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Unusual suspects: How to make witnesses more reliable
The Economist: To identify a suspect, police typically ask eyewitnesses to pick him out of a line-up of similar-looking folk. Alas, this method is often inaccurate. DNA testing has shown that witnesses often fail to detect the culprit or, worse, wrongfully accuse the innocent. Why should this be? Witnesses may feel under pressure to identify someone as the guilty party, even if they are not sure. Or they could be worried about making a mistake. A new study suggests that witnesses will make more accurate identifications if they do not have to be so precise.
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Optogenetics: Stranger Than Fiction
It sounds like a science fiction movie: Scientists integrate the photoreceptive properties of light-sensitive algae into rat neurons. The result? A rat whose brain can be controlled by light. As crazy as it seems, this isn’t science fiction: The field of optogenetics is scientific reality. In a May 2011 talk at the TED Conference, Edward Boyden explained that optogenetics allows scientists to target specific neurons quickly; conventional methods like drugs take longer to kick in. Boyden is also featured in a March Observer article on optogenetics, and he will be speaking in a webinar called Optogenetics in Neurons and Beyond on March 15, 2012.
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Placebo Power
APS Fellow and Charter Member Irving Kirsch, associate director of the Placebo Studies Program at Harvard Medical School, says the difference between the effect of a placebo and the effect of an antidepressant is minimal for most people. "People get better when they take the drug, but it's not the chemical ingredients of the drugs that are making them better," Kirsch told Lesley Stael in a 60 Minutes interview, "it's largely the placebo effect." The "placebo effect" may not be all in your head says Kirsch in the interview below: Kirsch, I., Deacon, B.J., Huedo-Medina, T.B., Scoboria, A., Moore, T.J., & Johnson, B.T. (2008).
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Perfectionism, Goal Appraisals, and Distress in Students
In case you missed it, the cameras were rolling in Washington, DC. Watch. Watch Gordon L. Flett from York University, Canada and Taryn Nepon of York University, Canada present their research at the 23rd APS Annual Convention in Washington, DC. This study examined perfectionism, goal cognitions, and distress in 95 students. Participants completed the Goal Systems Assessment Battery, along with measures of perfectionism, anxiety, and depression. Socially prescribed perfectionism and perfectionistic thoughts were associated with goal-related self-criticism and negative arousal. Self-oriented perfectionism predicted self-criticism and negative arousal for academic goals.
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Who’s in the Know? To a Preschooler, the Person Doing the Pointing
If you want a preschooler to get the point, point. That’s a lesson that can be drawn from a new study in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science. As part of their investigation of how small children know what other people know, the authors, Carolyn Palmquist and Vikram K. Jaswal of the University of Virginia, found they were able to mislead preschoolers with the simple introduction of a pointing gesture. “Children were willing to attribute knowledge to a person solely based on the gesture they used to convey the information,” says Palmquist.
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In the Brain, Broken Hearts Hurt Like Broken Bones
TIME: Sticks and stones may break your bones, but names can hurt just as much. Indeed, according to converging evidence reported in a new review in Current Directions in Psychological Science, physical and social pain are processed in some of the same regions of the brain. Naomi Eisenberger, co-director of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at UCLA, published the first brain-imaging paper revealing the overlap in 2003. She had been studying participants’ reactions to being rejected by other players (actually just a computer opponent) in a video game.