-
New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Young Children Bet on Their Numerical Skills: Metacognition in the Numerical Domain Vy A. Vo, Rosa Li, Nate Kornell, Alexandre Pouget, and Jessica F. Cantlon Although metacognition has been identified as an important factor in learning, it is still unclear how this skill emerges and develops in early childhood. Children 5 to 8 years old completed a number-discrimination task and an emotion-discrimination task. After each comparison, the children indicated the confidence they had in their answer.
-
The 1 Question to Ask to Identify a Narcissist
New York Magazine: If you suspect someone in your life is a narcissist, there may be an incredibly straightforward way to confirm your suspicions: Just ask them. New research published in PLOS ONE suggests that simply asking narcissists to out themselves can be surprisingly effective. Specifically, researchers asked this question over a series of 11 studies: “To what extent do you agree with this statement: I am a narcissist.’” The participants — and there were about 2,200 of them in total — were told to answer on a scale of one to seven.
-
And the Moral of the Story Is: Keep It Positive
The New York Times: The slower pace of summer means more time to tell stories to our kids, whether it’s around a campfire or in a car on the long, long trip to our vacation spot. We tell these stories for many reasons: to entertain, to pass the time, to share adventures from our own past. And sometimes we tell stories in order to make a point. Parents, teachers, and other adults have employed moral parables for thousands of years (Aesop’s fables date to the sixth century B.C., and we’re still telling kids who are slow off the mark about the tortoise and the hare).
-
The Common Cold May Be a Traffic Hazard
Fatigue is quickly becoming recognized as one of the most dangerous driving impairments. But that drowsiness is not just the product of sleep deprivation or over-exertion. Sluggishness resulting from the common cold can also hamper driving abilities. Psychologists Andrew Paul Smith and Samantha Jamson of Cardiff University wanted to investigate if individuals with a cold performed poorly on simulated driving tasks. The researchers conducted a two part, divided-attention test on 25 English college students. These volunteers were split into either a “Healthy” or “Colds” sample based on the self-assessed severity of their cold symptoms.
-
The Idea of Racial Hierarchy Remains Entrenched in Americans’ Psyches
Pacific Standard: Remember all that talk about how the United States is becoming a post-racial society? New research throws cold water on the concept, suggesting that, at least on an unconscious level, Americans retain their belief in a race-based hierarchy. In a large-scale study measuring implicit judgments, Americans—not surprisingly—showed a strong liking for their own racial group. But beyond that bias, their answers revealed a consistent set of racial rankings, with whites being most associated with positive thoughts, followed by Asians. Surprisingly, African-Americans did not end up at the bottom of the list.
-
Latest research: Why everyone should take vacation
The Washington Post: We Americans work hard. Weekends are more like workends. We sleep with our smartphones. And we think vacations are for wimps. So we don’t take them. Or take work along with us if we do. But what if taking vacation not only made you healthier and happier, as a number of studies have shown, but everyone around you? And what if everybody took vacation at the same time? Would life be better, not just for you, but for the entire society? Yes, argues Terry Hartig, an environmental psychologist at Uppsala University in Sweden. Yes, indeed. Read the whole story: The Washington Post
