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Study links willingness to cheat, viewpoint on God
Los Angeles Times: A new study on the link between one's view of God and willingness to cheat on a test is the latest example of social scientists wading into the highly charged field of religion and morality. The study, titled "Mean Gods Make Good People: Different Views of God Predict Cheating Behavior" was peer reviewed and published earlier this month in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion. In line with many previous studies, it found no difference between the ethical behavior of believers and nonbelievers. But those who believed in a loving, compassionate God were more likely to cheat than those who believed in an angry, punitive God.
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Hazy Recall as a Signal Foretelling Depression
The New York Times: OXFORD, England — The task given to participants in an Oxford University depression study sounds straightforward. After investigators read them a cue word, they have 30 seconds to recount a single specific memory, meaning an event that lasted less than one day. Cues may be positive (“loved”), negative (“heartless”) or neutral (“green”). For “rejected,” one participant answered, “A few weeks ago, I had a meeting with my boss, and my ideas were rejected.” Another said, “My brothers are always talking about going on holiday without me.” The second answer was wrong — it is not specific, and it refers to something that took place on several occasions.
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The Tricky Chemistry of Attraction
The Wall Street Journal: Much of the attraction between the sexes is chemistry. New studies suggest that when women use hormonal contraceptives, such as birth-control pills, it disrupts some of these chemical signals, affecting their attractiveness to men and women's own preferences for romantic partners. The type of man a woman is drawn to is known to change during her monthly cycle—when a woman is fertile, for instance, she might look for a man with more masculine features. Taking the pill or another type of hormonal contraceptive upends this natural dynamic, making less-masculine men seem more attractive, according to a small but growing body of evidence.
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How Right and Left Shape Right and Wrong
The Wall Street Journal: “The wise man’s heart is at his right hand,” says Ecclesiastes, “but the fool’s heart is at his left.” Islamic law says that Muslims should use their right hands alone for eating and drinking, because Satan uses his left. We may think that the preference for “right” over “left” is purely cultural, but, in fact, a growing body of evidence suggests that it is shaped by our bodily experience. Experiments find that right-handed people—and something like 90% of the population is right-handed—unconsciously prefer people and objects placed to their right; meanwhile, left-handers prefer people and things to their left. Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal
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Men ponder food and sleep as much as sex
MSNBC: Men think about sex every seven seconds, right? Not according to a new study that finds men ponder sleep and food as much as they do sex. The median number of thoughts about sex by college-age men was 18 times a day to women's 10 times a day, the study found. But the men also thought about food and sleep proportionately more. "In other words, there was nothing special about sexual thoughts," study researcher Terri Fisher, a psychologist at The Ohio State University, Mansfield, told LiveScience. "Males thought more about any of the health-related thoughts compared to females, not just thoughts about sex." Read the whole story: MSNBC
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Why We Celebrate a Killing
The New York Times: A MAN is shot in the head, and joyous celebrations break out 7,000 miles away. Although Americans are in full agreement that the demise of Osama bin Laden is a good thing, many are disturbed by the revelry. We should seek justice, not vengeance, they urge. Doesn’t this lower us to “their” level? Didn’t the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. say, “I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy”? (No, he did not, but the Twitter users who popularized that misattributed quotation last week found it inspiring nonetheless.) Why are so many Americans reluctant to join the party?
