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People Prefer ‘Carrots’ to ‘Sticks’ When It Comes to Healthcare Incentives
To keep costs low, companies often incentivize healthy lifestyles. Now, new research suggests that how these incentives are framed -- as benefits for healthy-weight people or penalties for overweight people -- makes a big difference. The research, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that policies that carry higher premiums for overweight individuals are perceived as punishing and stigmatizing. Researcher David Tannenbaum of the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles wanted to investigate how framing healthcare incentives might influence people’s attitudes toward the incentives.
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Kids’ Reading Success Boosted by Long-Term Individualized Instruction
Students who consistently receive individualized reading instruction from first through third grade become better readers than those who don’t, researchers find.
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Physical Environment May Affect Likelihood of Dishonest Behavior
New research shows that expansive physical settings -- such as having a big desk to stretch out while doing work or a large driver's seat in an automobile -- can cause individuals to feel more powerful, which may, in turn, elicit more dishonest behavior, such as stealing, cheating, and even traffic violations. The new research is forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Edward Gibson, Steven T. Piantadosi, Kimberly Brink, Leon Bergen, Eunice Lim, and Rebecca Saxe Research has suggested that the default word order across languages is subject, object, then verb (SOV), so why have so many languages developed with a subject-verb-object (SVO) order? One explanation is the noisy-channel hypothesis, which supposes that individuals choose a speech pattern that gives the listener the best chance of understanding the original meaning of a message.
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Hong Kong Skyscrapers Appear to Fall in Real-World Illusion
No matter how we jump, roll, sit, or lie down, our brain manages to maintain a visual representation of the world that stays upright relative to the pull of gravity. But a new study of rider experiences on the Hong Kong Peak Tram, a popular tourist attraction, shows that specific features of the environment can dominate our perception of verticality, making skyscrapers appear to fall. The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The Hong Kong Peak Tram to Victoria Peak is a popular way to survey the Hong Kong skyline and millions of people ride the tram every year.
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Brain Can Plan Actions Toward Things the Eye Doesn’t See
People can plan strategic movements to several different targets at the same time, even when they see far fewer targets than are actually present, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. A team of researchers at the Brain and Mind Institute at the University of Western Ontario took advantage of a pictorial illusion -- known as the “connectedness illusion” -- that causes people to underestimate the number of targets they see. "The Connectedness Illusion": Connecting the circles creates the illusion of fewer circles on the right.