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Perspectives Article Wins 2011 Best Paper Award
A paper published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, “The situated inference model: An integrative account of the effects of primes on perception, behavior, and motivation” was awarded the 2011 Best Paper Award from the International Social Cognition Network. In the article, authors Chris Loersch (University of Missouri, Columbia) and Keith Payne (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) introduce the situated inference model of priming, which suggests that a prime’s separate effects on judgment, action, and motivation can all be produced through the same basic process. According to Melissa Ferguson, Cornell University, the paper was selected among numerous excellent submissions.
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What Is Logical Isn’t Always True
In logic, an argument can be invalid even if its conclusion is true, and an argument can be valid even if its conclusion is false. It’s a confusing concept, and people are easily fooled when an argument’s validity and believability don’t match up, especially in the case of invalid arguments with conclusions that are believable. Psychological scientists call this phenomenon belief bias. For example, consider this argument. All psychological scientists conduct empirical research. William James conducts empirical research. Therefore, William James is a psychological scientist. All of the premises are true, and so is the conclusion, but it’s not a valid argument.
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Self-Control May Not Be a Limited Resource After All
So many acts in our daily lives – refusing that second slice of cake, walking past the store with the latest gadgets, working on your tax forms when you’d rather watch TV – seem to boil down to one essential ingredient: self-control. Self-control is what enables us to maintain healthy habits, save for a rainy day, and get important things done. But what is self-control, really? And how does it work?
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Who (and What) Can You Trust? How Non-Verbal Cues Can Predict a Person’s (and a Robot’s) Trustworthiness
People face this predicament all the time—can you determine a person’s character in a single interaction? Can you judge whether someone you just met can be trusted when you have only a few minutes together? And if you can, how do you do it? Using a robot named Nexi, Northeastern University psychology professor David DeSteno and collaborators Cynthia Breazeal from MIT’s Media Lab and Robert Frank and David Pizarro from Cornell University have figured out the answer. The findings will be published in the journal Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Too Soon? Too Late? Psychological Distance Matters When It Comes to Humor
Research has pinpointed a sweet spot in comedy – you have to get the right mix between how bad something is and how distant it is to garner laughs rather than boos.
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Social Psychologists Espouse Tolerance and Diversity – Do They Walk the Walk?
Every ten years or so, someone will make the observation that there is a lack of political diversity among psychological scientists and a discussion about what ought to be done ensues. The notion that the field discriminates against and is skewed toward a liberal political perspective is worthy of concern; scholars, both within and outside the field, have offered various solutions to this diversity problem. As psychological scientists Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers point out, however, we have few of the relevant facts necessary to understand and address the issue.
