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Gordon Bower, Inventive Memory Researcher, Is Dead at 87
APS Past President Gordon H. Bower (1932-2020) Gordon H. Bower, a research psychologist who spent more than half a century studying how the brain learns and remembers, as well as a host of related subjects, and who was among the leaders in his field, died on June 17 at his home in Stanford, Calif. He was 87. Stanford University, where he taught for almost 50 years, announced his death. The cause was complications of pulmonary fibrosis. When Dr. Bower joined the Stanford faculty in 1959, he became part of a psychology department that was already highly regarded.
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The Role of Cognitive Dissonance in the Pandemic
APS Members/Authors: Elliot Aronson and Carol Tavris Members of Heaven’s Gate, a religious cult, believed that as the Hale-Bopp comet passed by Earth in 1997, a spaceship would be traveling in its wake—ready to take true believers aboard. Several members of the group bought an expensive, high-powered telescope so that they might get a clearer view of the comet. They quickly brought it back and asked for a refund. When the manager asked why, they complained that the telescope was defective, that it didn’t show the spaceship following the comet.
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The Mug Shot, a Crime Story Staple, Is Dropped by Some Newsrooms and Police
For more than a century, police departments and news organizations have worked together to disseminate photos of people after their arrest, often bleary-eyed and despondent, sometimes defiant and smiling. It’s a practice as old as the mug shot itself: publicizing an unflattering close-up of a person’s face and profile, taken at one of the worst possible moments. And in some police departments and newsrooms across the country, it may be on its way out. William Scott, the San Francisco police chief, announced on Wednesday that his department would no longer release mug shots of people who had been arrested unless there was an immediate public safety reason to do so.
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New Content from Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science
A sample of articles on Bayesian Model Averaging, the “crud factor,” a tool for model checking, and an attempted replication of the Att-SNARC effect.
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This Stanford Scientist Can Make You Feel And Think Younger: Interview With Dr. Laura Carstensen
Have you ever wondered about aging and how to stop it? Would you like to do something about it? Regardless of where you are in life it is worthwhile learning about the field of geroscience and staying atop of the news and recent developments. I have been studying aging for over 17 years, and looking back I can say with confidence that the progress in the biology of aging and even in longevity medicine is rapidly accelerating. Since 2010 we saw a revolution in aging biomarkers dubbed “aging clocks”, senolytics, NAD+ boosters, rapalogs, cellular reprogramming, gene therapy, and many other fields.
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Social Isolation May Increase Susceptibility to Covid-19, Scientist Claims
The psychological stress of social isolation may make people more susceptible to severe Covid-19 infection, a US scientist has claimed. Dr Sheldon Cohen, who is a psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, said evidence from his previous research suggests social stressors are linked to an increased vulnerability to upper respiratory viruses, such as those which cause common cold. He believes there is a possibility that the psychological effect of stay-at-home measures, adopted by countries around the world to slow down the spread of the virus by minimising contact between people, might play a similar role by increasing a person’s susceptibility to Covid-19 illness.
