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What makes a face appealing to the opposite sex?
USA Today: While it may be true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, a new computer model helps reveal what's behind peoples' ideas of facial attractiveness. Many studies have concluded that people are drawn to "average" faces and those who fit the conventional notion of attractiveness for a person's gender — "masculinity" in men and "femininity" in women. But psychologists Christopher P. Said of New York University and Alexander Todorov of Princeton University believe attractiveness is more complex than that, so they created a computer model to identify and measure those complexities. Read the whole story: USA Today
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Snooze Control: Fatigue, Air Traffic and Safety
It is safe to say that we are all guilty of these at some point in our day – stifling a yawn in the middle of the work day, eyelids growing heavy and having the
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Maybe Just Drunk Enough to Remember
The New York Times: Drunken recollections, especially in rape trials, rarely play well to jurors. In a society that can be quick to turn a skeptical eye toward women who say they were raped — she was scantily dressed, she’s promiscuous, she’s just angry at him — prosecutors of sex crimes say one of their biggest obstacles in the courtroom is alcohol. A rape trial in Manhattan is the latest example. The accuser, who completed her testimony Monday, admitted that she was so drunk on the night in question that she could not remember most of what happened, even the cab ride home.
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Want to Ace That Test? Cheer Up!
Studying for a stressful exam can sometimes put us in a bad mood. The last thing we want to do is put on a happy face, but research suggests cheerfulness may help us perform better. A study published in Psychological Science found that being in a positive mood can improve performance on certain cognitive tasks. Volunteers were asked to watch a YouTube video that was found to elicit either a positive, neutral, or negative mood; then they completed learning tasks on a computer. Volunteers who were in a positive mood performed better at tasks that involved selecting rules and testing hypotheses than the volunteers who were put in a neutral or negative mood.
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I Know You Can – So I Believe I Can
Do you ever get unusually anxious before taking a test? Do you ever choke and blank-out during a test? If so, research suggests you try thinking about a competent person before you take the test. You’ll perform better than you think you will. A study published in Psychological Science found that people who have test anxiety perform better on a test when they are primed with competency before taking it. Volunteers were measured on their test anxiety, and were placed in either a competency prime group or a control group.
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The Hazards of Teamwork: Does Group Study Disrupt Learning?
The classic 1973 film The Paper Chase explores the challenges of first-year law students at Harvard, focusing on a handful who come together to form a study group. These groups are formed to manage the vast amount of learning that 1-L students are expected to absorb, on everything from contracts to property to the Constitution—but in this case the collaboration is a disaster. A combination of stress and competitiveness and pettiness sabotages the group effort, leaving the individual students on their own as they face the rigors of final exams. Study groups are very popular—and not only in law school.
