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Mealtime routines and rituals improve flavor
Salon: It’s hard to imagine how unhygienic candle-blowing or your family’s jarring birthday overtures could possibly make eating cake more pleasurable. But, researchers at harvard and the University of Minnesota say it’s exactly the singsong and ceremony of such rituals that can drastically change our perception of what we’re eating — for the better. In a collection of studies published in the journal Psychological Science, Kathleen Vohs, a psychological scientist at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, and colleagues conducted a series of experiments to see how nonfunctional mealtime rituals affect our perception and consumption of certain foods.
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Booze, Binging and the Devil You Don’t Know
The Huffington Post: Imagine this scenario. You are meeting your boyfriend at a restaurant, intending to break up with him. You know this conversation is going to be tough, but you really don't know what his reaction will be. He could end up sobbing, or shouting, or he could just sit there in uncomfortable silence. You arrive early and order a whiskey -- a double -- to steady your nerves. ... These findings, reported in a forthcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, have some real world implications.
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The psychology of online dating
Wired UK: A set of graphs doing the rounds on Twitter recently purported to show the changes in how heterosexual and homosexual couples meet. While categories such as "through friends", "in a bar", and "at school/work" were either declining or holding steady, one category has exploded in the last decade: "met online". According to these stats, 20 percent of heterosexual couples sampled, and nearly 70 percent of same-sex couples met this way and its growth shows no signs of abating. But is dating online that different from the traditional methods on a psychological level? ...
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Going Through the Motions Improves Dance Performance
Expert ballet dancers seem to glide effortlessly across the stage, but learning the steps is both physically and mentally demanding. New research suggests that dance marking -- loosely practicing a routine by “going through the motions” -- may improve the quality of dance performance by reducing the mental strain needed to perfect the movements. The new findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest that marking may alleviate the conflict between the cognitive and physical aspects of dance practice, allowing dancers to memorize and repeat steps more fluidly.
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Ein Gorilla in der Lunge (A gorilla in the lungs)
Suddeutsche Zeitung: Das Offensichtliche trägt ein zotteliges Kostüm, stellt sich in die Mitte des Bildes und trommelt sich auf die Brust. Und was passiert? Die meisten Probanden dieses längst klassischen Tests von 1999 übersehen die Frau im Gorillakostüm, weil sie mit einer Aufgabe beschäftigt sind. Die Teilnehmer dieser Studie der Psychologen Daniel Simons und Christopher Chabris zählten die Pässe, die drei Basketballspieler in weißen T-Shirts einander zuspielten. Eine fordernde Aufgabe, denn es waren auch drei Spieler in schwarzen Hemden im Bild, die ebenfalls einen Ball hin und herwarfen.
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About-Face: Rethinking Emotions
wbur: Nearly a half-century ago, a psychologist named Paul Ekman set out to see if human beings, from Papua New Guinea to Pittsburgh, showed emotions in the same way. He went around the world, showing photographs of faces and asked people to identify the emotions shown: fear, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise. What he found, in short, was that emotions are universal. It became one of the most recognized psychological works in the world. The findings are in the first chapter in most psychology textbooks. They’re the basis for the multimillion-dollar industry built on studying facial expressions, taught to FBI agents, marketing executives, cops and spies. And they might be all wrong.
