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Yum and Yuck: The Psychology Of What We Eat…And What We Spit Out
Paul Rozin has been studying the psychology and culture of food for more than 40 years. And he's come to appreciate that food fills many of our needs, but hunger is just one. "Food is not just nutrition that goes in your mouth or even pleasant sensations that go with it," he says. "It connects to your whole life, and it's really a very important part of performing your culture and experiencing your culture." This week, we chew over the profound role that food plays in our lives. Then, we spit it all out — we study the ick factor that turns us off to cockroaches, skunks, and poop. Rachel Herz explains the sensation of disgust, and why it doesn't always come naturally.
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Why it’s healthy to sing this holiday season
One of the highlights of Katy Cadman’s week is conducting two-hour-long MomChoir practice sessions with more than 50 other women. When all the voices come together for a song such as All I want for Christmas is You, the effect can be electrifying, says Cadman, the Vancouver choir’s artistic director. “You leave just buzzing with excitement and enthusiasm and this feeling of camaraderie,” she says. The high Cadman describes matches what researchers are learning in their labs: Singing has powerful effects on the brain, and it may provide a potent antidote to modern maladies such as stress, loneliness and depression.
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The case for buying kids audiobooks this holiday season
Giving kids books as presents always feels good. It might not elicit the joy that a new gadget might, but there is comfort to knowing that what you are giving is unambiguously good for them and not potentially addling their brains. What about audiobooks? Daniel Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and author of the 2015 Raising Kids Who Read, says audiobooks are a wonderful way to fill time that might otherwise not have been filled. “Print may be best for lingering over words or ideas, but audiobooks add literacy to moments where there would otherwise be none,” he wrote recently in the New York Times.
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The science of giving gifts your loved ones won’t want to return
Trying to find an ideal gift for a friend or family member, or at least something that won’t end up in the trash, is a perennial source of pre-holiday anxiety. As it happens, behavioral science can help. After all, gift-giving combines economics and psychology (the exchange of goods plus the complicating desire to affirm or celebrate a personal relationship), and those two academic fields have grown ever more entwined in recent years. So before struggling to sort through the likes, dislikes, quirks and wishes of the people on your holiday lists, you may want to consider some recent findings about which gift-giving strategies work — and which don’t. First, should we give gifts at all?
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Unrelated Events Are Linked in Memory When They Happen Close Together
Occurring within a brief window of time links two events in memory, such that calling forth memory of one helps retrieve memory for the other event.
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Stanford psychologist Eleanor Maccoby dies at 101
Eleanor Maccoby, the Barbara Kimball Browning Professor of Psychology, Emerita, at Stanford, recognized for scholarly contributions to gender studies and child and family psychology, died Dec. 11 at age 101 of pneumonia in Palo Alto. Maccoby was the first woman to serve as chair of the Stanford Department of Psychology, a position she held from 1973 to 1976. At Stanford, Maccoby was associated with the Center for the Study of Families, Children and Youth. Through that work, she became known for research on social and intellectual development in children.
