-
New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Far-Out Thinking: Generating Solutions to Distant Analogies Promotes Relational Thinking Michael S. Vendetti, Aaron Wu, and Keith J. Holyoak The authors examined whether inducing a general mindset using a verbal-analogy task would promote more abstract thinking on a subsequent unrelated reasoning task. Participants solved analogies with near or far semantic relations, either by indicating whether the analogy was valid or invalid or by generating a valid completion for an incomplete analogy. Participants then completed a picture-mapping task that used unrelated materials.
-
Dishonesty and Creativity: Two Sides of the Same Coin?
New research shows that lying about performance on one task may increase creativity on a subsequent task by making people feel less bound by conventional rules. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “The common saying that ‘rules are meant to be broken’ is at the root of both creative performance and dishonest behavior,” says lead researcher Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School.
-
When Faced With a Hard Decision, People Tend to Blame Fate
Life is full of decisions. Some, like what to eat for breakfast, are relatively easy. Others, like whether to move cities for a new job, are quite a bit more difficult. Difficult decisions tend to make us feel stressed and uncomfortable – we don’t want to feel responsible if the outcome is less than desirable. New research suggests that we deal with such difficult decisions by shifting responsibility for the decision to fate. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “Fate is a ubiquitous supernatural belief, spanning time and place,” write researchers Aaron Kay, Simone Tang, and Steven Shepherd of Duke University.
-
Talking About Social Class Boosts Grades of First-Generation College Students
A novel one-hour intervention focused on discussions of social class can significantly narrow the achievement gap between first-generation college students and students who have a least one parent with a college degree, researchers find. The study is forthcoming Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The key to the one-time intervention’s success was raising students’ awareness of the ways that social class shapes the college experience, according to Northwestern psychological scientist Nicole Stephens.
-
New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Mismatch or Cumulative Stress: The Pathway to Depression Is Conditional on Attention Style Esther Nederhof, Johan Ormel, and Albertine J. Oldehinkel It has been suggested that people use their childhood environment to predict how their future environment will be and develop accordingly. However, on the basis of this theory, a mismatch between a childhood and an adult environment could be detrimental. Adolescents were split into attention-style groups (shifting, sustained, or more balanced) and were assessed for early life stress, recent life stress, and major depression.
-
Mindfulness Meditation May Improve Decision Making
A focused 15-minute focused-breathing meditation may help to counteract the deep-rooted sunk cost bias.
