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New Research in Psychological Science
A sample of research on cultural distance, gossip and lying, skill learning, air pollution and anxiety, and the reliability of task-functional MRI measures.
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The Hard Truth Of Poker — And Life: You’re Never ‘Due’ For Good Cards
For many years, my life centered around studying the biases of human decision-making: I was a graduate student in psychology at Columbia, working with that marshmallow-tinted legend, Walter Mischel, to document the foibles of the human mind as people found themselves in situations where risk abounded and uncertainty ran high. Dissertation defended, I thought to myself, that’s that. I’ve got those sorted out. And in the years that followed, I would pride myself on knowing so much about the tools of self-control that would help me distinguish myself from my poor experimental subjects.
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From Behind the Coronavirus Mask, an Unseen Smile Can Still Be Heard
In many places all over the world, a mask has become mandatory to slow down the spread of SARS-CoV-2. People wear one on the bus or train, during shopping trips or at doctor’s appointments. How does that practice change basic communication? Does a face covering impair social interaction? Facial expression and emotion researcher Ursula Hess, deputy dean for international affairs at the faculty of life sciences at Humboldt University of Berlin, provides some answers in this interview with Scientific American’s German-language sister publication Spektrum der Wissenschaft.
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How Racial Bias Works — and How to Disrupt It
TED Talk with APS President Elect Jennifer L. Eberhardt Our brains create categories to make sense of the world, recognize patterns and make quick decisions. But this ability to categorize also exacts a heavy toll in the form of unconscious bias. In this powerful talk, psychologist Jennifer L. Eberhardt explores how our biases unfairly target Black people at all levels of society -- from schools and social media to policing and criminal justice -- and discusses how creating points of friction can help us actively interrupt and address this troubling problem.
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How to Soothe Your ‘Re-Entry Anxiety’ as COVID-19 Lockdowns Lift
When COVID-19 began spreading in the U.S., Dan Kerber was drawn to the data. The 48-year-old from Plano, Texas read about case counts and projections every day, keeping his team at the telecommunications company Ericsson up to date on the latest news. So in May, when states including Texas began to reopen before the data showed it was time to do so, Kerber began to get nervous. ... Lily Brown, director of the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, says there are two distinct types of re-entry anxiety.
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The Biggest Psychological Experiment in History Is Running Now
The impact of COVID-19 on the physical health of the world's citizens is extraordinary. By mid-May there were upward of four million cases spread across more than 180 countries. The pandemic's effect on mental health could be even more far-reaching. At one point roughly one third of the planet's population was under orders to stay home. That means 2.6 billion people--more than were alive during World War II--were experiencing the emotional and financial reverberations of this new coronavirus. "[The lockdown] is arguably the largest psychological experiment ever conducted," wrote health psychologist Elke Van Hoof of Free University of Brussels-VUB in Belgium.
