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A Tiny Reef Fish Can Recognize Itself in a Mirror
It’s something most of us do every morning without a second thought. We wake up, stumble to the bathroom and glance at ourselves in the mirror as we wipe the sleep from our eyes. It may not seem like much, but the simple act of looking at that mirror—and understanding that the eye-rubbing person staring back is really one’s own reflection—demonstrates a remarkably sophisticated level of understanding. Only a handful of the world’s other brainiest species have proved capable of this: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, bottlenose dolphins, killer whales, magpies and at least one Asian elephant.
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Killer Whales and Chimpanzees Have Similar Personalities
Anybody who has taken an undergraduate psychology course or filled out one of those online tests is probably familiar with the “big five” personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. For example, if you identify with the statement “I talk to a lot of different people at parties,” you might score high on extraversion. An individual's personality is thought to be fairly stable by adulthood, and the idea that it can be measured by just a handful of factors goes back at least a century.
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Close Enough: The Lure Of Living Through Others
It used to be that if you wanted to feel what it was like to do something, you had to go out and do it. If your dream was to see the Grand Canyon from a raft, you'd head to the river. If you wanted to gaze up close at the Mona Lisa, you'd go to Paris. But something in our culture has changed. Now, as we sit on the couch and eat take-out, we watch kitchen virtuosos whip up gourmet meals from scratch. And then, we watch other people eat meals — there's a popular genre on YouTube where you just watch other people binge eat. It has never been so easy to bring the world into our living rooms and kitchens and bedrooms. And the world that enters our lives has never looked better.
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The Personality Trait That Makes People Feel Comfortable Around You
Some people can walk into a room and instantly put everyone at ease. Others seem to make teeth clench and eyes roll no matter what they do. A small body of psychology research supports the idea that the way a person tends to make others feel is a consistent and measurable part of his personality. Researchers call it “affective presence.” This concept was first described nearly 10 years ago in a study by Noah Eisenkraft and Hillary Anger Elfenbein. They put business-school students into groups, had them enroll in all the same classes for a semester, and do every group project together.
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
A sample of research exploring: genetic associations anxiety, depression, and executive function; motivation and emotion regulation in depression; and sense of agency over thoughts in obsessive-compulsive disorder.
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The Kids (Who Use Tech) Seem to Be All Right
Social media is linked to depression—or not. First-person shooter video games are good for cognition—or they encourage violence. Young people are either more connected—or more isolated than ever. Such are the conflicting messages about the effects of technology on children’s well-being. Negative findings receive far more attention and have fueled panic among parents and educators. This state of affairs reflects a heated debate among scientists. Studies showing statistically significant negative effects are followed by others revealing positive effects or none at all—sometimes using the same data set.
