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The Liberating Effects of Losing Control
Self-control is one of our most cherished values. We applaud those with the discipline to regulate their appetites and actions, and we try hard to instill this virtue in our children. We celebrate the power of the mind to make hard choices and keep us on course. But is it possible that willpower can sometimes be an obstacle rather than a means to happiness and harmony? Tufts University psychologists Evan Apfelbaum and Samuel Sommers were intrigued by the notion that too much self-control may indeed have a downside—and that relinquishing some power might be paradoxically tonic, both for individuals and for society. They explored the virtue of powerlessness in the arena of race relations.
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Study shows males are more tolerant of same-sex peers
Women have traditionally been viewed as being more social and cooperative than men. However, there is recent evidence that this may not be the case. In fact, studies have shown that men maintain larger social networks with other males compared to women and tend to have longer lasting friendships with members of the same-sex than do women. Psychologist Joyce F. Benenson from Emmanuel College, along with her colleagues from Harvard University and the Université du Québec à Montréal wanted to compare males’ and females’ levels of tolerance towards same-sex peers.
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Read My Lips: Using Multiple Senses in Speech Perception
When someone speaks to you, do you see what they are saying? We tend to think of speech as being something we hear, but recent studies suggest that we use a variety of senses for speech perception—that the brain treats speech as something we hear, see and even feel. In a new report in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychologist Lawrence Rosenblum describes research examining how our different senses blend together to help us perceive speech. We receive a lot of our speech information via visual cues, such as lip-reading, and this type of visual speech occurs throughout all cultures.
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Born to be Wild? Thrill-Seeking Behavior May Be Based in the Brain
Sky diving and base jumping are not for everyone. However, for certain people, the more risk and adrenaline involved in an activity, the better! What draws some people to daredevil behavior while others shy away from it? Psychologists Jane E. Joseph, Xun Liu, Yang Jiang and Thomas H. Kelly from the University of Kentucky, along with Donald Lyman of Purdue University were interested in testing how the brains of sensation-seekers differ from those of us who avoid risky behavior. In these experiments, two sets of volunteers were recruited, high sensation seekers or low sensation seekers, based on their responses to personality surveys and risk-taking questionnaires.
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Rich Man, Poor Man: Study shows body language can indicate socioeconomic status
Socioeconomic status (SES) is determined by a number of factors such as wealth, occupation and schools attended. SES influences the food we eat, hobbies we participate in and can even have an impact on our health. People with an upper SES background can often be accused of flaunting their status, such as by the types of cars they drive or how many pairs of Manolo Blahniks they have in their closet. It is easy to guess someone's SES based on their clothing and the size of their home, but what about more subtle clues? Psychologists Michael W. Kraus and Dacher Keltner of the University of California, Berkeley wanted to see if non-verbal cues (that is, body language) can indicate our SES.
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Xenophobia, For Men Only
Very few people fear dandelions. Or even dangerous things—like Hummers. We may object to outsized automobiles on principle, but the mere sight of them doesn’t make us tremble and sweat and run away. On the other hand, even toddlers show an automatic and powerful fear of snakes, including harmless ones. That’s because of eons of evolution among both dangerous and benign things. There is probably no snake phobia programmed into our genetic code, but we do have an evolved mental readiness to be fearful of certain things in our world. Does this cognitive readiness influence our relationships with other people? Psychologists have been studying this question, and the preliminary answer is yes.
