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Nordwärts!
bild der wissenschaft: Die interne Landkarte des Hirns ist nach Norden ausgerichtet Deutsche Forscher sind dem System auf die Spur gekommen, wie das Gehirn die räumliche Struktur einer vertrauten Umgebung verarbeitet: Offenbar ist der Anhaltspunkt für die Orientierung der Norden – es ist also, als ob wir eine imaginäre Landkarte vor Augen hätten. Die Wissenschaftler um Julia Frankenstein vom Max-Planck-Institut für biologische Kybernetik in Tübingen führten ihre Experimente mit 26 Einwohnern der Stadt Tübingen durch. Die ortskundigen Probanden wurden mit einem fotorealistischen virtuellen Modell ihrer Heimatstadt konfrontiert.
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Simine Vazire
Washington University in St. Louis www.simine.com What does your research focus on? My research examines people's knowledge about their own personalities. Do people know how they behave? Do they know how others see them? I examine the discrepancies between how people see themselves and how others see them, and try to determine who is more accurate. I also examine whether people are aware of these discrepancies, and if so, how do they justify them? Finally, I'm curious about the processes that lead to these discrepancies - why do others sometimes know us better than we know ourselves? What drew you to this line of research? Why is it exciting to you?
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Study of the Day: Want to Improve a Woman’s Driving Skills? Flatter Her
The Atlantic: PROBLEM: Previous studies -- and far too many sexist jokes -- have discussed how women are not as skilled as men when it comes to tasks like parking and map-reading that require spatial awareness. University of Warwick psychologist Zachary Estes decided to find out if confidence could account for this gender difference. METHODOLOGY: Together with University of Georgia Health Center's Sydney Felker, Estes recruited 545 students for four experiments involving a 3-D mental rotation task that measures a person's spatial skills.
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Impatient? It May Be Hurting Your Credit Score
The New York Times: Remember when you were a kid and your parents harped on the importance of “delayed gratification” to get ahead in life? (You know: Put that birthday money in the piggy bank and save for something nice, instead of blowing it all now on Milky Way bars.) Well, it turns out that your propensity to wait (or not) is also reflected in your credit score, according to a study from researchers at Columbia and Stanford published online in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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A Thing or Two About Twins
National Geographic: Every summer, on the first weekend in August, thousands of twins converge on Twinsburg, Ohio, a small town southeast of Cleveland named by identical twin brothers nearly two centuries ago. They come, two by two, for the Twins Days Festival, a three-day marathon of picnics, talent shows, and look-alike contests that has grown into one of the world's largest gatherings of twins. Dave and Don Wolf of Fenton, Michigan, have been coming to the festival for years. Like most twins who attend, they enjoy spending time with each other.
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Prejudice Is A Basic Human Need
Science 2.0: Prejudice is just bigotry that arises from flawed ideology, right? Not so, say the authors of a new paper. They contend prejudice stems from a deeper psychological need and it is associated with a particular way of thinking. People who aren't comfortable with ambiguity and want to make quick and firm decisions are also prone to making generalizations about others. People who are prejudiced feel a much stronger need to make quick and firm judgments and decisions in order to reduce ambiguity. And, they argue, it's virtually impossible to change this basic way that people think.
