-
Psychological Scientists Ask How Well—or Badly—We Remember Together
The social nature of memory has fast become a keen and enduring area of interest for cognitive scientists. Visit Page
-
Read a Book, Stay Connected
U.S. News & World Report (Healthday): Reading a book can satisfy the crucial human need for belonging, a new study has found. The research involved 140 university students who were given 30 minutes to read a selected passage from either the vampire novel Twilight or the wizard novel Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. The passages focused on the lives of either vampires or wizards. Read the whole story: U.S. News & World Report (Healthday)
-
Does Taking Dietary Supplements Lead to Bad Health Choices?
ABC News Radio: New research suggests that people who take dietary supplements may make worse decisions for their health than those who don't. According to the study, published in Psychological Science, the action of taking supplements leads people to believe they are not susceptible to the health consequences of too little exercise or an unhealthy diet. Read the whole story: ABC News Radio
-
Facial Attraction
What makes a man or a woman attractive? We all have our individual preferences, but research has found a trend. A study published in Psychological Science found that there’s more to “masculinity” in men and “femininity” in women that makes them attractive to the opposite gender. Researchers created a computer program that analyzed thousands of male and female faces and the ratings they received from various opposite-gender volunteers. They looked at 50 different dimensions of attractiveness and divided them into two categories – “shape” (e.g. plumpness of lips) and “reflectance” (e.g. lightness or darkness of face).
-
Obama, lost in thought
The Washington Post: When I covered George W. Bush’s White House, my job was made easier by the simplicity of the subject. The president had a few defining mantras — Cut taxes! Rally the base! Terrorists hate freedom! With us or against us! — and most of his decisions could be understood, even predicted, by applying one of the overarching philosophies. With President Obama, there is no such luxury. The political right is befuddled as it tries to explain him: First, Obama was a tyrant and a socialist; now he’s a weakling who refuses to lead. Read the Whole Story: The Washington Post
-
Ostracism hurts—but how? Shedding light on a silent, invisible abuse
Humans need to belong. Yet they also commonly leave others out. Animals abandon the weakest to ensure the survival of the fittest. So do kindergartners and ’tweens, softball players and office workers. Common though they are, rejection and exclusion hurt. Endured for a long time, ostracism leaves people feeling depressed and worthless, resigned to loneliness or desperate for attention—in extreme cases, suicidal or homicidal. Yet ostracism “was essentially ignored by social scientists for 100 years,” says Purdue University psychologist Kipling D. Williams.
