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Men Are Funnier Than Women, But Not By Much, Study States
Huffington Post: Men are funnier than women, according to a study published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. Skeptical? Keep reading, there's a catch. Researchers at the University of California San Diego released a study that suggests males are more likely to make people laugh, but only by a small margin of 0.11 points. The researchers wanted to explore if the "women aren't funny" gender stereotype stood up to a series of experiments. A group of 16 male and 16 female undergraduates were instructed to write humorous captions for 20 New Yorker comics. A group of 34 males and 47 females were brought in to rate how funny they found a caption.
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Can’t remember the names of Beckham’s children? Then lucky you for avoiding the acquisition of trivia
The Daily Telegraph: The capital of New Zealand, the date of the Battle of Waterloo, the boiling point of water, the six wives of Henry VIII, the longest river in Africa, the names of David Beckham’s children, the colours of the rainbow, the last three winners of The X Factor... we all have that sort of tat cluttering up our brains, but how much of it do we actually need? Shouldn’t we be making a determined effort to forget the lot? That’s the intriguing question raised by new research published in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science.
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Undeserved Compliments May Harm Kids’ Self-Esteem
LiveScience: Giving yourself undeserved pats on the back may lead to psychological distress, a new study shows. The overly positive, yet distorted, view of one's achievements could keep someone from experiencing dejection, the researchers say. But the price may be more anxiety over whether others will find out. In addition, if a person thinks they are doing such a bang-up job, there's no room for improvement. Young-Hoon Kim of the University of Pennsylvania and Chi-Yue Chiu of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore conducted four studies that included 295 U.S. college undergraduates with an average age of 19 and 2,780 Hong Kong students from grades 7 to 12.
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HFES 56th Annual Meeting
The 56th Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society will be held at Westin Boston Waterfront, Boston, Massachusetts, October 22-26, 2012 For more information visit: http://www.hfes.org/web/HFESMeetings/meetings.html
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Evil: Is It Us or All Around Us?
Psychological scientist Philip Zimbardo reflected on his controversial Stanford Prison Experiment with Jon Stewart in a past episode of the Daily Show. In 1971, twelve students were randomly assigned to the roles of a prisoner or a guard in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Within 36 hours, the students displayed characteristics of abusive guards and pathological criminals. The experiment was supposed to run for 2 weeks, but it ended after only 6 days. In this clip, Zimbardo also discusses his book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil and explains how our environments can affect our actions.
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Psychologists Defend The Importance Of General Abilities
“What makes a great violinist, physicist, or crossword puzzle solver? Are experts born or made? The question has intrigued psychologists since psychology was born—and the rest of us, too, who may secretly fantasize playing duets with Yo Yo Ma or winning a Nobel Prize in science. It’s no wonder Malcolm Gladwell stayed atop the bestseller lists by popularizing the “10,000-hour rule” of Florida State University psychologist K. Anders Ericsson.