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Heart Trouble: Exploring Links Between Racism and Health Risks
Research suggests that people who live in communities with high levels of overt racism are more likely to die from heart disease and other circulatory diseases.
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Taking a Dog’s-Eye View of Social Interaction
As many dog owners will likely attest, dogs appear to have pretty sophisticated social skills. Not only can they learn verbal commands, they can also follow a person’s gaze and respond to nonverbal signals, including pointing. But how do they know when a series of events constitutes a social interaction? To find out whether dogs use contingency as a possible cue, researcher Tibor Tauzin and colleagues tested a group of 60 dogs, all family pets that were included in the Family Dog Research Database at the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary. The sample included both purebred and mixed breed dogs, both males and females.
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Motivating Eco-Friendly Behaviors Depends on Cultural Values
The specific cultural values of a country may determine whether concern about environmental issues actually leads individuals to engage in environmentally friendly behaviors.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Backward Semantic Inhibition in Toddlers Janette Chow, Anne M. Aimola Davies, Luis J. Fuentes, and Kim Plunkett Studies in adults have suggested that backward inhibition, or inhibition of an initial stimulus, occurs when the next stimulus belongs to a different category of semantic representation (e.g., switching from the word "dog" to the word "sea"). Backward inhibition leads to inhibition not only of the previously attended item (dog) but also of new items semantically related to the previous item (e.g., cat).
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More Than Just Faces in a Crowd
Our capacity for remembering items that a
ren’t relevant to the task at hand — such as memory for faces in a crowd — may be greater than previously thought.
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Dressing for Success: From Lucky Socks to the Red Sneaker Effect
Making a fashion statement at the office – a tie with an unusual pattern or some snazzy red sneakers paired with a suit – may actually provide a bit of a career boost. Under most circumstances, not conforming to etiquette rules tends to garner social disapproval; showing up to a business lunch in your gym clothes, for example, is not likely to impress your clients. However, Harvard psychological scientists Silvia Bellezza, Francesca Gino, and Anat Keinan hypothesized that intentionally standing out from the crowd could also send a positive message conveying status, confidence, and power.
