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Evolution of the Human Brain: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
With our uniquely large brains and extended childhoods, humans are a bit of an evolutionary puzzle. According to a recent article published in Perspectives in Psychological Science, romantic love and the pair-bonding that it motivates may be part of the answer to this evolutionary riddle. Researchers Garth Fletcher of Victoria University in Wellington New Zealand and collaborators Jeffry A. Simpson, Lorne Campbell, and Nickola C. Overall argue that the adaptation of romantic love may have played a key role in the evolution of our big, sophisticated brains and social aptitude. “Evolutionary adaptations typically have a jury-rigged nature, and romantic love is no exception,” says Fletcher.
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ORI Announces Grants to Fund Conferences Promoting Research Integrity
The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) seeks to support conferences to develop multidisciplinary networks to build upon existing evidence-based research and stimulate innovative approaches to preventing research misconduct and promoting research integrity. ORI is especially interested in supporting conferences that lead to extramural grant applications on research on research integrity and peer-reviewed publications.
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Powerful People Think They Can Control Time
Time is supposedly the great equalizer. No matter how much money we make, how famous we are, or how much clout we yield in the office, we are all limited by the same number of hours in a day. However, a recent study from psychological scientists Alice Moon and Serena Chen of the University of California, Berkeley demonstrates that feeling a sense of power leads people to perceive themselves as able to control time, and that they have more of time at their disposal. “Given that the objective experience of time is uniform for everyone, it would seem safe to assume that all people perceive time in the same way,” Moon and Chen write in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
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People Value Resources More Consistently When They Are Scarce
We tend to be economically irrational when it comes to choosing how we use resources like money and time but scarcity can convert us into economically rational decision makers, according to research in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Research from psychological science has shown that we humans make economically irrational decisions all the time, influenced by contextual factors that have no bearing on the utility or pleasure we will derive from a good or a service. We may scoff at the idea of buying a $4 hot dog from a street vendor, for example, but have no qualms about getting a $7 hot dog at a baseball game.
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Driving Under the Influence of Friends is Risky for Teens
Teen drivers are far more likely die in car accidents when they drive with friends. According to a study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, a teen driver's risk of death per mile driven increases by 44% with one teen passenger in the car and quadruples with three or more teen passengers. As a result, many states now have laws limiting the number of passengers allowed in a car with a teen driver. Crash data has long shown that driving with peers dramatically increases the odds of fatal crashes for teens, particularly males, but researchers have been unable to pinpoint exactly why some teens’ driving behavior spins out of control in the presence of their friends.
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The Perils of Being a ‘Chameleon’ in a Job Interview
We often unconsciously mirror the behavior of those around us, particularly when we’re trying to make a good impression, a phenomenon known as the “chameleon effect.” Research shows that, in general, mimicking another person’s gestures, inflections, or posture tends to make us come across as more likeable to that person. But a new study conducted by a team of psychological scientists from Texas Tech University and Drew University finds that people will also unwittingly mimic negative behaviors that can potentially get them into trouble. Researchers K. Rachelle Smith-Genthôs, Darcy A. Reich, Jessica L. Lakin, and Mario P.
