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Why To Exercise Today Twofer: Better Self-Image And Better Social Life
wbur NPR: Personally, my favorite explanation for why a more sound body leads to a more sound mind is pure chemistry, the hormonal effects of exercise on the brain. But here’s a nice new study out in the journal Clinical Psychological Science that found a dual explanation in thousands of Dutch teen girls: Improved self-image and improved social life. From the press release: Karin Monshouwer of the Trimbos Institute in the Netherlands and colleagues at Trimbos and VU University Medical Center specifically wanted to examine two existing explanations for the link between exercise and mental health.
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‘Power Punch Broccoli’? New Names Spice Up Veggies
ABC: Forget plain old carrots and boring broccoli. Rebranding these veggies as "X-ray Vision Carrots" or "Power Punch Broccoli" helps more kids eat healthy at school, according to a new study.
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Bias Persists for Women of Science, a Study Finds
The New York Times: Science professors at American universities widely regard female undergraduates as less competent than male students with the same accomplishments and skills, a new study by researchers at Yale concluded. As a result, the report found, the professors were less likely to offer the women mentoring or a job. And even if they were willing to offer a job, the salary was lower. The bias was pervasive, the scientists said, and probably reflected subconscious cultural influences rather than overt or deliberate discrimination.
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Language and Perception – Insights from Psychological Science
New research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, examines the nuanced relationship between language and different types of perception. Bilingual Infants Can Tell Unfamiliar Languages Apart Speaking more than one language can improve our ability to control our behavior and focus our attention, recent research has shown. But are there any advantages for bilingual children before they can speak in full sentences? We know that bilingual children can tell if a person is speaking one of their native languages or the other, even when there is no sound, by watching the speaker’s mouth for visual cues.
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Climate change deniers ‘are either extreme free marketeers or conspiracy theorists’
The Telegraph: The study, to be published in the journal Psychological Science, also found that those who reject the scientific consensus on the human contribution to climate change are more likely to to reject other scientific findings such as the linkage between tobacco and lung cancer or between HIV and Aids. The paper, titled “NASA faked the moon landing – Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science”, was based on a survey of more than 1000 visitors to blogs dedicated to discussion of climate change. “We find that endorsement of a laissez-faire conception of free-market economics predicts rejection of climate science,” the paper says.
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Money Degrades Our Ability to Empathize
Pacific Standard: Given the tone-deaf comments a wealthy political figure recently made while addressing some equally affluent donors, you’d almost think money makes a person less able to relate to the feelings of others. And, according to newly published research, you’d be absolutely right. “Financial incentives lead individuals to see themselves as less interdependent with others, and consequently render them less able to accurately infer what others are feeling,” report psychologists Christine Ma-Kellams and Jim Blascovich. Specifically, they found people judged the emotional states of others less accurately when they were offered a monetary reward for a correct response.
