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Steven Pinker: The Elephant, the Emperor, and the Matzo Ball
William James Fellow Award Address recorded May 2016 in Chicago at the 28th Annual Convention of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Richard Ivry: Actions Speak Louder Than Words
William James Fellow Award Address recorded May 2016 in Chicago at the 28th Annual Convention of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Is Gossip Good at Work?
Talking about co-workers or bosses while they’re not around can be nefarious, but new research suggests that gossip also can have positive effects on group behavior and cooperation at work. Psychological scientists Junhui Wu and Paul A. M. Van Lange of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Daniel Balliet of Wesleyan University compared the effects of gossip and punishment on group behavior in a computer-based experiment. According to Wu and colleagues, knowing that their reputation is on the line tends to make people more cooperative.
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Genetic Variations Linked with Social and Economic Success
Psychological characteristics link genes with upward social mobility, according to data collected from almost 1000 individuals over four decades. The data suggest that various psychological factors play a role in linking a person’s genetic profile and several important life outcomes, including professional achievement, financial security, geographic mobility, and upward social mobility. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study, led by psychological scientist Daniel W.
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Science Develops New Data- and Materials-Sharing Requirements
In June 2015, a committee sponsored by the Center for Open Science developed a set of guidelines offering “a concrete and actionable strategy toward improving research and publishing practices” named the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) guidelines. Now, scientific publishers are putting these guidelines into action: The journal Science has announced that it has used these guidelines to revise its standards for articles that it publishes. The TOP guidelines invite journal editors to consider transparency and openness as they pertain to eight different parts of the research process.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Searching for Category-Consistent Features: A Computational Approach to Understanding Visual Category Representation Chen-Ping Yu, Justin T. Maxfield, and Gregory J. Zelinsky Categories provide a fundamental structural framework that guides human cognition. When we encounter a single object, we typically understand that it belongs to a hierarchy of different categories that range from very specific (e.g., a sailboat) to very broad (e.g., mode of transportation). What visual features do people use to determine whether an object fits better into one category than another?
