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A Match Made in the Code
The New York Times: New Orleans — In the quest to find true love, is filling out a questionnaire on a Web site any more scientific than praying to St. Valentine? Yes, according to psychologists at eHarmony, an online company that claims its computerized algorithms will help match you with a “soul mate.” But this claim was criticized in a psychology journal last year by a team of academic researchers, who concluded that “no compelling evidence supports matching sites’ claims that mathematical algorithms work.” In response, eHarmony’s senior research scientist, Gian C. Gonzaga, went into the academic lions’ den known as S.P.S.P.
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What a Mess: Chaos and Creativity
One of the most influential ideas about crime prevention to come out in recent years is something called the “broken windows theory.” According to this theory, small acts of deviance—littering, graffiti, broken windows—will, if ignored, escalate into more serious crime. In practice, this theory leads to zero tolerance of public disorder and petty crime. Both theory and practice have been embraced by some big city mayors, most notably Rudy Giuliani, who credited the strategy with significantly cutting serious crime in 1990s New York City. The idea has been controversial from the start, for many reasons, but it does get some empirical support from psychological science.
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Being Stoic for the Spouse’s Sake Comes at a High Cost
Among life’s many tragedies, the death of a child is one that is perhaps the greatest for parents. No matter what the age of the child or the cause of death, the irrefutable fact of the loss is one that shatters the normal cycle of life, leaving parents traumatized and often incapacitated by grief. Research on coping with bereavement has focused primarily on the individual, despite the fact that family and married relationships are all profoundly disrupted by the loss. But in the wealth of studies about parental grief, little attention has been paid to precisely how couples relate to each other as they struggle to come to terms with the death of a child.
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Powerful People Are Looking Out For Their Future Selves
Psychological research suggests that people who feel powerful are more likely to save money, in part because they feel a stronger connection with their future selves.
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The Power of One: The Psychology of Charity
The Huffington Post: Mother Teresa famously said: "If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will." There are worse people to turn to for lessons in human charity, and here Calcutta's celebrated missionary also showed an astute grasp of cognitive psychology -- and its paradoxes. Our compassion and generosity should grow as the number of poor and suffering multiplies, but the opposite seems to occur. Some numbers are just too big and abstract to grasp, so they lose their power. ... The results were clear, and much like the earlier findings.
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Neuroeconomics: How Brain Science Matters to Business
Forbes: At first glance, a neuroscientist and a business school might seem an odd fit. But in fact economists have been paying increasing attention to how the brain works. Christine Looser discusses her research on how the brain detects aliveness — and the possible implications for organizations and advertisers — in this article by Carmen Nobel, which first appeared on the HBS Working Knowledge website. Humans are often delighted by objects with vaguely humanoid characteristics—think Pet Rocks, toy robots, or sock puppets. But there is a point at which an object looks almost human, yet not quite human enough, and the result is disturbing. It’s called the uncanny valley.
