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Testing Creativity
Widow. Bite. Monkey. What word goes with these three words? This is the kind of question that is asked on the Remote Associates Test, which psychologists use to study creativity. In a new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychological scientists took a closer look at the test to see why people go wrong. (The answer to that question is coming soon, so think about it now.) People who have an easier time coming up with answers in the Remote Associates Test, or RAT, are generally more creative.
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A Gender-Biased Metric Guides Funding Decisions in Psychology Research
How do psychologists gauge scientific impact? One way is the so-called “journal impact factor,” or JIF, a ranking of a journal derived from the number of citations by other authors to all of the articles it has published in a given year. But JIF isn’t just a statistical abstraction. “JIFs are increasingly used to assess and predict the merits of academic work,” which leads to decisions about hiring, promotion, and the allocation of scarce resources to researchers, says University of Surrey psychologist Peter Hegarty. Needless to say, such a consequential measure must be as fair as possible.
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Can you really be addicted to the internet?
The Guardian: Several reports today suggest that a study of the brains of people who excessively use the internet show abnormalities similar to those found in people with substance addictions could be proof that the internet has similar addictive qualities to drugs, alcohol or tobacco. The Independent's report here is the most extensive. It says: Internet addiction has for the first time been linked with changes in the brain similar to those seen in people addicted to alcohol, cocaine and cannabis.
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Do we bounce back quickest when life hurts us the most?
Business Insider: Do we bounce back quickest when life hurts us the most? Yes. Often we bounce back from painful events more quickly than we would guess: Intense hedonic states trigger psychological processes that are designed to attenuate them, and thus intense states may abate more quickly than mild states. Because people are unaware of these psychological processes, they may mistakenly expect intense states to last longer than mild ones. In Study 1, participants predicted that the more they initially disliked a transgressor, the longer their dislike would last.
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Healing After My Second Awake Brain Tumor Surgery
Huffington Post: The anesthesiologist grabbed my hand as I woke up in the room. As I embraced her touch, my head was locked into metal equipment even when I could move other parts of my body. But I wasn't supposed to. Standing behind me, my neurosurgeon reminded me not to try moving my head. With his hands in my brain, his touch worked to save my life. Sometimes life makes people return to difficult places and experiences for survival. For me, that includes my second awake brain surgery in September 2011. My first brain surgery in 1998 and recovery was completely new to me. Since then, I have come to understand some essential health and healing components needed when dealing with cancer.
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Les puissants se voient plus grands qu’ils ne sont
Le Monde: En avril 2010, la destruction de la plate-forme pétrolière de BP, Deepwater Horizon, provoque la plus importante marée noire jamais enregistrée aux Etats-Unis. Quelques semaines plus tard, le président de BP fait scandale en déclarant, au sujet des victimes de cette catastrophe : "Nous nous soucions des petites gens." Comme s'il y avait d'un côté les grands hommes et, de l'autre, les minus de la plèbe. C'est à la suite de cette phrase que deux chercheurs américains ont l'idée d'explorer une étonnante hypothèse : l'expérience du pouvoir modifie-t-elle la perception que les puissants ont de leur propre taille ? Read the full story: Le Monde
