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The Why Factor: Swearing
BBC: Why do a few, select words have such power to shock and offend? With help from swearing historian Melissa Mohr, Mike Williams traces the history of taboo language from Roman times to the present day and hears how cultural taboos have shaped offensive language down the centuries. He talks to American psychological scientist Timothy Jay of the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts about why we swear and discovers that children start using profane language at a much earlier age than you might imagine. And he meets psychologist Dr Richard Stephens who persuades him to take part in two swearing experiments, one of them rather painful, with some surprising results. Read the whole story: BBC
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The Limits of Memory for Witnesses of Crime
Pacific Standard: Armed robbery. Bank hold-ups. Sleight-of-hand shoplifting. While not all of these crimes are violent, what they all have in common is the sudden, stressful position they can often put eyewitnesses and victims in—namely, the need to quickly assess a situation and react in just the right way. Does this robber really have a gun in her pocket? When the suspected shoplifter vehemently denies it, when is it time to search his bag? Our brains seek out, collect, and analyze countless cues in any given interaction, which all add up and tell us—consciously or no—who is lying, who is dangerous, and what action we should take.
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Why you can’t stop checking your phone
The Boston Globe: Drive for long enough in America, and you’re bound to see someone texting behind the wheel. Maybe it’ll be the guy ahead of you, his head bobbing up and down as he tries to balance his attention between his screen and his windshield. Or maybe it’ll be the woman weaving into your lane, thumbing at her phone while she holds it above the dashboard. Maybe it’ll be you. A recent study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute showed that drivers who are texting are twice as likely to crash, or almost crash, as those who are focused on the road.
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Opferzahl bei Katastrophen bestimmt Spendenhöhe (Number of victims of disasters determine donations)
Die Welt: Die Zahl der Toten nach einer Naturkatastrophe hat mehr Einfluss auf die Spendenbereitschaft als die Zahl der Überlebenden. Das geht aus einer Studie der Rotterdam School of Management hervor, die im Fachjournal "Psychological Science" veröffentlicht wurde. "Unsere Forschung zeigt, dass Spender gemeinhin dazu neigen, nicht zu prüfen, wer eigentlich die Hilfe empfängt", erklärte der leitende Forscher Ioannis Evangelidis. Die Forscher untersuchten zunächst die humanitäre Hilfe, die für Naturkatastrophen zwischen 2000 und 2010 geleistet wurde und befragten Probanden zu ihrer Spendenbereitschaft. Read the whole story: Die Welt
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Tip-of-the-Tongue Moments May be Benign
Despite the common fear that those annoying tip-of-the-tongue moments are signals of age-related memory decline, the two phenomena appear to be independent, according to findings published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Veterans With Gulf War Illness Show Brain Changes Linked to Memory Deficits
New research illuminates definitive brain alterations in troops with Gulf War Illness (GWI) thought to result from the exposure to neurotoxic chemicals, including sarin gas, during the first Persian Gulf War. “More than 250,000 troops, or approximately 25% of those deployed during the first Persian Gulf War, have been diagnosed with Gulf War Illness (GWI). Although medical professionals have recognized the chronic and often disabling illness for almost two decades, brain changes that uniquely identify GWI have been elusive until now,” explained researcher Bart Rypma, principal investigator at the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas.
