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New Research From Psychological Science
One to Four, and Nothing More: Nonconscious Parallel Individuation of Objects During Action Planning Jason P. Gallivan, Craig S. Chapman, Daniel K. Wood, Jennifer L. Milne, Daniel Ansari, Jody C. Culham, and Melvyn A. Goodale Processing sensory information about multiple objects at once is limited, but is there a processing limit when someone is planning to do something with the objects (action planning)? Participants were asked to touch targets on a computer screen within a certain period of time. The number of targets that appeared, as well as their distance from the center of the screen, varied.
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Boys Who Lack Empathy Don’t React to a Fearful Face
Scientific American: Psychopaths can't connect emotionally. Researchers have thought that trait may be connected with an outsized drive for reward and an inability to register fearful expressions in others’ faces. And that training them to pay attention to such expressions might help. Training, however, has not been successful, and a paper to be published in the journal Psychological Science suggests why. Read more: Scientific American
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Older people not good liars
Otago Daily Times: A University of Otago study suggests the ability to recognise deceit may wear down with age, making older people less able to lie or recognise they are being lied to. University of Otago department of psychology researchers Ted Ruffman, Janice Murray and Jamin Halberstadt compared young and old adults' skills at deception as judged by listeners within and outside their age group. The results of the lie detection test showed both young and old listeners found it easier to differentiate truths and lies when the speaker was an older adult compared to a young adult, Associate Professor Halberstadt said. Read more: Otago Daily Times
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L’affetto dei nonni allunga la vita ai nipotini
Salute 24: Avere i nonni accanto fa vivere di più i nipoti: nelle famiglie in cui sono presenti più generazioni, infatti, anche in situazioni difficili la possibilità di sopravvivenza dei più piccoli è maggiore. È quanto emerge da uno studio pubblicato su Current Directions in Psychological Science dal team guidato da David A. Coall, ricercatore della Edith Cowan University di Perth (Australia). Read more: Salute 24
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Why we perceive death differently
Times of India: European-Americans get worried and try to protect their sense of self, while Asian Americans are more likely to reach out to others. Much of the research on what psychologists call "mortality salience" – thinking about death – has been done on people of European descent, and has found that it makes people act in dramatic ways. "Men become more wary of sexy women and they like wholesome women more. People like to stereotype more. You see all these strange and bizarre occurrences when people think about the fact that they aren't going to live forever," said Christine Ma-Kellams of the University of California Santa Barbara, who carried out the research with Jim Blascovich.
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Capacity for Commitment May Start in Early Childhood
MSN Health: The ability of men and women to have staying power and a strong level of commitment in their romantic relationships can be traced back to their early childhood and adolescence, a new study finds. Researchers asked 78 people aged 20 or 21 and their heterosexual partners about their level of commitment to their relationship. The researchers already had data on the participants from when they were aged 2 and 16, including how loving and attentive their mothers were when they were toddlers, and how they dealt with a conflict with a friend as teens.
