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How To Fight Racial Bias When It’s Silent And Subtle
NPR: In the popular imagination and in conventional discourse -- especially in the context of highly charged news events such as the shooting of Trayvon Martin -- prejudice is all about hatred and animosity. Scientists agree there's little doubt that hate-filled racism is real, but a growing body of social science research suggests that racial disparities and other biased outcomes in the criminal justice system, in medicine and in professional settings can be explained by unconscious attitudes and stereotypes. Subtle biases are linked to police cadets being more likely to shoot unarmed black men than they are unarmed white men.
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Wait, Have I Been Here Before? The Curious Case of Déjà Vu
Smithsonian Magazine: Déjà vu is a rare occurrence, but you know it when you feel it. As you walk through a new city for the first time, something familiar clicks in your mind, giving you pause. You’ve definitely been here before. But you haven’t. So what gives? Well, no one really knows for sure. The origin of déjà vu (French for “already seen”), a sense of familiarity with something entirely new, remains hidden somewhere deep in our brains. The phenomenon is difficult to study—most people, when they experience déjà vu, aren’t hooked up to a bunch of electrodes, with clipboard-toting researchers at the ready. ...
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Employers: Facebook Party Pics Don’t Always Reflect Employees’ Bad Judgment
TIME: A picture may be worth a thousand words, and party pics posted on Facebook speak volumes for employers sifting through job applicants, right? Maybe not. While recent concerns about employers plumbing social media for information about both current and potential employees have led many users to adjust their privacy settings and posting habits, a new study found that college students who posted images of themselves enjoying a drink or two, or even using drugs were just as responsible and hard-working as those who did not advertise their partying. ...
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science. Time in Perspective Andrei Gorea and Janice Hau Researchers know that the perceived size of an object increases as its perceived distance from an observer increases (Emmert's law) and that the perceived time interval between two consecutively occurring stimuli increases when the distance between them is greater (Kappa effect). What happens when these two perceptual phenomena are induced together? The researchers found that people overestimated the perceived duration of objects moving in a distant plane relative to the perceived duration of the same objects moving in a closer plane.
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The Psychology of Exile
The Huffington Post: When I was in middle school, one of the assigned readings was a story called "The Man Without a Country." It was written by Edward Everett Hale in 1863, and told the story of a young American army lieutenant, Philip Nolan, who is tried for treason along with Aaron Burr. During the trial, he angrily denounces his country, declaring his wish to never hear mention of the United States again, and the shocked judge complies: He sentences Nolan to spend the rest of his life in exile, aboard U.S. warships, where he will hear no word of life in America. ... The findings were clear. Those facing a life of loneliness were more apt to believe in supernatural agents of all kinds.
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How brain lets us hear our inner voice
Deccan Chronicle: A new study has looked at a possible brain mechanism that could explain how we hear the inner voice in the absence of actual sound. In two experiments, researcher Mark Scott of the University of British Columbia found evidence that a brain signal called corollary discharge - a signal that helps us distinguish the sensory experiences we produce ourselves from those produced by external stimuli - plays an important role in our experiences of internal speech. Corollary discharge is a kind of predictive signal generated by the brain that helps to explain, for example, why other people can tickle us but we can't tickle ourselves.
