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New Research From Psychological Science
Telling Things Apart: The Distance Between Response Keys Influences Categorization Times Daniël Lakens, Iris K. Schneider, Nils B. Jostmann, and Thomas W. Schubert Making gestures can help people organize their thoughts. To test whether space (e.g., the distance between two response keys) would affect how people categorized stimuli, researchers asked volunteers to perform a task in which they pressed one of two response keys to indicate the color of a word. If the keys were far apart, they responded faster on the incongruent trials in which the word did not match the color (e.g., the word “blue” printed in red ink).
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Le drapeau national fait-il voter à droite ?
Slate France: Avec la primaire d'Europe Ecologie - Les Verts et celle, dont on parle beaucoup moins,du Parti communiste, le temps des pré-scrutins pour l’élection présidentielle de 2012 est déjà venu. L’an prochain, dans la foulée de l’élection suprême, la France aura droit à des législatives. Alors, pour qui voterons-nous ? Pour reformuler la question d’une manière un peu plus scientifique, qu’est-ce qui décide de notre vote ? La vulgate des sciences politiques et de la psychologie dit qu’en démocratie le choix d’un candidat plutôt qu’un autre est le fruit d’un raisonnement. C’est sans doute vrai dans la majorité des cas mais pas toujours.
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KSU study finds getting answers right on practice tests improves memory
Akron Beacon Journal: Kent State University graduate student Kalif Vaughn conducted an interesting experiment to determine if getting answers right on practice tests would improve recall not only of the thing you’re trying to remember, but things that trigger that memory and things associated with what you’re trying to remember. Vaughn and KSU Associate Professor Katherine Rawson tested students on how well they remembered the English equivalent of a Lithuanian word.
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Income disparity causes unhappiness – study
Reuters: As the rich get richer and the poor fall further behind, levels of happiness and satisfaction drop, but only among people with modest and lower incomes, a new study shows. The finding holds true for about 60 percent of Americans, according to research that will be published in the journal Psychological Science. "Income disparity has grown a lot in the U.S., especially since the 1980s. With that, we've seen a marked drop in life satisfaction and happiness," said Shigehiro Oishi, a psychologist at the University of Virginia. Read more: Reuters
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Exploring the Dynamic Interaction Between Genes, Environment and the Brain
A Symposium on Epigenetics at the 3rd Scientific Meeting of the ESN 8 September 2011 in Basel, Switzerland Cosponsored by the Association for Psychological Science and the Federation of the European Societies of Neuropsychology With modern advances in a number of scientific disciplines, we have moved from looking at genetic versus environmental factors to looking at the interplay between these factors in understanding individual differences in behavior. In the process of development, the expression of genes is shaped by environmental experience, producing stable changes in individual characteristics that can persist within and across generations.
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Can Aptitude Tests Really Predict Your Performance?
Colleges, employers, and the military all use aptitude tests to predict how well someone might do. In recent years, some critics of these tests have said there isn’t much difference in performance above a certain level—that, above a certain threshold, everyone is more or less the same. Now, in a new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, the authors find that this isn’t true. Instead, the higher your score, the better you perform later. But some critics have said that the tests aren’t much use at the top end of the scale.
