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Why conservatives are more likely than liberals to believe false information about threats
Los Angeles Times: After an electoral season that blurred the line between fact and fantasy, a team of UCLA researchers is offering new evidence to support a controversial proposition: that when it comes to telling the difference between truth and fiction, not all potential voters see it the same way. When “alternative facts” allege some kind of danger, people whose political beliefs are more conservative are more likely than those who lean liberal to embrace them, says the team’s soon-to-be-published study. Read the whole story: Los Angeles Times
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Higher-Ranking People Have More Difficulty Spotting Unethical Behavior
Research suggests that obtaining a higher rank within an organization may prompt people to overlook unethical behavior.
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
Read about the latest research in Clinical Psychological Science: Impact of Panic on Psychophysiological and Neural Reactivity to Unpredictable Threat in Depression and Anxiety Lynne Lieberman, Stephanie M. Gorka, Stewart A. Shankman, and K. Luan Phan People who have panic disorder (PD) seem to be particularly sensitive to unpredictable threat. In this study, the authors examined whether this sensitivity is specific to PD or is applicable to the continuum of panic symptomatology. Participants with a range of panic symptoms completed a startle task in which they received no shock, a predictable shock, or an unpredictable shock. They then completed a similar task while undergoing fMRI.
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People Assume Sexists Are Also Racist and Vice Versa
The stigma associated with prejudice against women and people of color seems to transfer from one group to another, a series of experiments shows.
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Oldies but goodies
The Boston Globe: WE OFTEN ASSUME that people don’t want to hear the same old story. But psychologists at Harvard and the University of Virginia wondered if people “worry too much about boring their listeners and not enough about confusing them, and that they therefore tell novel stories to listeners who would have enjoyed hearing familiar stories a great deal more.” Read the whole story: The Boston Globe
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To Please Your Friends, Tell Them What They Already Know
We love to tell friends and family about experiences we’ve had and they haven’t—from exotic vacations to celebrity sightings—but new research suggests that these stories don’t thrill them quite as much as we imagine.
