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Americans Overestimate Class Mobility
Pacific Standard: America, we learn as children, is the land of opportunity—a place where anyone who works hard and saves their money can climb their way into a higher social class. While statistics do not bear out this belief, newly published research suggests it remains stubbornly entrenched in our minds. Across four studies, Americans offered “substantial and consistent overestimates of class mobility, overestimating the amount of income mobility and educational access by a wide margin,” write University of Illinois psychologists Michael Kraus and Jacinth Tan.
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Companies Wanting Immediate Sales Should Pass On Super Bowl Ads
NPR: Researchers asked this question: Is a company better off spending big money for a Super Bowl ad or buying several spots for that same amount of money at a less expensive time of the year? Well, there are a couple of different reasons. One, Geisenberg thinks that being in sort of the hyper-excited state that people are as they're watching these big sporting events might not actually make you very conducive to processing the content of the ads. But there's also something else. Sascha Topolinski in Germany recently conducted a study. He wasn't studying the Super Bowl, but his research is spot on when it comes to describing how most Americans watch the Super Bowl.
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The psychology of why sports fans see their teams as extensions of themselves
The Washington Post: Two weeks ago, a man who earns his living by chasing other men in pursuit of a leather prolate spheroid handed a team staffer a football that felt soft. The staffer reported this unusual occurrence to his supervisor, who reported it to his supervisor, who reported it to his supervisor, and then all hell broke loose. Ever since, the nation has been held in thrall to the spectacle of sports fans debating the ideal gas law . The scandal has acquired its own name, DeflateGate, and let’s be real: You have an opinion on this matter, and I have an opinion on this matter, and people who hate prolate spheroids and listen only to public radio have an opinion on this matter.
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There’s a Difference Between Being Generous and Being a Doormat
New York Magazine: It is the giving-est time of year, and so it seems very timely indeed that the latest episode of "The Psychology Podcast" features a chat between University of Pennsylvania psychologists Scott Barry Kaufman and Adam Grant about Grant’s work on givers and takers. These are his terms for the people who enjoy being generous and helping others, and the people who are more motivated by personal gain; he wrote an entire book on the subject, published last year.
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Learning From Animal Friendships
The New York Times: A goat frolics with a baby rhinoceros. A pig nestles up to a house cat. A rat snake makes nice with the dwarf hamster originally intended as its lunch. Few things seem to capture the public imagination more reliably than friendly interactions between different species — a fact not lost on Anheuser-Busch, which during Sunday’s Super Bowl will offer a sequel to“Puppy Love,” its wildly popular 2014 Budweiser commercial about friendship between a Clydesdale and a yellow Labrador puppy. The earlier Super Bowl spot has drawn more than 55 million views on YouTube. ...
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Predicting Psychosis
In the search for new ways to prevent and treat mental illnesses, scientists are refining their understanding of the interplay between environmental factors and brain development in these disorders. Elaine F. Walker has been instrumental in propelling this area of research forward. In one of her most well-known studies, she retrospectively examined childhood home movies of adult-onset schizophrenia patients and their healthy siblings using quantifiable behavioral observations. This approach was groundbreaking in examining real-time predictions of schizophrenia across the early developmental trajectory.
