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Older Adults Gauge Their Partner’s Feelings Through Knowing, Not Seeing
Compared to younger adults, older people are less adept at reading emotion in their spouse’s face. But when their spouse isn’t present, older and younger adults are equally able to discern their significant others’ moods. These findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest that older adults retain the ability to make accurate judgments about others' emotions using their acquired knowledge, but not sensory cues. “When judging others’ emotions in real life, people do not exclusively rely on emotional expressions,” says lead researcher Antje Rauers of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Germany.
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How You Tune Out Your Spouse—and Why
TIME: Spouses have always had a funny way of both hearing and not hearing each other. On the one hand, the person you married is the person with whom you conduct the most intimate business of your life, and on a day to day, moment to moment basis, you must always be in communication. On the other hand, that constant stream of talk can become something of a hum—the conversational equivalent of the buzz of a fan or the thrum of an air conditioner that you hear so much you stop hearing at all. At least that’s the faintly scientific excuse I, and I suspect a lot of other husbands and wives, inwardly make when we’re caught not listening.
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How Money Worries Can Scramble Your Thinking
NPR: There's no question that dealing with mortgages, car payments and other bills takes up time and energy. But having a tight budget may also zap our ability to think clearly, scientists Thursday in the journal Science. In a series of clever experiments involving farmers in India and shoppers in New Jersey, scientists found that people are worse at solving puzzles — similar to those on the IQ test — when they're first reminded of money problems. "Financial constraints capture a lot of your attention," says Eldar Shafir, a psychologist at Princeton University, who helped lead the study. "Then there's less bandwidth left to solve problems.
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Girls’ fear of math debunked, study suggests
CBC News: While girls tend to say they feel anxious about doing math, they are not actually much more anxious than their male counterparts during math classes or exams, according to new research by German and Canadian researchers. Researchers from Humboldt University Berlin, the University of Munich and McGill University in Montreal say they've identified a key failing in previous studies that said girls are far more apprehensive about doing math than their male peers. Previous studies asked students about generalized perceptions of mathematics anxiety rather than asking them directly about their anxiety while doing math.
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Food Is Tastier When Part of a Ritual
Scientific American: Food can taste better when you’re really hungry. Now a study reveals another condition that can enhance the flavor of a meal: when it’s part of a ritual. Scientists asked volunteers to eat some chocolate. They told one group to relax for a few minutes, then eat the chocolate in any way they wanted. But another group was given these instructions: “Without unwrapping the chocolate bar, break it in half. Unwrap half of the bar and eat it. Then, unwrap the other half and eat it.” Read the whole story: Scientific American
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Selfish U.S.?: Study says country becoming more self-centered
CBS: New research shows that as culture has evolved over the last two centuries — with increasing urbanization, greater reliance on technology, and widespread availability of formal education — so has human psychology. Listen to the whole story: CBS
