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What Do We Pay Attention To?
U.S. News & World Report: Once we learn the relationship between a cue and its consequences—say, the sound of a bell and the appearance of the white ice cream truck bearing our favorite chocolate cone—do we turn our attention to that bell whenever we hear it? Or do we tuck the information away and marshal our resources to learning other, novel cues—a recorded jingle, or a blue truck? Psychologists observing “attentional allocation” now agree that the answer is both, and they have arrived at two principles to describe the phenomena. The “predictive” principle says we search for meaningful—important—cues amid the “noise” of our environments.
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FDA’s Graphic Cigarette Images: Will They Work?
Can graphic images persuade people to make lasting changes to their behavior? The answer, according to psychological research, is probably not. Howard Leventhal, the Board of Governors Professor of Health Psychology at Rutgers, agrees that photos are in fact stronger than words, but that images may not lead to long-term behavioral effects. Leventhal states, “You don’t need a lot of threat to get something to happen as long as the threat is associated with a clear, simple plan of action.
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Ovulating women better at spotting straight men: study
CTV Canada: Women can more accurately identify a man's sexual orientation the closer she is to ovulation, according to a study released this month. The study, a joint project by the University of Toronto and Tufts University in Boston, looked at the ability of 40 undergraduate women to judge whether a man is gay or straight based on viewing a photograph of his face. In the first of three experiments, the women looked at 80 images, half of which were gay men, and were told to determine each man's sexual orientation. Read more: CTV Canada
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How our brains make the most of recalling bad memories
Irish Times: CAN NEGATIVE emotions help memory? It seems they can, under certain circumstances, according to a new study published in Psychological Science. Researchers asked students to study lists of Swahili words and their translations into English, then the students were asked to recall the meanings. After each correct answer, the students were shown a negative image, a neutral picture or a blank screen. When that first test was over, they did a quick multiplication exercise, then the students were quizzed again on the Swahili- English items. Read more: Irish Times
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Women’s prejudice linked with menstrual cycle
Times of India: A study byMichigan State University psychologist researchers has indicated that women's bias against male strangers increases when women are fertile, suggesting prejudice may be partly fuelled by genetics. "Our findings suggest that women's prejudice, at least in part, may be a byproduct of their biology," said Melissa McDonald, a doctoral student and lead author on the paper. Read more: Times of India
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Why are passionate women always compared to cats? Meow!
The Globe and Mail: Earlier this month, someone who is not a cat meowed at Australian Minister of Finance Penny Wong. Wong had the floor during a heated debate among members of the Senate Economics Legislation Committee when a Tasmanian senator named David Bushby interrupted her with said animal sound. Wong, incredulous at what she’d heard, shot back: “The blokes are allowed to yell, but if a woman stands her ground, you want to make that kind of comment. It’s sort of schoolyard politics, mate. It’s just extraordinary.” Read more: The Globe and Mail
