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Sounds true, but you seem like a liar
The Boston Globe: Can you spot a liar? No, but you can sense a liar. That’s the implication of new research from psychologists at the University of California Berkeley. After watching videos of suspects being interrogated about a mock crime, people couldn’t reliably discriminate guilt from innocence when explicitly asked to do so.
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Steven Pinker’s Mind Games
The New York Times: Steven Pinker is every bit the populist. All but three of his nine books are aimed at the general public (“The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined” is available in 21 formats and editions; the CD comes out this week). Dr. Pinker’s teaching is similarly accessible. Just look at the test questions here, culled from one of his Harvard courses, “Psychological Science.” He explains his approach: “The questions that psychology tackles are the ones that obsess us in everyday life: family relations, sexuality, kindness and aggression, the reliability of knowledge.
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Smartphone game designed to reduce anxiety shows promise in study
CBS: Anxiety relief could be at your fingertips just by playing a game on your smartphone, new research suggests. Not just any game, though. A professor of psychology and neuroscience teamed up with app developers to design a game called Personal Zen that incorporates the latest science to clinically reduce anxiety levels while you play. Dr. Tracy Dennis, the game's creator and a professor at Hunter College in New York, says the game helps fill a gap in the mental health care system.
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Your Brain Has No Idea Where It’s Going
TIME: Want proof that your brain isn’t as smart as it assumes it is? Take this pop quiz: Say you’re standing at 42nd St. in Manhattan waiting for an uptown bus and plan to get off at 52nd St. Say a person on the opposite side of the avenue is waiting for a downtown bus and plans to get off at 32nd St. Whose trip will cover a greater distance? Neither, obviously, since they’re both 10 blocks. Now try telling your lyin’ brain that. The fact is, your trip will somehow feel like it should be shorter and the person across the street will feel the same way about the trip going in the other direction.
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Procrastinating on those taxes? Blame your genes
Los Angeles Times: New research suggests the Internal Revenue Service should expand the list of acceptable explanations for procrastinators' yearly extension requests and late tax filings. Two possibilities: "I was born this way" and "failure to evolve." Procrastination, suggests a new study, is an evolved trait that likely served humans well in a time when finding food and water and fending off prey were job one. For man in the state of nature, pondering lofty goals for an indistinct future was sure to result in an early demise. The inclination to defer unpleasant but necessary tasks appears to coexist intimately with the trait of impulsiveness.
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Global Warming Scare Tactics
The New York Times: IF you were looking for ways to increase public skepticism about global warming, you could hardly do better than the forthcoming nine-part series on climate change and natural disasters, starting this Sunday on Showtime. A trailer for “Years of Living Dangerously” is terrifying, replete with images of melting glaciers, raging wildfires and rampaging floods. “I don’t think scary is the right word,” intones one voice. “Dangerous, definitely.” Showtime’s producers undoubtedly have the best of intentions. There are serious long-term risks associated with rising greenhouse gas emissions, ranging from ocean acidification to sea-level rise to decreasing agricultural output. ...
