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Your Unconscious Mind Is Better Than You Are at Detecting Lies
Pacific Standard: Can you tell if someone is lying to you? Newly published research suggests you actually have that ability—at least to an extent—but accessing it is a different story. In two experiments, researchers from the University of California-Berkeley found people are better at detecting deception using indirect methods that tap into their unconscious minds. They conclude our conscious minds, hobbled by commonly held misbeliefs, tend to trip us up.
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Does Thinking Fast Mean You’re Thinking Smarter?
Smithsonian Magazine: In 1884, at his specially built Anthropometric Laboratory in London, Sir Francis Galton charged visitors three pence to undergo simple tests to measure their height, weight, keenness of sight and “swiftness of blow with fist.” The laboratory, later moved to the South Kensington Museum, proved immensely popular—“its door was thronged by applicants waiting patiently for their turn,” Galton said—ultimately collecting data on some 17,000 individuals.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Beyond Gist: Strategic and Incremental Information Accumulation for Scene Categorization George L. Malcolm, Antje Nuthmann, and Philippe G. Schyns Scene categorization is generally thought of as a perceptually driven process, but in this study, the authors examined whether hierarchical categorization may be driven by both top-down and bottom-up processes. The authors examined the processes involved in categorizing scenes at different hierarchical levels by recording participants' eye movements as they categorized scenes at the basic or subordinate level.
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Photo Identification: The ‘Best And Worst Way’ To ID People
NPR: As an international armada of planes, ships and helicopters continues to comb the Indian Ocean for any sign of Malaysian Airlines flight 370, now missing for more than a week, Interpol confirms that two passengers aboard that flight were traveling on stolen passports. Aviation experts say the incident highlights a major security gap at many airports: It is simply too easy to board a flight using someone else's photo ID. A new study looked in to the reliability of facial recognition with photos. Researchers found that the fewer fake IDs people see, the harder it is to spot them when the do come along — and multiple traps can cloud screeners' judgment.
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Theology, Taboos, and Creative Thinking
The Huffington Post: During the 1976 presidential campaign, then-candidate Jimmy Carter famously told Playboy magazine: "I've looked on many women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times." Carter's unguarded remarks were published in the November issue, just days before the election, and they caused a broad public uproar. The campaign was already concerned about the appeal of Carter's Southern Baptist faith, and some believed this candor would tip the balance to the Republican incumbent Gerald Ford. It didn't. Carter went on to squeak out a victory, and became the country's 39th president. But the Playboy interview put evangelical Christianity in the national spotlight.
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Happiness Can Boost Employee Productivity by 10 Percent
Slate: It’s natural to believe that success will bring you happiness, but a variety of psychologists, including Harvard’s Shawn Achor, have argued that this common-sense understanding is actually backward. Success doesn’t make you happy so much as happiness makes you more successful. But how much more successful exactly, and how can you ever rigorously, scientifically test something like that? Quantifying Happiness A team of economists out of the University of Warwick in the U.K. and a German university recently attempted to find out. Their results are soon to be published in the Journal of Labour Economics.
