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Science Still Doesn’t Understand Video Games
Pacific Standard: Last spring, Gunwoo Yoon, a doctoral student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, recruited 194 undergraduates and tasked them with blasting their way through a Space Invaders-style video game. After five minutes of play, he gave each student a cup filled with chocolate or chili sauce. Give it a taste, he said, and spoon some onto a plastic dish for the next participant. That person will have to clear the plate. Yoon told everyone the game and food components of the experiment were unrelated, but this was a lie.
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Cultural Stereotypes May Evolve From Sharing Social Information
Millenials are narcissistic, scientists are geeky, and men like sports -- or so cultural stereotypes would have us believe. Regardless of whether we believe them to be true, we all have extensive knowledge of cultural stereotypes. But how does this information become associated with certain groups in the first place? Research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that cultural stereotypes are the unintended but inevitable consequence of sharing social information.
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More Breaks May Help You Go With the “Flow” at Work
Giving employees more breaks and vacation time may actually help improve their performance on the job by increasing their experiences of “flow,” according to new research. It’s common for people to feel tired after work, but after taking time off for a vacation or a fun evening out they’re likely to feel refreshed or recovered. According to the effort-recovery model (ERM), this occurs because people require a reserve of cognitive resources to maintain performance throughout the day. When demands are reduced, such as during leisure time, cognitive resources are restored. In a recent study, a group of psychological scientists led by Maike E.
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Kooky Kickstarters — Why They Succeed
NPR: Kickstarters give people a sense of belonging "The Internet is this incredibly cluttered space," says Deborah Small, "and advertisers are spending tons of money to capture the attention of consumers." Like Ethan, Deborah is a professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research areas focus on marketing and psychology. Then along comes this random guy "with a silly campaign," Deborah says. "We know that unusual things grab attention — and humor is part of that." Deborah also attributes the odder crowdfunded successes to a sense of wanting to belong. "It's like how people wear certain clothes to fit in with certain groups," she says.
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Can a Jury Believe What It Sees?
The New York Times: LAST week the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal law enforcement agencies instituted a policy of recording interrogations of criminal suspects held in custody. Only a minority of states and local governments have a similar requirement, but the new rule, which applies to nearly every federal interrogation, will most likely spur more jurisdictions to follow suit. It’s not far-fetched to think that such recordings may soon become standard police practice nationwide. Supporters of the practice present recordings as a solution for a host of problems, from police misconduct to false confessions.
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The Trouble With Brain Science
The New York Times: ARE we ever going to figure out how the brain works? After decades of research, diseases like schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s still resist treatment. Despite countless investigations into serotonin and other neurotransmitters, there is still no method to cure clinical depression. And for all the excitement about brain-imaging techniques, the limitations of fMRI studies are, as evidenced by popular books like “Brainwashed” and “Neuromania,” by now well known. In spite of the many remarkable advances in neuroscience, you might get the sinking feeling that we are not always going about brain science in the best possible way. Read the whole story: The New York Times
