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Our Estimates of Food Value Run “Hot” and “Cold”
It stands to reason that you’d be willing to pay more for a nice slice of pumpkin or apple pie before Thanksgiving dinner, when you’re hungry and salivating, than afterwards, when you’re full to bursting.
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The Link Between Perceiving and Doing
Common coding theory holds that seeing, hearing, or thinking about an action triggers the same cognitive processes that are activated when we actually perform the action. Experimental psychological scientist Wolfgang Prinz is the founder of that theory, which provided a critical foundation for advances in cognitive neuroscience. The discovery of mirror neurons in macaque monkeys (neurons that fire both when the monkeys perceived another performing an action, such as grabbing a piece of food, and when they actually grasp the food themselves) provided some of the first neurophysiological evidence for common coding.
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Beware the Long-Winded Leader
The most overbearing talkers in the office can be bad for business. Whether it’s in the conference room or by the water cooler, they display an incessant need to dominate every meeting and every conversation. And if they’re in positions of authority, they can douse any ideas from others. But loquacious folks who aren’t in leadership roles don’t get away with controlling the dialogue, new research shows. Their colleagues simply don’t allow them to hijack a meeting or override anyone else’s input. And that leads to better sharing of information and ideas. The research is based on experimental studies led by psychological scientist Leigh Plunkett Tost of the University of Michigan.
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Hungry? Low Blood Sugar May Increase Support for Social Welfare
Think “Hunger Games” and you’ll undoubtedly think of heroine Katniss Everdeen fighting against a totalitarian state in the blockbuster series of books and movies. Fortunately for us, those Hunger Games are entirely fictional, but new research suggests that we may have developed a different kind of real-world “hunger games” as a way of getting others to share a particularly precious resource: Food.
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Holiday Travelers Take Note: Scientists Explore Roadway Aggression
It’s that time of year again – the time to gather with family and friends, to celebrate the passing of another year…to spend hours in a car dealing with pent-up roadway aggression? According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, long-distance trips increase by 54% in the 6-day period surrounding Thanksgiving and by 23% in the weeks around Christmas and New Year’s. Most of those trips take place in personal automobiles. Being stuck in traffic on a regular day is frustrating enough, but racing to be home for the holidays could make driving at this time of year a particularly fraught endeavor.
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Experiencing Awe Increases Belief in the Supernatural
Awe-inspiring moments -- like the sight of the Grand Canyon or the Aurora Borealis -- might increase our tendency to believe in God and the supernatural, according to new research. The new findings -- published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science -- suggest that awe-inspiring sights increase our motivation to make sense of the world around us, and may underlie a trigger of belief in the supernatural.
