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Just thinking you have poor endurance genes changes your body
If you want to win a race or stick to a difficult diet, coaches of all kinds will tell you it’s all about “mind over matter.” But that advice rarely crosses over into the medical community, where an inborn ability—or risk—is thought to depend more on genes and environment than on mindset. Now, in a study examining what may be a novel form of the placebo response, psychologists have found that just telling a person they have a high or low genetic risk for certain physical traits can influence how their body functions when exercising or eating, regardless of what genetic variant they actually have. The results could be an eye-opener for medical providers and consumer DNA testing companies.
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Psychology’s Replication Crisis Has Made The Field Better
In 2012, psychologists Will Gervais and Ara Norenzayan published a paper in the journal Science reporting a series of experiments that suggested engaging in analytical thinking could reduce someone’s religious belief. It sounded vaguely plausible, but five years later, another group of researchers attempted to replicate the finding. They used a sample size about two and a half times larger and found no evidence that analytic thinking caused a decrease in religious belief. “Is it fun to find out that a study you published in a high profile outlet back in the day does not hold up well to more rigorous scrutiny? Oh hell no,” Gervais wrote in a blog post.
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Is Listening to a Book the Same Thing as Reading It?
A few years ago, when people heard I was a reading researcher, they might ask about their child’s dyslexia or how to get their teenager to read more. But today the question I get most often is, “Is it cheating if I listen to an audiobook for my book club?” Audiobook sales have doubled in the last five years while print and e-book sales are flat. These trends might lead us to fear that audiobooks will do to reading what keyboarding has done to handwriting — rendered it a skill that seems quaint and whose value is open to debate. But examining how we read and how we listen shows that each is best suited to different purposes, and neither is superior. In fact, they overlap considerably.
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For Gorillas, Being a Good Dad Is Sexy
He was tall and rugged, with piercing blue eyes, blond hair and a magnificent jawline. And what was that slung across his chest? A holster for his Walther PPK? When I saw what the actor Daniel Craig—aka James Bond—was actually toting, my heart skipped a beat. It was an elegant, high-tech baby carrier, so that he could snuggle his baby daughter.
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Gender Bias Sways How We Perceive Competence in Faces
Faces that are seen as competent are also perceived as more masculine, research reveals.
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New Research From Psychological Science
A sample of research exploring how trait anxiety relates to attention, how choosing different career paths may shape personality development, and how attentional selection contributes to risky decision making.
