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High-Testosterone Competitors More Likely to Choose Red
Why do so many sports players and athletes choose to wear the color red when they compete? A new study to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that it may have to do with their testosterone levels. The new study, conducted by psychological scientist Daniel Farrelly of the University of Sunderland and colleagues, demonstrated that males who chose red as their color in a competitive task had higher testosterone levels than other males who chose blue. “The research shows that there is something special about the color red in competition, and that it is associated with our underlying biological systems,” says Farrelly.
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Secrets of the Criminal Mind
Scientific American: What is science revealing about the nature of the criminal mind? Adrian Raine, a professor at the university of Pennsylvania, is an expert in the expanding field of “neurocriminology.” He has written The Anatomy of Violence, a sweeping account of crime’s biological roots, including genetics, neuro-anatomy and environmental toxins like lead. He spoke with Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook. ... What do you think of the argument put forward by Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature, suggesting that violence has dropped dramatically as our social structures have changed?
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Mice, Men, and Fate
The New Yorker: Almost fifteen years ago, in a book called “Chance, Development, and Aging,” the gerontologists Caleb Finch and Thomas Kirkwood described a truly elegant study of biology: a batch of roundworms, all genetically identical, raised on identical diets of agar. Despite having identical genetics and near-identical environments, some worms lived far longer than others. The lesson? The classical equation of “life = nature + nurture” had left out chance. Of course, that was just worms.
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Shaking Off Loneliness
The New York Times: I now know why I gained more than 30 pounds in my early 20s: I was lonely. I had left my beloved alma mater upstate for graduate school and a job in the Upper Midwest. I knew no one and felt like a fish out of water. I filled my lonely nights and days with — you guessed it — food. Anything I could get my hands on, especially candy, cookies and ice cream. Food filled the hole in my soul, at least temporarily. No matter how hard I tried, I could not rein in my out-of-control eating until I returned to New York and my family, and began dating my future husband. Loneliness, says John T.
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9th Annual River Cities I-O Psychology Conference
9th Annual River Cities I-O Psychology Conference Trends in Training The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, University Center Chattanooga, TN October 25-26, 2013 www.utc.edu/ioprog/RCIO2013.htm
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What’s Location Got to Do With It?
When we see airplanes and toothbrushes and other visible things, we see them in relation to other objects — on top of a runway or inside of a mug on the bathroom counter. Many psychologists believe that location plays a special role in feature binding, the process through which the brain turns visual information about distinct features (e.g., location, color, and shape) into a cohesive image that represents an object. But a 2011 study published in the Journal of Cognitive Psychology by Snehlata Jaswal of the Indian Institute of Technology in Ropar, India, and Robert H.
