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Why ‘Batman’ Met a Tragic Death on the Highway
Leonard B. Robinson, known as the "Route 29 Batman," was killed this week after his black “Batmobile” broke down on the highway. At the time of the accident, Robinson was dressed in the black Batman costume he often wore to cheer up sick children in the hospital. After his car experienced an engine problem, Robinson pulled over to the side of a dark highway where he got out of the car to check the engine in the dark. Robinson was killed when a passing car failed to spot him on the side of the road. Recent research has shown that pedestrians tend to underestimate how visible they are to drivers at night; likewise, motorists overestimate their own accuracy at spotting pedestrians in the dark.
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Good Stress, Bad Stress
Over the course of one’s life, hormonal changes alter behavior, mood, and cognition. Bruce McEwen has spent more than 40 years studying how hormones regulate the brain and nervous system, and his lab helped draw distinctions between the vital and toxic forms of stress. McEwen coined the term allostatic load, a concept that explains how stress systems that help the body survive can cause problems when overworked. This work has led to a realization that stress hormone effects are protective in the short term and potentially damaging in the long term.
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Daycare Doesn’t Lead to Aggressive Behavior in Toddlers
Working parents often worry about sending their toddlers to daycare. But the results of a new study that tracked almost 1,000 Norwegian children enrolled in daycare indicate that working parents can breathe a sigh of relief: The amount of time children spent in daycare had little impact on aggressive behavior. The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Microlending Success Starts with a Smile
The economist Muhammad Yunus was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 in recognition for his pioneering work in microlending – making small loans available to people living in poverty. Yunus believed that entrepreneurs in rural, impoverished areas needed the same things as any other business—capital to get their small businesses started and growing. These entrepreneurs are frequently unable to get loans through traditional banking institutions. Through microlending, someone in Montana can help finance a small $500 loan so that an aspiring tailoring business in Tajikistan can invest in buying more sewing machines.
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How Others See Our Identity Depends on Moral Traits, Not Memory
We may view our memory as being essential to who we are, but new findings suggest that others consider our moral traits to be the core component of our identity. Data collected from family members of patients suffering from neurodegenerative disease showed that it was changes in moral behavior, not memory loss, that caused loved ones to say that the patient wasn't “the same person” anymore. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “Contrary to what you might think -- and what generations of philosophers and psychologists have assumed -- memory loss itself doesn't make someone seem like a different person.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Costly Signaling Increases Trust, Even Across Religious Affiliations Deborah L. Hall, Adam B. Cohen, Kaitlin K. Meyer, Allison H. Varley, and Gene A. Brewer Cultures often have specific norms that members of the group are expected to follow. Although adherence to group norms generally increases within-group trust, it is not known how adherence to or violation of such norms is viewed by outgroup members. In a series of four studies, the authors examined costly signaling -- the performance of costly behaviors that communicate commitment to the group -- on perceptions of in-group and out-group trust.
