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Inside the Mind of a Creationist
Texas governor and Presidential candidate Rick Perry is ambivalent about the “theory” of evolution. He says that it’s just a one theory that’s out there, on equal footing with creationism. He’s proud of the fact that, in Texas, children are taught both—so they can choose for themselves. There’s a serious problem with this approach to education, however. It has to do with humans' very limited ability to weigh probabilities rationally. Calculating likelihoods and odds is tough cognitive work, and we only do it when we must. Years of research on human thinking has shown this.
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Vierjarigen herkennen echte slimmeriken
Scientias Netherlands: Kinderen van vier jaar oud zijn al in staat om in te schatten welke mensen echte kennis in huis hebben. Dat blijkt uit onderzoek. Uit eerdere onderzoeken was al gebleken dat kinderen van een jaar of drie konden inschatten of iemand goede informatie kan verschaffen. Maar iemand die goede antwoorden geeft, is niet automatisch een autoriteit. Nieuw onderzoek wijst erop dat vierjarigen in staat zijn om ook dat laatste te beoordelen. Foto De onderzoekers verzamelden kinderen van drie, vier en vijf jaar oud. De kinderen moesten een foto van een dier omhooghouden en twee poppen konden de kinderen dan vertellen welk dier het was.
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The Book Bench
The New Yorker: In the News: Out on a Limn, Pronoun Psychology The composer Philip Glass will publish a memoir with Norton. Remember the uproar over the critic Michiko Kakutani’s (over)use of the word “limn”? It’s back. Which of your favorite songs have expanded your vocabulary? The writer Sam Kean explains the weirdly smutty cover of the Chinese version of his book. On the heels of Grantland, The Classical. Roger Ebert tantalizes readers with an excerpt of his forthcoming memoir, “Life Itself.” The psychologist James Pennebaker says the way we use pronouns reveals much about us. Read the whole story: The New Yorker
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Vitamins bad for health, experts claim
Mirror: VITAMIN pills can be bad for you – because you’re more likely to indulge bad habits. People on supplements tend to engage in more potentially harmful activities such as casual sex or excessive eating and drinking, a study found. They think taking the pills gives them a “licence to indulge”. Experts say this explains why supplements’ popularity is not reflected in public health improvements. Drug firms say almost half all Brits take vitamins, spending £400million on them last year. The researchers gave placebos to 82 volunteers and told half that their pills were fakes. The rest, who thought they were taking vitamins, felt more “invincible” than the first group.
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Why it feels good to be the Master Chief
msnbc: Leave it to a psychologist at the University of Essex to discover that the secret sauce in irresistible video games is the characters' personalities — especially those that leave just enough creative space for players to pour themselves into. "Games offer a window. They offer you that window to be your ideal self," Andrew Przybylski, a Halo and Angry Birds player himself, says. Previously, Przybylski has shown that players prefer challenges in games to violence.
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Spoiler alert: Why knowing the ending isn’t always a bad thing
National Post: Bruce Willis is dead. Edward Norton is Tyler Durden. Clint Eastwood pulls the plug: As annoying as it can be, finding out how films end may not be such a downer after all. According to research carried out at UC San Diego, spoilers may actually enhance our enjoyment. Nicholas Christenfeld, a professor of psychology at the California university, and his student Jonathan Leavitt recently tested the effect of spoilers using short stories, and their results will be published in the upcoming issue of Psychological Science.
