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Why an Invisible Gorilla Is a Security Threat
Pacific Standard: You may have seen a video online somewhere, or in a Psych 101 class perhaps, of a group of people wearing black and white shirts passing a basketball back and forth. When you watch, you are prompted to count how many times the players wearing white shirts pass the ball. What you may not see, though, even though it is right in front of you, is that after a half a minute of the basketball-passing and feet-shuffling, someone wearing a gorilla suit strolls into the center of the screen, thumps her chest, and then walks away.
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These 2 Words Will Make You More Selfish
The Atlantic: Don't think about Wall Street. Did you think about Wall Street? Of course you did. You can't stop yourself from thinking about something you're told not to think about. But I didn't just conjure images of stocks, suits, and a bronze bull. I primed you to be more selfish. It's science. ... Well, it depends on what you call it. At least that's what a 2004 paper by Varda Liberman, Steven Samuels, and Lee Ross found when they tested Stanford undergraduates. These researchers set up a simple Prisoner's Dilemma with money prizes, but added a wrinkle.
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Science and Its Skeptics
The New Yorker: Science has been taking a lot of punches lately. A recent cover story for The Economist argued, with cause, that “modern scientists have done too much trusting, and not enough verifying.” A few days ago, the science writer-provocateur John Horgan wrote a dark reflection, in Scientific American, on a litany of failures in science that he has seen over his thirty-year career.
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Visual Aids Can Help People Better Understand Health Risks
In order to be able to make sound health decisions, patients need to understand the risks and the benefits that come with medical treatments, screenings, and lifestyle choices. But many people have difficulty understanding the
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Seeing In The Pitch-Dark Is All In Your Head
NPR: A few years ago, cognitive scientist Duje Tadin and his colleague Randolph Blake decided to test blindfolds for an experiment they were cooking up. They wanted an industrial-strength blindfold to make sure volunteers for their work wouldn't be able to see a thing. "We basically got the best blindfold you can get." tells Shots. "It's made of black plastic, and it should block all light." Tadin and Blake pulled one on just to be sure and waved their hands in front of their eyes. They didn't expect to be able to see, yet both of them felt as if they could make out the shadowy outlines of their arms moving. Being scientists, they wondered what was behind the spooky phenomenon.
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You look better with your friends than you do on your own, study says
NBC: If you’re dressing up for Halloween tomorrow, make it a group costume. People seem more attractive when they’re part of a group than when they’re on their own, a new study says. The paper repeatedly references a season four episode of “How I Met Your Mother”: Ted sees a group of girls in the bar that he wants to hit on, but before he does, Barney warns him of the “cheerleader effect” -- the idea that people seem better-looking in a group than when scrutinized individually. "Also known as the Bridesmaid Paradox, the Sorority Girl syndrome and, for a brief period in the mid-nineties, the Spice Girls conspiracy," the Neil Patrick Harris character says.
