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Why Misinformation Sticks and Corrections Can Backfire
TIME: At the height of campaign season in any presidential election year, voters will be inundated with all kinds of information of dubious accuracy, from misleading claims about candidates’ personal lives to exaggerations about their policy differences. Unfortunately, it’s precisely this type of misinformation — the kind that hews to people’s preexisting political, religious or social ideology — that sticks. As a new review of past research concludes, “mud” sticks — and, worse, attempts to correct erroneous beliefs can backfire, reinforcing the very misrepresentations they aim to erase.
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New Research on Social Cognition From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research on social cognition published in Psychological Science. Reading Between the Minds: The Use of Stereotypes in Empathic Accuracy Karyn L. Lewis, Sara D. Hodges, Sean M. Laurent, Sanjay Srivastava, and Gina Biancarosa Do stereotypes help us determine what people are thinking? Participants watched a movie of a new mother and at certain points were asked to infer what the mother was thinking at that moment. Researchers then compared the accuracy of the participants' inferences to the mother's actual thoughts. Researchers also coded the stereotypicality of both the mother's and the participants' thoughts.
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Rx for Sisyphus: Take two Tylenol…
For the French philosopher and writer Albert Camus, the Greek myth of Sisyphus perfectly captured the human condition. Sisyphus was condemned to a life of meaningless activity—pushing a boulder up a hill again and again and again, without purpose or accomplishment. If the miscreant king had any hope of finding meaning in this existence, it had to come from inside him. This is the existential condition, as philosophers have described it from the 19th century on. Understanding the absurdity of it—and understanding that one is personally responsible for making life meaningful—can be a source of overpowering anxiety and unease—what philosophers have called existential dread.
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Welche Gesten den Egoisten entlarven (The gestures that reveal the egoist)
Die Welt: Sie haben jemanden gerade erst kennen gelernt und trotzdem überkommt Sie bereits nach wenigen Minuten ein mulmiges Gefühl. Ihr Bauchgefühl sagt Ihnen, dass Sie dieser Person besser nicht vertrauen sollten. Doch wieso wirken manche Menschen auf uns eigentlich vertrauensvoll und andere nicht? Könnten Sie mit dem Finger darauf zeigen? Sind es vielleicht die ausweichenden Blicke oder das nervöse Zucken der Hände? Seit Jahren zerbrechen sich Forscher über diese Frage den Kopf, bisher recht erfolglos. "Wissenschaftlern ist es bisher nicht gelungen, die Signale für Vertrauen zu entschlüsseln, weil sie es falsch angegangen sind", sagt der Psychologe David DeSteno.
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Sex, Drugs and Raising Kids
The Huffington Post: "Anything in moderation," the saying goes. But does this wisdom apply to the decisions we make as parents? The temptation exists, particularly when our kids are young, to try to shield them from anything that might be even the slightest bit upsetting, unhealthy, unpredictable or dangerous. As they grow, however, we watch as they develop minds and lives of their own, and we learn that keeping them in bubble wrap is impossible, not to mention inadvisable if we want them to develop their own sense of conscience, independence and an internal compass.
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Why To Exercise Today Twofer: Better Self-Image And Better Social Life
wbur NPR: Personally, my favorite explanation for why a more sound body leads to a more sound mind is pure chemistry, the hormonal effects of exercise on the brain. But here’s a nice new study out in the journal Clinical Psychological Science that found a dual explanation in thousands of Dutch teen girls: Improved self-image and improved social life. From the press release: Karin Monshouwer of the Trimbos Institute in the Netherlands and colleagues at Trimbos and VU University Medical Center specifically wanted to examine two existing explanations for the link between exercise and mental health.
