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The WEIRD Evolution of Human Psychology
Scientific American: Does psychology’s over-reliance on American undergraduates distort our image of the human species? Imagine that you’re in a room with 100 psychopaths. The first thing you’ll probably want to do is leave that room. However, once you do, you discover a booth installed with one-way glass where you can watch what’s taking place without anyone seeing you. Comfortably seated, you observe a strange experiment taking place. A few of the individuals have on white coats and are carrying around clipboards while most are being run through a battery of psychological tests. Slowly the frantic activity begins to make sense.
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Babies learn who to trust at early age
ABC Science: You can fool them once, but babies will not be fooled again if adults trick them, according to a new Canadian study. Infants normally mimic sounds, facial expressions and actions they observe but researchers at Concordia University in Montreal found that if an adult tricks them, they will no longer follow along with that person. The findings published in the journal Infant Behavior and Development bolster previous evidence that infants can differentiate between credible and un-credible sources, the study says.
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Creativity Linked to Rule Bending
Scientific American: Why do cheaters cheat? Perhaps because they can think up original ways to avoid work: a new study finds that creativity is tied to a willingness to cheat. The work is in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. [Francesca Gino and Dan Ariely, "The dark side of creativity: Original thinkers can be more dishonest"] The teacher hands back copies of a multiple-choice test where you circled your answers. She then tells you to transfer your answers to a sheet where you fill in circles next to each answer. But your copy of the test includes her marks for the correct answers.
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In praise of healthy sins
Calgary Herald: Everything in moderation. I think of those words as my mother's buzz phrase. After decades of scare stories about the dangers of red meat, alcohol and sexually transmitted diseases, it's a wonder anyone gets out of bed in the morning. I'm not about to minimize the dangers of any of those things, but whenever I feel like adopting a more ascetic lifestyle devoid of the dangers of eating, drinking and generally being alive, I try to think of my mom's advice: "Everything in moderation." The good news is the science that scares us every time we consider buying the rib-eye instead of oatcakes can also be used to justify a more balanced approach to living.
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Why Aren’t We Smarter Already? Evolutionary Limits on Cognition
We put a lot of energy into improving our memory, intelligence, and attention. There are even drugs that make us sharper, such as Ritalin and caffeine. But maybe smarter isn’t really all that better. A new paper published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, warns that there are limits on how smart humans can get, and any increases in thinking ability are likely to come with problems. The authors looked to evolution to understand about why humans are only as smart as we are and not any smarter.
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How Impatience Kills Your Credit Score
Forbes: Everything seems to come back to marshmallows in the end. You may recall the famous 1972 Stanford psychology study, conducted by Walter Mischel, in which a group of kids were presented with a plate of marshmallows and told that if they could wait and not eat them now, they’d get a better reward later. When the adults left the room, some of the kids stuffed marshmallows into their mouths with abandon, while others fought back the urge and waited it out.
