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Who’s Trustworthy? A Robot Can Help Teach Us
The New York Times: How do we decide whether to trust somebody? An unusual new study of college students’ interactions with a robot has shed light on why we intuitively trust some people and distrust others. While many people assume that behaviors like avoiding eye contact and fidgeting are signals that a person is being dishonest, scientists have found that no single gesture or expression consistently predicts trustworthiness. But researchers from Northeastern University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cornell recently identified four distinct behaviors that, together, appear to warn our brains that a person can’t be trusted.
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Throw like a girl? You can do better.
The Washington Post: There’s no way around it. I throw like a girl. Luckily, it’s not difficult to avoid situations in which throwing is required, and I’ve managed to do it successfully my entire adult life. Except that one time. A decade or so ago, in New York, a ball came flying over an 18-foot schoolyard fence just as I was passing by. There was no one I could hand it off to, and a gaggle of fifth-graders was waiting for me to toss it back. I had so little faith in my overarm throwing that I had to go underhand. The squeal of brakes was my first indication that the ball had ended up behind me, in the middle of Columbus Avenue.
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Why We Lie: Time Is A Factor, Study Suggests
The Huffington Post: Lying: Everyone does it, even though we know we shouldn't. So what makes us do it? Desire for acceptance, preservation of self-esteem, not wanting to get in trouble -- any number of things can play a part. But according to a new study that will be published in the journal Psychological Science, time is a huge factor. Researchers at the University of Amsterdam and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev conducted experiments where study participants rolled dice for money. In one of the experiments, participants had to roll the die three times, and the researchers weren't able to see what numbers they rolled.
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The Gregarious Salesman: Death of a Stereotype?
I had to buy a car recently, my first in many years, and I confess I couldn’t stop thinking about Jerry Lundegaard. Jerry Lundegaard is a Minneapolis car salesman, and the central character in the Coen brothers’ 1996 film classic, Fargo. He is fast-talking, weasely, dishonest. Played to great comic effect by William H. Macy, Lundegaard is a caricature of all that we expect and fear in those who are out to sell us something. Okay, so maybe some of this is my stereotyping of car salesmen, and perhaps I’m being unfair. But like a lot of stereotypes, mine has some basis in fact. Not the inept criminal part, but certainly the blustery, glad-handing, over-the-top enthusiasm.
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Taste buds and ‘tude: The food and mood link
Los Angeles Times: Research sheds light on how food affects mood and the flip side: how emotions impact taste. All day, food metaphors weave their way into our thoughts about others. Watching someone cut in line may leave a bad taste in your mouth. Your current love may be the sweetest person you know. A growing body of evidence is making clear the links between what we taste and how we feel: Repulsion is repulsion, whether caused by a shameful act or a rotten egg. "Your brain can't tell the difference between something that tastes bad and something that makes you feel morally violated," says Kendall Eskine, a cognitive psychologist at Loyola University in New Orleans.
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Science Study: verbally acknowledging fear helps dissipate it
Wired: According to a study published by a team of psychologists, telling a spider you are frightened of its ugly and terrifying self is the path to setting yourself free from a fear of arachnids. Methods of modifying human behaviour when it comes to battling fear range from shaping that behaviour through positive reinforcement or acclimatising an individual to a feared object through systematic desensitisation. Regulating emotions through positive verbal reinforcement is also a popular practice -- for instance, encouraging those afraid of spiders to approach the arachnid in question while repeating the words "that spider can't hurt me and I'm not afraid of it".
