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Do Sandy’s storm clouds have a silver lining?
This morning I heard a radio interview with a resident of one of New York’s storm-ravaged towns. It’s been more than a week since Sandy swept through the eastern seaboard, and locals are just starting to process the long-term implications of this natural disaster. It will be months and months before many homes and businesses are restored, and some communities will never again be the same. Yet this man concluded the interview with this thought: New Yorkers will learn from this experience, he said, and it will make us stronger. Make us stronger.
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Taking on the Challenges of Replication in Psychological Science
Psychological science has come of age. But the rights of a mature discipline carry with them responsibilities, among them the responsibility to maximize confidence in our findings through good data practices and replication. The November issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science (APS), reflects the discipline’s ongoing commitment to examine methodological issues that affect all areas of science — such as failures to replicate previous findings and problems of bias and error — with the goal of strengthening our discipline and contributing to the discussion that is taking place throughout science.
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We Need a Little Fear
The New York Times: The voters have spoken. So, what now? How will our still divided government deal with our mounting threats and challenges? Shared fear can help. A Bedouin proverb says, “Me against my brother, my brothers and me against my cousins, then my cousins and me against strangers.” Human beings are pretty good at uniting to fight at whatever level is most important at a given moment. This is why every story about a team of warriors or superheroes features an internal rivalry, but all hatchets are buried just before the climactic final battle in which the team vanquishes the external enemy.
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Facebook ‘more addictive than sex’
The Times of India: Facebook and email trump sex in terms of sheer irresistibility, researchers say. The German study used smartphone-based surveys to probe the daily desires of 205 men and women, most of whom were college age. For one week the phones, provided by the researchers, buzzed seven times daily, alerting study subjects to take a quick survey on the type, strength and timing of their desires, as well as their ability to resist them. The study found that while the desire for sex was stronger, the study subjects were more likely to cave into the desire to use media, including email and social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
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Can daydreaming boost your creativity?
kyPost: The next time you are called out for daydreaming just say that you’re working on your creative side. Psychological Science developed a study researching the links between daydreaming and creativeness. The results concluded that taking a break to let your mind run free may actually be beneficial. A link between creative problem-solving and daydreaming was found by researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara. In their study, they had participants engage in an “unusual use task”— in which they would take an object and try to figure out as many ways as possible to use it.
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The experience of awe can slow down perceived time in people’s lives
The Washington Times: As anyone trying to juggle a career, family and sleep will tell you: The one universal truth of modern life is that there are not enough hours in the day to do everything that needs to be done. If only we could stop time in its tracks or, at least, slow it down — wouldn’t that be nice? Maybe we can. Though scientists have yet to discover a way to add more hours to the day — if only — a new study by psychologists at Stanford University and the University of Minnesota brings us one step closer to that elusive goal. If you want to slow time down, then add a splash of awe to your otherwise hyperactive life.
