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Yours, Mine, Ours: When You and I Share Perspectives
While reading a novel, as the author describes the main character washing dishes or cooking dinner, we will often create a mental image of someone in the kitchen performing these tasks. Sometimes we may even imagine ourselves as the dishwasher or top chef in these scenarios. Why do we imagine these scenes differently- when do we view the action from an outsider’s perspective and when do we place ourselves in the main character’s shoes? Psychologist Tad T. Brunyé from the US Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center (NSRDEC) and Tufts University, along with Tali Ditman, Caroline R. Mahoney and Holly A. Taylor from Tufts University and Jason S.
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Study Suggests Collective Religious Rituals, Not Religious Devotion, Spur Support for Suicide Attacks
In a new study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychologists Jeremy Ginges and Ian Hansen from the New School for Social Research along with psychologist Ara Norenzayan from the University of British Columbia conducted a series of experiments investigating the relationship between religion and support for acts of parochial altruism, including suicide attacks. Suicide attacks are an extreme form of “parochial altruism”—they combine a parochial act (the attacker killing members from other groups) with altruism (the attacker sacrificing themselves for the group).
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Is Difficult Better? Study Reveals We Tend to Ignore Simple Items While Pursuing Goals
Try the following experiment with two young children. To one child, hold a toy out just beyond their grasp and watch them bounce all over the place trying to reach it. With the second child, just hand the toy over to them. Is the first child likely to find the toy more interesting than the other child? When we are pursuing a goal, we need to carefully consider the best ways of achieving it. If we come across something very difficult, how will that affect our ability to meet our goal? University of Chicago psychologists Aparna A. Labroo and Sara Kim investigated the extent that subjective feelings of difficulty are associated with an increased appeal towards a product.
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If It’s Hard to Say, It Must be Risky
We all have different criteria for what we consider risky. However, numerous studies have suggested that we tend to perceive familiar products and activities as being less risky and hazardous than unfamiliar ones. If something is familiar, the thinking goes, it is comfortable and safe. But how do we know if something is familiar? We often rely on a simple shortcut: If it is easy to perceive, remember or pronounce, we have probably seen it before. If so, will a product’s name and how easy it is to pronounce, affect how we view the product? Will it seem safer when its name is easy to pronounce?
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Study Indicates How We Maintain Visual Details In Short Term Memory
Working memory (also known as short term memory) is our ability to keep a small amount of information active in our mind. This is useful for information we need to know on-the-fly, such as a phone number or the few items we need to pick up from the grocery store. We hang on to the information for a brief period of time, just long enough to make a phone call or get through the checkout line, and then we forget it forever. We receive much of our information through our visual system, but it was unknown how much of this visual information is actively involved in short term memory. Psychologists John T. Serences from the University of California, San Diego, along with Edward F.
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The Liberating Effects of Losing Control
Self-control is one of our most cherished values. We applaud those with the discipline to regulate their appetites and actions, and we try hard to instill this virtue in our children. We celebrate the power of the mind to make hard choices and keep us on course. But is it possible that willpower can sometimes be an obstacle rather than a means to happiness and harmony? Tufts University psychologists Evan Apfelbaum and Samuel Sommers were intrigued by the notion that too much self-control may indeed have a downside—and that relinquishing some power might be paradoxically tonic, both for individuals and for society. They explored the virtue of powerlessness in the arena of race relations.
