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Replicate This
Pacific Standard: There are few psychological effects better known—or more widely accepted—in academic halls than what is called semantic priming. Show a person a simple stimulus, something as unremarkable as a photograph of a cat. Let some time pass, then ask that same person to list as many words as possible that start with the letter c. This person is more likely not only to come up with the word cat, but to mention catlike animals such as cougars and cheetahs, because he was initially primed with that one little kitty cat. And yet, many of the classic studies that led us to our current understanding of priming have never been replicated.
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Hurting Someone Else Can Hurt You Just As Much
Experiencing ostracism -- being deliberately ignored or excluded -- hurts, but ostracizing someone else could hurt just as much, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Humans are social animals and they typically avoid causing harm to others when they can. But past experiments -- and real-life events -- suggest that people are willing to inflict harm in order to comply with authorities. Graduate student Nicole Legate, along with her advisor, Richard Ryan of the University of Rochester, and colleagues, hypothesized that complying with these kinds of directives might have psychological costs for the perpetrators.
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Leading Psychological Science Journal Launches Initiative on Research Replication
Reproducing the results of research studies is a vital part of the scientific process. Yet for a number of reasons, replication research, as it is commonly known, is rarely published. Now, a leading journal is adopting a novel way to promote and publish well-designed replications of psychological studies. Perspectives on Psychological Science, published by the Association for Psychological Science, is launching an initiative aimed at encouraging multi-center replication studies. One of the innovative features of this initiative is a new type of article in which replication study designs are peer-reviewed before data collection.
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Stress Hormone Foreshadows Postpartum Depression in New Mothers
Women who receive strong social support from their families during pregnancy appear to be protected from sharp increases in a particular stress hormone, making them less likely to develop postpartum depression, according to a new study published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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How Offices Become Complaint Departments
The New York Times: There is the ideal life, and then there is life as it really exists. We have various ways of expressing discontent over this inevitable gap, and one of the most common is complaining. ... The workplace is no exception. The office is too hot or too cold. Brenda has been making personal calls all day. The boss is making me work on a Saturday. More seriously: that manager is a bully. I think that person’s behavior was unethical. My salary is much lower than everyone else’s. Imagine a workplace with no complaining at all, and a totalitarian government comes to mind.
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Do Music Lessons Make You Smarter?
Scientific American: Practice makes progress, if not perfection, for most things in life. Generally, practicing a skill—be it basketball, chess or the tuba—mostly makes you better at whatever it was you practiced. Even related areas do not benefit much. Doing intensive basketball drills does not usually make a person particularly good at football. Chess experts are not necessarily fabulous at math, and tuba players can’t just put down their tubas and pick up cellos. ... Much of the literature makes the mistake of inferring causation from correlation, and fails to control for confounding variables.
