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Bruisers make the best friends: Study finds tough guys are really softies at heart
The Daily Mail: Tough guys are really softies at heart, a study suggests. Psychologists found that men with a more aggressive appearance – typically those with wider faces – were more likely to sacrifice themselves to help friends or colleagues. The researchers, at the University of St Andrews, gave students money to play a game in which they could either enrich themselves or risk their cash to assist their group. Read the whole story: The Daily Mail
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Rethinking Rage in the Middle East
In September of last year, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas petitioned the United Nations for full membership in the world body. For many Palestinians, this event was a potent and long-overdue symbol of their statehood, a cause for celebration. For many Jewish Israelis, the Palestinians’ bid was a betrayal of the spirit of ongoing peace negotiations in the region. For many others around the world, it was just one more flash point in the seemingly endless and intractable conflict between Israel and Palestine. The event sparked intense emotions, from righteous resentment to hateful rage, and these emotions did indeed threaten the halting peace negotiations.
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Psychology Greener Than Thou
The Wall Street Journal: Organic-food advocates, often seen as insufferably smug and even depicted that way in TV comedies like "Portlandia," won't find a new study reassuring. Sixty-two participants either looked at pictures of fruits and vegetables labeled as organic, comfort foods such as ice cream and brownies, or foods that don't fit neatly into a category (rice, beans). They rated these foods' desirability. Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal
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Memory, Judgment, and Neuroeconomics—Insights from Current Directions in Psychological Science
Current Directions in Psychological Science, a publication of the Association for Psychological Science, offers a unique perspective on developments taking place across the many different areas of psychological science. New reports from the June issue of the journal examine how people retrieve memories from their minds, a new model of how working memory works, how we judge each other’s personalities, and a multi-disciplinary field of study that merges behavior and economics. Retrieval-Based Learning: Active Retrieval Promotes Meaningful Learning Scientists who study learning tend to investigate how memories are formed during learning. But Jeffrey D.
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Scientists Find Learning Is Not ‘Hard-Wired’
Education Week: Neuroscience exploded into the education conversation more than 20 years ago, in step with the evolution of personal computers and the rise of the Internet, and policymakers hoped medical discoveries could likewise help doctors and teachers understand the "hard wiring" of the brain. That conception of how the brain works, exacerbated by the difficulty in translating research from lab to classroom, spawned a generation of neuro-myths and snake-oil pitches—from programs to improve cross-hemisphere brain communication to teaching practices aimed at "auditory" or "visual" learners.
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God’s Flipside: Religion Without Kindness
Huffington Post: I recently watched one of the most brutal and upsetting films I've ever seen, called The Stoning of Soraya M. I suppose the title of this 2008 film should have warned me away, but I really don't believe that anything could prepare viewers for the graphic, bloody and excruciatingly prolonged scene that gives the film its name. It's the story of a 35-year-old mother, falsely accused of adultery by her bullying husband and local mullah, who is convicted under Islamic law and executed by the men of a rural Iranian village. The stoning, based on a true story, took place in 1986, but the small-mindedness and hate-filled religiosity are medieval. The Stoning of Soraya M.
