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Are Wider Faced Men More Self-Sacrificing?
Picture a stereotypical tough guy and you might imagine a man with a broad face, a square jaw, and a stoical demeanor. Existing research even supports this association, linking wider, more masculine faces with several less-than-cuddly characteristics, including perceived lack of warmth, dishonesty, and lack of cooperation. But a new study suggests that men with these wide, masculine faces aren’t always the aggressive tough guys they appear to be. “Men with wider faces have typically been portrayed as ‘bad to the bone,’” says psychologist Michael Stirrat. But he and David Perrett wondered whether the relationship between facial width and personality was really so simple.
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Behaviors We Don’t Know We Have – Insights from Psychological Science
Understanding human behavior – why and how people do what they do – is at the very heart of psychological science. New research presented in the June issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science examines the processes that underlie various aspects of human behavior, exploring how we learn patterns in language and vision, why some people are able to overcome significant life stressors, and how humans process reward and fear. Statistical Learning: From Acquiring Specific Items to Forming General Rules Richard N. Aslin and Elissa L. Newport Statistical learning is the process by which adults and infants extract patterns embedded in both language and visual input.
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Sex and Trauma Research Is Less Upsetting to College Students Than Previously Assumed
Research on sex and trauma faces an ethical dilemma: how can we find out more about the effects of such psychologically sensitive topics without hurting the people who participate in the study? Institutional review boards that approve research on human subjects believe that asking people about sex and trauma is riskier and more distressing than asking people to complete standard intelligence tests or personality questionnaires.
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When Equality Loses
Despite our inclination to believe equality within a team or group is important, new research suggests that a built-in hierarchy leads to fewer group conflicts and higher productivity. The research finds a team or group with all high-performers will not outperform teams or groups with an established hierarchy. Teams in which everyone has high power are likely to experience elevated levels of conflict, reduced role differentiations, less coordination and integration, and poorer productivity than teams with a broader distribution of power and status.
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People Know When to Move On
People make decisions all the time. What sandwich to order, whether to walk through that puddle or around it, what school to go to and so on. However, psychologists disagree on how good we are at making decisions. “In the literature on human decision-making, there are two almost parallel stories,” said Andreas Jarvstad of Cardiff University. “One goes, ‘humans are terrible at making choices.’ The other goes, ‘humans are close to being as good as they possibly can be.’” Jarvstad is an author of a new study on decision-making published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. His study is about choosing how long to spend on the task at hand.
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Questionable Research Practices Surprisingly Common
Not all scientific misconduct is flat-out fraud. Much falls into the murkier realm of “questionable research practices.” A new study finds that in one field, psychology, these practices are surprisingly common. The survey of more than 2,000 research psychologists, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that most have engaged in at least one of the questionable practices at some point in their career. “There have been some very widely publicized cases of outright fraud,” says Leslie K. John of Harvard Business School.
