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Teens’ Self-Consciousness Has Biological Basis, Study Says
US News & World Report: Many teens are concerned about what other kids think of them, and this self-consciousness is linked with specific body and brain responses that appear to begin and peak in adolescence, a new study finds. Researchers put 69 volunteers, aged 8 to 23, in a situation in which they believed they were being observed by another person their own age and monitored the participants' emotional, body and brain responses. The goal was to determine if just being looked at might trigger more intense body and brain responses in teens than in children and adults. That turned out to be the case, the researchers reported recently in the journal Psychological Science.
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The Psychological Challenge of Being a Prince
The Huffington Post: Amidst the celebrations of the birth of a British prince, it is worth thinking about what this may mean psychologically for a youngster who will turn 18 in 2031. A look back at his forebears gives a hint of the psychological challenges he will face. His great-great-great-great grandfather Edward VII was a disappointment to his parents and lived a fairly dissolute life and only found a properly adult role when he became King at the age of 60. George V had an easier time because he was only 44 when his father died in 1910, but he did not make things easy for his son Edward VIII, saying about him: "After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself in twelve months".
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What’s in a Royal Name? Psychological Researchers Explain the Significance
The royal baby has been named — George Alexander Louis. And that handle will have a significant bearing on the child's future, psychological researchers say. As Jason Goldman of the University of Southern California describes in The Guardian, children born in European nations are more likely to have popular, traditional names than children born in countries colonized by European explorers. Those findings were reported in a 2011 study published in Psychological Science. And it appears the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge followed this naming norm, in effect safeguarding the child's future public image.
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How Do Babies Learn to Be Wary of Heights?
Infants develop a fear of heights as a result of their experiences moving around their environments, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Learning to avoid cliffs, ledges, and other precipitous hazards is essential to survival and yet human infants don’t show an early wariness of heights. As soon as human babies begin to crawl and scoot, they enter a phase during which they’ll go over the edge of a bed, a changing table, or even the top of a staircase.
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Why Men Need Women
The New York Times: WHAT makes some men miserly and others generous? What motivated Bill Gates, for example, to make more than $28 billion in philanthropic gifts while many of his billionaire peers kept relatively tightfisted control over their personal fortunes? New evidence reveals a surprising answer. The mere presence of female family members — even infants — can be enough to nudge men in the generous direction. In a provocative new study, the researchers Michael Dahl, Cristian Dezso and David Gaddis Ross examined generosity and what inspires it in wealthy men.
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Gorillas in the Lung
The Scientist: Anyone who’s taken an introductory psychology course in the last 20 years likely remembers the “invisible gorilla” video. The video shows a group of kids engaged in a ball-passing game while, mostly unnoticed, a man in a gorilla suit scurries through the scene. The video is a striking example of a phenomenon called inattentional blindness, whereby observers may miss unexpected, but salient, events while engaged in other tasks. Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in Boston examined whether inattentional blindness also affects expert observers.
