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I Like Your Face—but why? A New Computer Model Pinpoints the Reasons
Whether you’re dating, job seeking, or running for office, an attractive face can get you far. But what makes a face attractive? Most studies have found we’re drawn to “average” faces, as well as those whose features fit conventionally with one gender or the other—“masculinity” in men, “femininity” in women. Except, that is, when we’re drawn to “feminine” male faces—or our reactions are mixed. Psychologists Christopher P. Said of New York University and Alexander Todorov of Princeton University surmised that attractiveness is more complex than those two qualities. So they designed a computer model to tease out and measure the complexities.
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How Beliefs Shape Effort and Learning
If it was easy to learn, it will be easy to remember. Psychological scientists have maintained that nearly everyone uses this simple rule to assess their own learning. Now a study published in an upcoming issue Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests otherwise: “Individuals with different theories about the nature of intelligence tend to evaluate their learning in different ways,” says David B. Miele of Columbia University, who conducted the study with Bridgid Finn of Washington University in St. Louis and Daniel C. Molden of Northwestern University.
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Are Your Values Right or Left? The Answer Is More Literal Than You Think
Up equals good, happy, optimistic; down the opposite. Right is honest and trustworthy. Left, not so much. That’s what language and culture tell us. “We use mental metaphors to structure our thinking about abstract things,” says psychologist Daniel Casasanto, “One of those metaphors is space.” But we don’t all think right is right, Casasanto has found. Rather, “people associate goodness with the side they can act more fluently on.” Right-handed people prefer the product, job applicant, or extraterrestrial positioned to their right. Lefties march to a left-handed drummer. And those linguistic tropes?
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Crossing the Line: What Constitutes Torture?
Torture. The United Nations defines it as the “infliction of severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” But how severe is severe? That judgment determines whether or not the law classifies an interrogation practice as torture. Now, a study published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, condemns this method of classification as essentially flawed. The reason: The people estimating the severity of pain aren’t experiencing that pain—so they underestimate it. As a result, many acts of torture are not classified—or prohibited—as torture, say authors, Loran F.
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Actions and Personality, East and West
People in different cultures make different assumptions about the people around them, according to an upcoming study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The researchers studied the brain waves of people with Caucasian and Asian backgrounds and found that cultural differences in how we think about other people are embedded deep in our minds. Cultural differences are evident very deep in the brain, challenging a commonsense notion that culture is skin deep. For decades, psychologists believed that it's natural for humans to see behaviors and automatically link them to personality.
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Some People’s Climate Beliefs Shift With Weather
Results from three studies show that people who thought the current day was warmer than usual were more likely to believe in and feel concern about global warming than those who thought the day was unusually cold.
