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What the Stanford prison experiment taught us — and didn’t teach us — about evil
Boston Globe: Via Longreads, Stanford Magazine has a fascinating piece on the infamous Stanford prison experiment. For those who never took a psychology class, in August of 1971 a psychologist named Phil Zimbardo and his colleagues took a bunch of male college students, divided them into "guards" and "prisoners," stuck them in a fake prison on the Stanford campus, and observed their subsequent interactions.
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Anti-White Bias On The Rise?
NPR: New research shows that whites in the U.S. believe there are increases in racial bias toward them and public policies that create inequality. Vice Chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Abigail Thernstrom deems these claims as 'ridiculous,' and adds that race-based preferences will vanish when all students have leveled playing fields in schools. Host Michel speaks with Thernstrom to learn more of her opinion. Listen here: NPR
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Our Brains Have Multiple Mechanisms For Learning
One of the most important things humans do is learning this kind of pattern: when A happens, B follows. A new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, examines how people learn, and finds that they use different mental processes in different situations. “There's a long history in the field of psychology of two different approaches to thinking about how we learn,” says James McClelland of Stanford University, who cowrote the paper with graduate student Daniel Sternberg. One is learning by association; Pavlov's dog learned to associate food with the sound of a bell.
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Rooney take note! Goalies dive to the RIGHT in penalty shootouts if their team is behind
Daily Mail: It's news that could have proved useful to footballers Stuart Pearce, Gareth Southgate and Jamie Carragher - goalkeepers under pressure are more likely to dive to the right. The England players all missed crucial penalties in international matches trying to slot the ball in the left side of the goal, leading commentators to bemoan the country's poor record in shoot-outs. Now scientists from the University of Amsterdam have made a promising finding after examining every penalty shoot-out in every World Cup from 1982 to 2010. Read the whole story: Daily Mail
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Vokale vermitteln Größe
ORF News Austria: Die Forscher arbeiteten mit 28 Babys im Alter von vier Monaten. Ihre Muttersprache war Spanisch. Sie spielten den Babys Silben vor, die aus Konsonanten und den Vokalen I, O, E oder A zusammengesetzt waren. Bedeutung hatten die Silben keine. Während die Babys eine Silbe hörten, zeigten ihnen die Forscher gleichzeitig mehrere geometrische Figuren. Die Kreise, Ovale, Quadrate und Dreiecke waren unterschiedlich groß und hatten verschiedene Farben. Mit einem sogenannten Eyetracker wurde das Blickverhalten der Babys aufgezeichnet. Hörten die Babys Silben mit den Vokalen I und E, fiel ihr Blick als erstes auf kleinere geometrische Figuren.
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Optimism helps teens tackle anxiety
Times of India: Training teens to develop a positive outlook might help them tackle anxiety effectively as adults, according to a new research. "For example, I might wave at someone I recently met on the other side of the street," says experimental psychologist Jennifer Lau from Oxford University, who led the study. "If they don't wave back, I might think they didn't remember me - or alternatively, I might think they're snubbing me. People with anxiety are more likely to assume the latter interpretation," Lau said Read more: Times of India
