, at every step along the way, we wondered whether we were making the right…
dmunger | November 10, 2009Take a look at this video from last night's episode of Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show."
If you'd like, you can skip past all the political snark to the 4:47 mark to watch Jon bring cognitive psychology into prime time (or at least latenight cable)! That's right; you saw it: Jon Stewart mentioned the psychological concept of "object permanence" on national TV. Object permanence was introduced by Jean Piaget as a way of measuring the growing cognitive ability of children. Three-month-olds don't have it; most 6-month-olds do. More recently, researchers have investigated similar milestones in…
dmunger | November 5, 2009Greta and I did our undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago, or as a commonly-sold T-shirt on campus put it, "where fun goes to die." To say that Chicago didn't emphasize academics over a social life is to deny that people literally lived in the library (a full-scale campsite was found behind one of the stairwells in the stacks; students had been living there for months). It's not that the administration didn't try to encourage its students to socialize. The library did close at 10 p.m. on Friday nights. There was not one but two film societies, so often students had to choose…
dmunger | November 3, 2009One of my favorite cartoons as a child was "Speed Racer." It featured an all-American boy (first name, "Speed," last name, "Racer") engaging in that most American of pastimes: driving fast cars. Except that "Speed Racer" wasn't really American; it was made in Japan, and the original Japanese voices were crudely overdubbed in English. Perhaps I can be excused for not noticing the Japanese origins of the show -- I was only 10 years old. Even now, as an adult looking back at those cartoons, the characters do seem awfully American-looking. Or perhaps that's just my Caucasian bias.
Does everyone…
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 28, 2009Product placements in movies and TV shows are becoming so commonplace that my kids now cynically take note of them whenever they appear. It wasn't always that way. In 1982 when I first saw E.T. I had no idea that Elliott's use of Reeses' Pieces to lure E.T. into his home was part of a clever marketing ploy that had been pre-arranged with the multinational conglomerate selling the candy. Now that nearly every household has a DVR allowing viewers to fast-forward through commercials, advertisers are relying more and more heavily on product placement to show off their wares. But how effective are…
dmunger | October 22, 2009When Jim and Nora were in elementary school, both Greta and I worked challenging jobs, so we did whatever we could to save time. Instead of bringing lunches made by their parents, the kids bought hot meals at school. The school was proud of its cafeteria. Kids had credit accounts, which meant they didn't have to carry lunch money to school (thus making them less of a target for bullies). The children were encouraged to make "healthy choices" instead of just getting a ladleful of mystery meat plopped on their trays.
After a few billing cycles, however, we noticed that Jim was spending more and…
dmunger | October 20, 2009Recently we took our hybrid car into the shop for its annual emissions test. In our state, the test is conducted while the car is idling. A hybrid doesn't actually idle -- it shuts the engine off completely. So our car's emissions were tested at 0 RPM. It may be time to rethink our state's emissions laws.
There's another law that might need rethinking in the age of hybrids. Our car's internal combustion engine often doesn't start up even when the car is moving at low speeds -- it uses electric motors, running nearly silently. This can potentially be dangerous for pedestrians in parking lots…
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 | October 1, 2009The other day, our car wouldn't start and Jim had to ask a neighbor over to help him jump-start it. There was much rushing in and out of the house looking for flashlights and other tools to help get the job done. After the neighbor left, Jim wanted to drive somewhere and couldn't find the keys. Clearly he had just had them because he was working on the car. Where could they be? We searched up and down throughout the house, but we couldn't find them and eventually had to use a spare set.
The next morning as I was getting ready to leave for our school carpool in our other car, I found them…
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 24, 2009As an undergraduate, at my school it was practically a requirement to steal silverware from the campus cafeteria. There were students who'd commandeered full sets of china. The desk clerk at my dorm used to say that the only thing we were learning from our college education was "how to steal."
Somehow it didn't seem wrong to us to steal from the cafeteria (though I drew the line at a single setting of silverware). Plus, we'd heard that at other schools, students used the cafeteria trays as sleds after the first winter snow. At least we weren't doing that (though arguably this was only because…
dmunger | September 22, 2009Imagine your neighbor has a dog that regularly escapes her yard. One day you see the dog escape and return it to her. She thanks you by giving you a piece of delicious home-made apple pie. This happens several days in a row. Then one day when you return the dog, there's no pie, no thanks, and no explanation. Would you return the dog the next time it escapes?
You might be disinclined. But what if there had never been any reward? Wouldn't returning her dog be the right thing to do?
Children as young as 14 months old will spontaneously help others for no reward. But a 1973 study of 3- to 5-year-…