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Study Suggests Oxytocin Makes People Trusting, but Not Gullible
Oxytocin (OT) is a hormone that plays an important role in social behavior—it has even been nicknamed "the love hormone" and "liquid trust." Increased levels of OT have been associated with greater caring, generosity, and trust. But does OT increase people's trust in just anybody or does it act more selectively? Psychological scientist Moïra Mikolajczak from the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium) and her colleagues investigated just how trusting OT can make us. In this experiment, volunteers received either a placebo or OT nasal spray.
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Sign Language Speakers’ Hands, Mouths Operate Separately
When people are communicating in sign languages, they also move their mouths. But scientists have debated whether mouth movements resembling spoken language are part of the sign itself or are connected directly to English. In a new study on British Sign Language, signers made different mistakes in the sign and in the mouthing—which means the hand and lip movements are separate in the signer's brain, not part of the same sign. David P. Vinson, of University College London, and his colleagues Robin L. Thompson, Robert Skinner, Neil Fox, and Gabriella Vigliocco planned to do basic research on how signers process language.
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People With “Fused” Identities Are Willing to Die for Their Social Group
People who are "fused" with a group—a bond even stronger than group identification—will take extreme actions to protect other group members, but not outsiders, conclude researchers in a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. This intense bond to a group may help explain the actions of suicide bombers. Psychological scientist William B. Swann, Jr., of the University of Texas, came up with the concept of identity fusion when talking with a graduate student and a Spanish colleague about terrorism. "We started talking about terrorists and what can cause somebody to engage in terrorism.
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Smokers Trying to Give Up – Don’t Stop Thinking About Cigarettes
Blocking thoughts of cigarettes helps reduce smokers’ intake at first, but means they smoke more than usual when they stop suppressing, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study was carried out by researchers at St. George’s, University of London and the University of Hertfordshire. Co-author Dr. James Erskine, a psychologist at St. George’s, says the study shows that many smokers attempting to give up—as well as people trying to quit other vices—may be thwarted by the very technique they use to stop.
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Preschoolers Use Statistics to Understand Others
Children are natural psychologists. By the time they're in preschool, they understand that other people have desires, preferences, beliefs, and emotions. But how they learn this isn't clear. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that children figure out another person's preferences by using a topic you'd think they don’t encounter until college: statistics. In one experiment, children aged 3 and 4 saw a puppet named "Squirrel" remove five toys of the same type from a container full of toys and happily play with them. Across children, the toys that Squirrel removed were the same (for example, all five were blue flowers).
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An intuitive sense of property
Americans like to own their homes, and the rules and conventions for ownership are generally well understood. So it's easy to forget that in many corners of the globe the rules are more ambiguous--and more open to challenge. Indeed, there are an estimated one billion squatters in the world today--people who, mostly out of necessity, are living on property they do not own and cannot afford. Squatters rarely have a voice, but in a few industrialized cities where they do, their claims are usually founded on the idea of improvement.
