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2013 SRA and RISE Winners and Honorable Mentions
Student Research Award The APS Student Research Award (SRA) serves a dual purpose: to provide students with experience of the peer review process (both as submitters and reviewers) and to recognize outstanding research conducted by students. This year’s competition received 260 submissions, representing all areas of psychological science. The quality of submissions was exceptionally high, and competition was stiff. In response to record growth in the contest’s popularity over the last few years, this year’s contest featured a lengthier application process to provide additional information for our peer reviewers. Four overall winners and eight honorable mentions were selected.
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People Attribute Minds to Robots, Corpses That Are Targets of Harm
As Descartes famously noted, there’s no way to really know that another person has a mind -- every mind we observe is, in a sense, a mind we create. Now, new research suggests that victimization may be one condition that leads us to perceive minds in others, even in entities we don’t normally think of as having minds. This research, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that people attribute minds to entities they perceive as being targets of harm, even when the entity in question is a robot or a corpse.
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Race/Ethnicity Moderates Associations Between Childhood Weight Status and Early Substance Use
Identification of risk-factors for early drinking, smoking, and illicit drug use is essential for targeted substance abuse prevention. Few studies have examined associations between weight during childhood and early substance use, with mixed results. Some research has linked childhood obesity to higher rates of alcohol, cigarette, and/or cannabis use during adolescence, while others have found no associations. The present study examined the role of race/ethnicity as a potential moderator of relationships between childhood weight status and early use (by age 15) of alcohol, cigarettes, and cannabis.
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So Damn Superior: Parsing Partisan Politics
A new Gallup poll shows that Americans’ confidence in the Congress is at an all-time low. A measly 10 percent of citizens express confidence in lawmakers, and most say they have little or no confidence. That is the worst rating of any American institution—including the military, HMOs and labor unions—since this polling began in 1973. A lot of this disaffection has to do with the extreme partisanship that has seemingly paralyzed Capitol Hill. Today’s is not the first political stalemate in American history, but it is certainly one of the most maddening. Lawmakers—and the country itself—appear locked into extreme ideological positions that allow little if any room for compromise.
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Le donne hanno una migliore memoria fotografica (Women may have better memory for faces)
La Stampa: Le donne godrebbero di una naturale migliore memoria fotografica rispetto agli uomini. Non si tratterebbe di pigrizia mentale o scarsa attenzione da parte dei maschi, ma di una capacità innata, e spesso inconsapevole, tipica delle femmine di studiare le caratteristiche di un volto nuovo. A decretare che sul fronte memoria fotografica vincono le donne è un nuovo studio della McMaster University di Hamilton, in Canada, e pubblicato su Psychological Science.
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Why Dads Get Short Shrift on Father’s Day — and Dads Are O.K. With It
TIME: When it comes to their respective days of honor, why do dads get funny ties and moms get diamond-heart necklaces? Why do we spend 40% more on Mother’s Day than Father’s Day? Some seemingly ungrateful children (and a few dads) offer explanations. Every year since the National Retail Federation has been keep track, the amount consumers spend on Father’s Day gifts has been significantly less than the average spent on Mother’s Day. This year, average Father’s Day spending is expected to be around $120, compared with $169 for moms. To get to the bottom of this apparent inequity, I interviewed scores of dads and kids about Father’s Day.
