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Your Spouse’s Voice Is Easier to Hear – And Easier to Ignore
With so many other competing voices, having a conversation on a bustling subway or at a crowded cocktail party takes a great deal of concentration. New research suggests that the familiar voice of a spouse stands out against other voices, helping to sharpen auditory perception and making it easier to focus on one voice at a time. “Familiar voices appear to influence the way an auditory 'scene' is perceptually organized,” explains lead researcher Ingrid Johnsrude of Queen’s University, Canada. Johnsrude and her colleagues asked married couples, ages 44-79, to record themselves reading scripted instructions out loud.
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Forensic Experts May Be Biased By the Side That Retains Them
Forensic psychologists and psychiatrists are ethically bound to be impartial when performing evaluations or providing expert opinions in court. But new research suggests that courtroom experts’ evaluations may be influenced by whether their paycheck comes from the defense or the prosecution. The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The findings reveal that experts who believed they were working for prosecutors tended to rate sexually violent offenders as being at greater risk of re-offending than did experts who thought they were working for the defense.
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Divorce Elevates Risk for Depression, But Only for Some People
A data analysis uncovers some new clues as to why depressive episodes follow divorce for some people, but not others.
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Do Girls Really Experience More Math Anxiety?
Girls report more math anxiety on general survey measures but are not actually more anxious during math classes and exams, according to new research forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Existing research suggests that females are more anxious when it comes to mathematics than their male peers, despite similar levels of achievement.
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Sweaty Palms and Racing Heart May Benefit Some Negotiators
The idea of having to negotiate over the price of a new car sends many into the cold sweats, but new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that sweaty palms and a racing heart may actually help some people in getting a good deal. As researchers Ashley D. Brown and Jared R. Curhan of the Sloan School of Management at MIT demonstrate in two experiments, physiological arousal isn’t always detrimental: “It turns out that the effect depends on whether you are someone who dreads or looks forward to negotiating,” Brown explains.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: One for All: Social Power Increases Self-Anchoring of Traits, Attitudes, and Emotions Jennifer R. Overbeck and Vitaliya Droutman The authors of this study hypothesized that powerful people are more likely than people with little power to engage in self-projection -- the projection of one's own traits, attitudes, and values onto group members. Participants were told they would be playing a group game and were assigned the role of group manager (high-power condition) or team member (low-power condition).