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We’re All Climate-Change Idiots
The New York Times: CLIMATE CHANGE is staring us in the face. The science is clear, and the need to reduce planet-warming emissions has grown urgent. So why, collectively, are we doing so little about it? Yes, there are political and economic barriers, as well as some strong ideological opposition, to going green. But researchers in the burgeoning field of climate psychology have identified another obstacle, one rooted in the very ways our brains work. The mental habits that help us navigate the local, practical demands of day-to-day life, they say, make it difficult to engage with the more abstract, global dangers posed by climate change.
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Stop bullying the ‘soft’ sciences
Los Angeles Times: Once, during a meeting at my university, a biologist mentioned that he was the only faculty member present from a science department. When I corrected him, noting that I was from the Department of Psychology, he waved his hand dismissively, as if I were a Little Leaguer telling a member of the New York Yankees that I too played baseball. There has long been snobbery in the sciences, with the "hard" ones (physics, chemistry, biology) considering themselves to be more legitimate than the "soft" ones ( psychology, sociology). It is thus no surprise that many members of the general public feel the same way.
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Mind vs. Body? Dualist Beliefs Linked with Less Concern for Healthy Behaviors
Many people, whether they know it or not, are philosophical dualists. That is, they believe that the brain and the mind are two separate entities. Despite the fact dualist beliefs are found in virtually all human cultures, surprisingly little is known about the impact of these beliefs on how we think and behave in everyday life. But a new research article forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that espousing a dualist philosophy can have important real-life consequences.
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Today’s Spotlight: Robert A. Bjork
Watch APS Past President Robert A. Bjork explain his theory on long-term memory in this series of interviews. Bjork is a Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. His lab, the Bjork Learning and Forgetting Lab, investigates human learning, memory, and the implications of such research on instruction. Bjork was Co-editor of Psychological Science in the Public Interest. GoCognitive is an educational website supported by the APS Teaching Fund that provides free access to tools on cognitive psychology and neuroscience. GoCognitive has an archive of video interviews of leading researchers in the field, in addition to interactive demonstrations.
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BATMAN Gear for the Real World
The United States Air Force is taking a page from an iconic comic. As an intern in the Human Performance Wing at Wright Paterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, psychological scientist Andre Garcia, from George Mason University, worked on the BATMAN team. Though Garcia tends to think of team BATMAN (which stands for Battlefield Air Targeting Man-Aided kNowledge) as being more like Alfred, Batman’s loyal butler who was always there to help the caped crusader with all of his high-tech gizmos.
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Save the Nerves for the Night Before
Four days left, 4 more psychological science highlights: Counting down to the Olympic Opening Ceremony, with research insights on sports and performance. #4. In Olympic competition, the margin between winning the gold and sitting in the stands often comes down to fractions of a second. Olympic athletes will be doing everything they can to gain even the slightest competitive edge. Researchers have found that feeling tense the night before a game could actually be part of gaining that edge. Recent research conducted at Northwestern University investigated whether feelings of tension play a part in swimming performance.
