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Anti-Prejudice Campaigns Can Increase Bias
LiveScience: Campaigns to reduce prejudice may backfire if they take the bossy approach and tell people what to do, new research indicates. In experiments, researchers looked at two different approaches to persuading people to reduce prejudice. One type, the controlling approach, tells people what they should do, while the second explains the advantages of being non-prejudiced. They found that participants responded much better to the second approach; meanwhile, the controlling approach actually increased prejudice. Read more: LiveScience
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Goalies Tend to Dive Right in World Cup Penalty Shoot-Outs When Their Team is Behind…Why?
In World Cup penalty shoot-outs, goalies tend to dive right when their team is behind and they have a chance to save the game for their country, according to a study.
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What Does Bottle-Feeding Have to Do With Autism Risk?
TIME: As if there weren't already enough tension between bottle-feeding and breast-feeding moms, now a researcher at the State University of New York at Albany is courting controversy by suggesting that bottle-feeding is associated with an increased risk of autism. In actuality, it's not bottle-feeding per se that may be linked to autism, but the absence of breast-feeding, contends evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup in an article published in June in the journal Medical Hypotheses. Gallup didn't do his own research but based his theory on data from a January study in the journal Pediatrics.
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Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia Go To College
Fast Company: As governments and universities around the world take a more active interest in Wikipedia's accuracy and reach, Wales talks about his site's new status. "I'm not sure if we are becoming a default 'official' source of information" he tells us, "but we are certainly the first port of call for hundreds of millions of people already." Wikipedia has evolved from the hobby of amateur enthusiasts to a fully financed priority of academics and government agencies looking to improve what is quickly becoming the world’s first source of information. Just last month, the United States National Archives announced a "Wikipedian In Residence," a full-time liaison to the Wikipedia community.
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Even Before Language, Babies Learn The World Through Sounds
It’s not just the words, but the sounds of words that have meaning for us. This is true for children and adults, who can associate the strictly auditory parts of language— vowels produced in the front or the back of the mouth, high or low pitch—with blunt or pointy things, large or small things, fast-moving or long-staying things. Do the same principles apply for young infants, and not just to things, but also to abstractions? A new study by Marcela Peña, Jacques Mehler, and Marina Nespor, working together at the International School for Advanced Studies, in Trieste, Italy and Catholic University of Chile, says yes.
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In Defense of Antidepressants
The New York Times: In terms of perception, these are hard times for antidepressants. A number of articles have suggested that the drugs are no more effective than placebos. Last month brought an especially high-profile debunking.
