-
Motivation by Anticipation: Expecting Rapid Feedback Enhances Performance
There are a number of factors that influence how well we do in school, including the amount of time we study and our interest in a subject. Now, according to new findings in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, how quickly we expect to receive our grades may also influence how we perform. Psychological scientists Keri L. Kettle and Gerald Häubl of the University of Alberta in Canada wanted to investigate how the timing of expected feedback impacts individuals’ performance. For this experiment, they recruited students enrolled in a class that required each student to give a 4-minute oral presentation.
-
It’s the Thought That Counts: Helping Behavior in Infants May Be Determined by Previous Interactions
We are usually eager to assist people who have helped us in the past. These reciprocal relationships are an important part of adult interactions and foster cooperation in society. New findings, reported in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest that this reciprocal behavior may have early beginnings and can be demonstrated in children as young as 21-months-old. Psychological scientists Kristen A. Dunfield and Valerie A. Kuhlmeier from Queen’s University in Canada wanted to examine the specificity of infants’ helping behavior — that is, if they are likelier to help one person over another.
-
Study Suggests Environment May Impact Apes’ Ability to Understand Declarative Communication
When we notice somebody pointing at something, we automatically look in the direction of the gesture. In humans, the ability to understand this type of gesturing (known as declarative communication) may seem to be an automatic response, but it is actually a sign of sophisticated communication behavior. Numerous studies have tried to determine if great apes (for example, chimpanzees and bonobos) are able to understand declarative communication, but results have been mixed.
-
Talking Your Way to Happiness: Well-being Is Related to Having Less Small Talk and More Substantive Conversations
Is a happy life filled with trivial chatter or reflective and profound conversations? Psychological scientists Matthias R. Mehl, Shannon E. Holleran, and C. Shelby Clark from the University of Arizona, along with Simine Vazire of Washington University in St. Louis investigated whether happy and unhappy people differ in the types of conversations they tend to engage in. Volunteers wore an unobtrusive recording device called the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) over four days. This device periodically records snippets of sounds as participants go about their lives.
-
Darkness Increases Dishonest Behavior
Darkness can conceal identity and encourage moral transgressions; thus Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in “Worship” in The Conduct of Life (1860), “as gaslight is the best nocturnal police, so the universe protects itself by pitiless publicity.” New research in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that darkness may also induce a psychological feeling of illusory anonymity, just as children playing “hide and seek” will close their eyes and believe that other cannot see them, the experience of darkness, even one as subtle as wearing a pair of sunglasses, triggers the belief that we are warded from others’ attention and inspections.
-
Does the Devil Really Wear Prada? The Psychology of Anthropomorphism and Dehumanization
People talk to their plants, pray to humanlike gods, name their cars, and even dress their pets up in clothing. We have a strong tendency to give nonhuman entities human characteristics (known as anthropomorphism), but why? In a new report in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychological scientists Adam Waytz from Harvard University and Nicholas Epley and John T. Cacioppo from University of Chicago, examine the psychology of anthropomorphism.
