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The perils of ‘bite-size’ science
Short, fast, and frequent: Those 21st-century demands on publication have radically changed the news, politics, and culture—for the better or worse, many say. Now an article in January’s Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science, aims a critique at a similar trend in psychological research. The authors, psychologists Marco Bertamini of the University of Liverpool and Marcus Munafò of the University of Bristol, call it “bite-size science”—papers based on one or a few studies and small samples. “We’re not against concision,” says Bertamini. “But there are real risks in this trend toward shorter papers.
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To children (but not adults) a rose by any other name is still a rose
Two vital parts of mentally organizing the world are classification, or the understanding that similar things belong in the same category; and induction, an educated guess about a thing’s properties if it’s in a certain category. There are reasons to believe that language greatly assists adults in both kinds of tasks. But how do young children use language to make sense of the things around them? It’s a longstanding debate among psychologists. A new study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, challenges the predominant answer.
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Self-affirmation May Break Down Resistance to Medical Screening
People resist medical screening, or don’t call back for the results, because they don’t want to know they’re sick or at risk for a disease. But many illnesses, such as HIV/AIDS and cancer, have a far a better prognosis if they’re caught early. How can health care providers break down that resistance? Have people think about what they value most, finds a new study by University of Florida psychologists Jennifer L. Howell and James A. Shepperd. “If you can get people to refocus their attention from a threat to their overall sense of wellbeing, they are less likely to avoid threatening information,” says Howell.
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How Pregnancy Changes a Woman’s Brain
We know a lot about the links between a pregnant mother’s health, behavior, and moods and her baby’s cognitive and psychological development once it is born. But how does pregnancy change a mother’s brain? “Pregnancy is a critical period for central nervous system development in mothers,” says psychologist Laura M. Glynn of Chapman University. “Yet we know virtually nothing about it.” Glynn and her colleague Curt A. Sandman, of University of the California Irvine, are doing something about that.
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Research States That Prejudice Comes From a Basic Human Need and Way of Thinking
Where does prejudice come from? Not from ideology, say the authors of a new paper. Instead, prejudice stems from a deeper psychological need, associated with a particular way of thinking. People who aren’t comfortable with ambiguity and want to make quick and firm decisions are also prone to making generalizations about others. In a new article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Arne Roets and Alain Van Hiel of Ghent University in Belgium look at what psychological scientists have learned about prejudice since the 1954 publication of an influential book, The Nature of Prejudice by Gordon Allport.
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Does Team Training Save Lives? A New Science Gives It a Rigorous Evaluation
Whether the task is flying a plane, fighting a battle, or caring for a patient, good teamwork is crucial to getting it done right. That’s why team-building and training courses are big business in the U.S., and have been for decades. But lately something has changed: “There’s a demand for evaluations—an emphasis on showing that team training makes a difference in safety, decision-making, communication, clinical outcomes—you name the ultimate criteria the industry has,” says Eduardo Salas, an organizational psychologist at the University of Central Florida.
