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Perfect Pitch May Not Be Absolute After All
People who think they have perfect pitch may not be as in tune as they think, according to a new study in which people failed to notice a gradual change in pitch while listening to music.
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Online Dating Really Can Lead to Love
Science: Millions of people first met their spouses through online dating. But how have those marriages fared compared with those of people who met in more traditional venues such as bars or parties? Pretty well, according to a new study. A survey of nearly 20,000 Americans reveals that marriages between people who met online are at least as stable and satisfying as those who first met in the real world—possibly more so. When online dating started gaining widespread attention a decade ago, many people considered it creepy. But after the exponential growth of dating websites such as Match and OkCupid, online dating has become a mainstream activity.
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Can’t We All Just Get Along? What Psychology Tells Us About Political Gridlock
LiveScience: The U.S. government is broken. That is how Diane Halpern, a cognitive psychologist at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif., opens her talks on the psychology of political partisanship. The divisions between the Republican and Democratic parties are so pronounced and polarized these days that Halpern says the current political climate is one that is characterized by hyperpartisanship. With the parties unable to agree, legislative measures are increasingly being held up in Congress, leading to more acrimony and political gridlock.
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Women are better at remembering new faces (and here’s how we do it)
NBC News: So you're at a party, and you see a new face in the room, someone you haven't met yet. You introduce yourself, and it turns out -- you totally have met this person before. (Maybe even a couple times before.) You are probably feeling very awkward. And you're also probably a guy. A new study shows that women are better than men at remembering new names and faces, something past research has also shown. But this new paper, just published in the journal Psychological Science, also suggests the reason why women are so good at it: In the first few moments that we meet someone, we tend to take in more details about the new face in front of us.
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Zazes, Flurps and the Moral World of Kids
The Wall Street Journal: Here's a question. There are two groups, Zazes and Flurps. A Zaz hits somebody. Who do you think it was, another Zaz or a Flurp? It's depressing, but you have to admit that it's more likely that the Zaz hit the Flurp. That's an understandable reaction for an experienced, world-weary reader of The Wall Street Journal. But here's something even more depressing—4-year-olds give the same answer. In my last column, I talked about some disturbing new research showing that preschoolers are already unconsciously biased against other racial groups. Where does this bias come from?
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The Riddle of Consciousness
The New Yorker: A few weeks ago, while staying with my in-laws, my four-month-old son woke up at two-thirty in the morning. He was hungry, and, knowing that he would not be coaxed back to sleep without a bottle, I brought him downstairs to the kitchen, where his crying stopped abruptly. He clearly recognized that he had arrived in an unfamiliar place, and he became fully absorbed in understanding where he was and how he’d gotten there. He was searingly alert; he craned his head and his eyes darted around. The eight minutes or so that it took it to warm the bottle, usually a time of intense complaint, passed with hardly a peep.
