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Men’s Interest in Babies Linked With Hormonal Responses to Sexual Stimuli
Young men’s interest in babies is associated with their physiological reactivity to sexually explicit material, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study showed that young men who reported more interest in babies showed a lower increase in testosterone in response to sexually explicit material than men who weren’t as interested in babies. “Our findings show there is a strong mind-body connection: Liking or not liking babies is related to how a man’s body – specifically, his testosterone – responds to sexual stimuli,” explains Dario Maestripieri of the University of Chicago, lead researcher on the study.
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Clinical Psychological Science: The Price of Perspective Taking: Child Depressive Symptoms Interact With Parental Empathy to Predict Immune Functioning in Parents Erika M. Manczak, Devika Basu, and Edith Chen People vary in the amount of empathy -- the tendency to affectively experience and adopt the perspective of others -- they experience. Empathy is generally considered to be a positive and desirable trait, but are there circumstances in which empathy is harmful?
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Quick Thinkers Are Charismatic
Charisma may rely on quick thinking, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The research shows that people who were able to respond more quickly to general knowledge questions and visual tasks were perceived as more charismatic by their friends, independently of IQ and other personality traits.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: A Thousand Words Are Worth a Picture: Snapshots of Printed-Word Processing in an Event-Related Potential Megastudy Stéphane Dufau, Jonathan Grainger, Katherine J. Midgley, and Phillip J. Holcomb Several large-scale studies of word recognition have been performed; however, these studies have been behavioral in nature and have not focused on the timing of component processes involved in reading. Participants completed a 960-word go/no-go lexical decision task while researchers collected electroencephalogram (EEG) data.
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Teens’ Cellphone Use Mirrors Their Offline Lives
Researchers find that teenagers’ online lives closely resemble their offline experiences, but bullying is one area where the digital age may be introducing new risks.
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A “Council of Psychological Science Advisers” Tackles Pressing Policy Issues
Some of the most urgent issues that American society faces today -- including obesity, consumer debt, risk of terrorism, and climate change -- are fundamentally influenced by decision making and behavior at both the individual and institutional levels. Despite this, policymakers have only recently begun to capitalize on insights from research in the behavioral sciences in developing policies that address these issues. A special section in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, underscores how findings from behavioral science can provide actionable solutions to societal problems. The special section, edited by Bethany A.
