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The Science Of Smiles, Real And Fake
The notion that you can smile your way to happiness is an enduring one. Back in the 1800s, Charles Darwin was among the first to come up with what modern scientists further developed into the "facial feedback hypothesis." That's the idea that smiling can make you happier and frowning can make you sadder or angrier — that changing your facial expression can intensify or even transform your mood. Dick Van Dyke sang about the phenomenon — and so did Nat King Cole. And it is still taught in psychology classes today. But researchers are now finding that this phenomenon may be more complicated than they once thought.
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Online Game Helps Fight the Spread of Fake News: Study
An online game that allows people to deploy Twitter bots, photo-shop evidence and incite conspiracy theories has proven effective at raising their awareness of "fake news", a study from the University of Cambridge has found. Results from the study of 15,000 users of the "Bad News" game, launched last year by the university's Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab (CDSMLab), showed it was possible to train the public to be better at spotting propaganda. "Research suggests that fake news spreads faster and deeper than the truth, so combatting disinformation after the fact can be like fighting a losing battle," said Sander van der Linden, the CDSMLab's director.
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New Research From Psychological Science
A sample of research exploring rationality in joint action; parenting, poverty, and brain connectivity; coupling between vocabulary and reasoning; and links between visual attention and perceived emotion.
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What Dropping 17,000 Wallets Around The Globe Can Teach Us About Honesty
So picture this: You're a receptionist at, say, a hotel. Someone walks in and says they found a lost wallet but they're in a hurry. They hand it to you. What would you do? And would that answer be different if it was empty or full of cash? Those are questions researchers have been exploring; Thursday, they published their findings in the journal Science. The experiment started small, with a research assistant in Finland turning in a few wallets with different amounts of money. He would walk up to the counter of a big public place, like a bank or a post office.
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A Rational Case for Following Your Emotions
In the popular American imagination, emotion and rationality are often mutually exclusive. One is erratic, unpredictable, and often a liability; the other, cool, collected, and absent obvious feeling. And even though research suggests that people experience emotions internally in similar ways no matter their gender, many Americans still regard emotion as uniquely feminine and weak. That myth has long ruled everything from the military to the white-collar workplace, and it has played a role in systemically excluding women from professional and cultural leadership. But dismissing the value of emotion is at odds with how human feelings actually work, both interpersonally and evolutionarily.
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Psychologist Finds 2 Easy Strategies to Beat the Stress of Waiting for News
The anxiety of waiting can be brutal. Whether you’re waiting on GRE scores, job application news, health test results, or any other weighty piece of life information, some strategies for coping are more effective than others. One powerful way to deal with that sense of anxious foreboding, scientists argued in a recent paper in the Journal of Positive Psychology, is to have your mind blown. According to research conducted by scientists at University of California-Riverside’s “Life Events” lab, one good way to deal anxiety-ridden waiting is to have an “awe experience.” Psychologist Katharine Sweeny, Ph.D. describes this as a moment that helps you lose yourself in the grandeur of life.
