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Why Waiting Is Torture
The New York Times: SOME years ago, executives at a Houston airport faced a troubling customer-relations issue. Passengers were lodging an inordinate number of complaints about the long waits at baggage claim. In response, the executives increased the number of baggage handlers working that shift. The plan worked: the average wait fell to eight minutes, well within industry benchmarks. But the complaints persisted. Puzzled, the airport executives undertook a more careful, on-site analysis. They found that it took passengers a minute to walk from their arrival gates to baggage claim and seven more minutes to get their bags.
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Study shows teens imitate risky sex of films, TV
The Washington Times: Can you name the last five movies your teenage son or daughter has watched with friends? How strong was the sexual content in those movies? Does it really matter? New research suggests it does. The study, conducted by Ross O'Hara and soon to be published in the journal Psychological Science, found that on-screen promiscuity promotes promiscuity in real life. “Adolescents who are exposed to more sexual content in movies start having sex at younger ages, have more sexual partners” and engage in riskier sexual activities, Mr. O'Hara said. While at Dartmouth University, Mr.
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Does Alcohol Really Help People Get Along?
Men's Fitness: There’s nothing like an open bar to turn a mandatory office gathering into a late-night party, where even the most argumentative coworkers can get along. But while alcohol has a reputation for breaking down social barriers, does it really work as a social lubricant? To answer this question, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh put strangers together in groups of three and told them they were studying how alcohol would affect their execution of certain tasks.
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Brain-Computer Interfaces Are Changing the Way We Communicate
APS Fellow Niels Birbaumer, Professor of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology at the University of Tübingen, Germany, studies brain-computer interfaces (BCI). BCIs allow communication from the brain to an external device for patients who otherwise could not communicate through muscle movements to produce speech, gestures, or eye movements. Birbaumer was awarded the Wilhelm Wundt Medal, the Helmholtz Medal as well as honorary doctorates from Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena and Complutense University of Madrid. Watch Niels Birbaumer discuss his research on brain-computer interfaces in this series of interviews.
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Gerichte doelstelling doet tijd sneller gaan (With an objective, time goes faster)
Express Belgium: Aangename activiteiten doen de tijd sneller te lijken gaan, maar vooral de uiteindelijke doelstelling heeft daarin een cruciale functie. Dat is de conclusie van een onderzoek van wetenschappers aan de University of Alabama. De perceptie over het tijdsverloop wordt volgens de Amerikaanse onderzoekers bepaald door de wens om iets na te streven. Het fenomeen kan volgens hen wellicht worden verklaard door het feit dat deze gebeurtenissen het geheugen en de aandacht concentreren, waardoor irrelevante gedachten en gevoelens zouden worden uitgesloten.
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War may not be cause of all military PTSD
United Press International: The experience of war or combat is not typically what triggers the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, a Danish researcher says. Professor Dorthe Berntsen of the Center on Autobiographical Memory Research at the Aarhus University in Denmark, military psychologists at the Danish Center for Defense Veterans and researchers from Duke University in North Carolina surveyed 746 Danish soldiers who served in Afghanistan. The soldiers completed a questionnaire five times -- before their posting, during their time in Afghanistan and three times after their return to Denmark.
