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Looks could kill
The Economist: PEOPLE decide quickly how trustworthy a stranger is, based on what his face looks like. And experiments show that, regarding any particular individual, they generally come to the same conclusion. There really are, it seems, trustworthy and untrustworthy faces—though, surprisingly, there is little consensus among researchers as to whether someone whose face is deemed devious really is more likely to betray a trust. The perceivedly untrustworthy do, however, suffer for their phizogs. And a study published in this month’s Psychological Science suggests that in extreme cases—in America at least—this suffering may be fatal.
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Do Know-It-Alls Really Know It All?
NPR's Science Friday: Pre-rated stocks,” “fixed rate deduction,” and “annualized credit” sound like fairly weighty financial terms. So much so, that a number of self-described finance experts said they were familiar with them. However, these concepts were invented by researchers at Cornell University seeking to understand why people say they know things when they don’t—what the team refers to as “overclaiming.” The resulting study, published in the journal Psychological Science, indicates that the more people see themselves as experts, the more likely they are to feign knowledge of phony information.
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Age Is Just a Number
People tend to proceed through life trying to act their age. But the pioneering research of Ellen Langer suggests that adopting the attitude of a younger person may actually have health benefits. In a classic 1981 study, she had old men live in a retreat that was retrofitted to look like 1959, while they pretended that they were living in that year. She and her colleagues found that the men experienced improvements in vision, strength, and other abilities, and that they actually looked younger as well. Langer’s mind-body research indicates that just as social cues can make us feel old, other social cues can make us feel and act young.
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At What Age Does Hard Work Add a Shine to Lousy Prizes?
Putting in a lot of effort to earn a reward can make unappealing prizes more attractive to kindergartners, but not to preschoolers, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Visit Page
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Beyond Simple Models of Self-Control
The adolescent brain is more “plastic” than it will ever be again and capable of remarkable adaptability in light of the many challenges that this developmental phase brings. Yet it is a peak time for accidental injury and death, in part because of diminished self-control – the ability to inhibit inappropriate desires, emotions, and actions in favor of appropriate ones. Findings of adolescent-specific changes in self-control and underlying brain circuitry are considered in terms of how evolutionary based biological constraints and experiences shape the brain to adapt to the unique challenges of adolescence.
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Regulation Across the First Decade of Life
Regulation – a multilayered construct defined by the interplay of excitation and inhibition –undergoes substantial development across the first decade of life, is supported by bottom-up processes, and matures in the context of parent-infant synchrony and the neurobiology of affiliation. The talk will chart a biobehavioral perspective on the development of regulation by providing insights from five birth cohorts each followed repeatedly across the first decade of life using careful behavioral observations and neurobiological assessments.
