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Easily Pronounced Names May Make People More Likable
Wired: Though it might seem impossible, and certainly inadvisable, to judge a person by their name, a new study suggests our brains try anyway. The more pronounceable a person’s name is, the more likely people are to favor them. “When we can process a piece of information more easily, when it’s easier to comprehend, we come to like it more,” said psychologist Adam Alter of New York University and co-author of a Journal of Experimental Social Psychology study published in December. Fluency, the idea that the brain favors information that’s easy to use, dates back to the 1960s, when researchers found that people most liked images of Chinese characters if they’d seen them many times before.
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Optogenetics: Stranger Than Fiction
It sounds like a science fiction movie: Scientists integrate the photoreceptive properties of light-sensitive algae into rat neurons. The result? A rat whose brain can be controlled by light. As crazy as it seems, this isn’t science fiction: The field of optogenetics is scientific reality. In a May 2011 talk at the TED Conference, Edward Boyden explained that optogenetics allows scientists to target specific neurons quickly; conventional methods like drugs take longer to kick in. Boyden is also featured in a March Observer article on optogenetics, and he will be speaking in a webinar called Optogenetics in Neurons and Beyond on March 15, 2012.
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When My Eyes Serve My Stomach
Our senses aren’t just delivering a strict view of what’s going on in the world; they’re affected by what’s going on in our heads. A new study finds that hungry people see food-related words more clearly than people who’ve just eaten. The study, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that this change in vision happens at the earliest, perceptual stages, before higher parts of the brain have a chance to change the messages coming from the eyes. Psychologists have known for decades that what’s going on inside our head affects our senses.
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Placebo Power
APS Fellow and Charter Member Irving Kirsch, associate director of the Placebo Studies Program at Harvard Medical School, says the difference between the effect of a placebo and the effect of an antidepressant is minimal for most people. "People get better when they take the drug, but it's not the chemical ingredients of the drugs that are making them better," Kirsch told Lesley Stael in a 60 Minutes interview, "it's largely the placebo effect." The "placebo effect" may not be all in your head says Kirsch in the interview below: Kirsch, I., Deacon, B.J., Huedo-Medina, T.B., Scoboria, A., Moore, T.J., & Johnson, B.T. (2008).
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Hope for children addicted to gaming
The Sydney Morning Herald: Children addicted to video games are more likely to suffer depression, anxiety and social phobias as a result of their pathological gaming, and may need professional help to recover, a visiting American researcher says. Once their gaming is back to normal levels, their psychological problems shift, and their mood and school work improves, says Douglas Gentile, a lead researcher on two studies of video game addiction. Dr Gentile, an associate professor in psychology at Iowa State University, will be a guest speaker at the Corporate Takeover of Childhood conference in Melbourne next month. Read the whole story: The Sydney Morning Herald
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Driven to Worry, and to Procrastinate
The New York Times: SINCE time began, it seems, people have been putting off till tomorrow what they could have done today — berating themselves and inconveniencing others in the process. It wouldn’t be a problem except that time eventually runs out. “You may delay, but time will not,” said Benjamin Franklin. In the world of work, procrastination has “expensive and visible costs,” said Rory Vaden, a corporate trainer, who points to research showing that the average employee admits to wasting two hours a day on nonwork tasks. People know that procrastination hurts themselves, others and their work, so why do they do it?
