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Analysis of Social Cognition Predicts Dangerous Drivers
A team of psychological scientists in the Czech Republic is looking at the brains of bad drivers to understand why some of us flout the rules--putting others at risk of serious injury or death--while the rest of us abide by them. In a recent study published in the journal NeuroImage, lead author Jana Zelinková of the Central European Institute of Technology found that while watching videos on traffic safety, people with a history of dangerous driving show relatively less activation in brain areas associated with social cognition and empathy compared to their law-abiding counterparts.
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Predicting Psychosis
In the search for new ways to prevent and treat mental illnesses, scientists are refining their understanding of the interplay between environmental factors and brain development in these disorders. Elaine F. Walker has been instrumental in propelling this area of research forward. In one of her most well-known studies, she retrospectively examined childhood home movies of adult-onset schizophrenia patients and their healthy siblings using quantifiable behavioral observations. This approach was groundbreaking in examining real-time predictions of schizophrenia across the early developmental trajectory.
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Feelings of Entitlement Enhance Creativity
Entitlement is rarely viewed as a positive quality. But a recent study finds that a sense of entitlement can lead to one surprisingly positive outcome—increased creativity. Entitled people are unapologetic about getting what they want, when they want it, without regard for anyone else. By definition, entitled people feel that the rules just do not apply to them, and this can easily lead to problems in the workplace. Researchers have found that people who feel a sense of entitlement are more likely to make unethical decisions, break rules, and engage in hostile behavior. But across four experiments, psychological scientists Emily M. Zitek of Cornell University and Lynne C.
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Babies Can Follow Complex Social Situations
Infants can make sense of complex social situations, taking into account who knows what about whom, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “Our findings show that 13-month-olds can make sense of social situations using their understanding about others’ minds and social evaluation skills,” says psychological scientists and study authors You-jung Choi and Yuyan Luo of the University of Missouri.
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The Power of Puppies: Looking at Cute Images Can Improve Focus
Pictures of baby animals, including puppies and kittens, can have powerful effects on attention and concentration, a study shows.
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We Know How You Feel
The New Yorker: Three years ago, archivists at A.T. & T. stumbled upon a rare fragment of computer history: a short film that Jim Henson produced for Ma Bell, in 1963. Henson had been hired to make the film for a conference that the company was convening to showcase its strengths in machine-to-machine communication. Told to devise a faux robot that believed it functioned better than a person, he came up with a cocky, boxy, jittery, bleeping Muppet on wheels. “This is computer H14,” it proclaims as the film begins.
