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The psychology of superstitions, explained
Vox: In 2013, the psychologist Daniel Kahneman published a book called Thinking Fast and Slowthat popularized a growing theory in the psychological literature. The theory outlines two main channels, or “systems,” in which we think, and how the two of them interact can explain how superstitious thoughts originate and stick around. The first way, called System 1, represents our immediate gut reactions to the world. It’s the part of our brain that thinks in stereotypes and makes snap judgments. In the case of superstitions, System 1: Read the whole story: Vox
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Does Smiling Make Cartoons Funnier?
Scientific American: A large, multi-lab replication study has found no evidence to validate one of psychology’s textbook findings: the idea that people find cartoons funnier if they are surreptitiously induced to smile. But an author of the original report—published nearly three decades ago—says that the new analysis has shortcomings, and may not represent a direct replication of his work. In 1988, Fritz Strack, a psychologist now at the University of Würzburg, Germany, and colleagues found that people who held a pen between their teeth, which induces a smile, rated cartoons as funnier than did those who held a pen between their lips, which induced a pout, or frown.
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Powerful People Think Differently About Their Thoughts
New York Magazine: Being in power does, in a very real sense, go to people’s heads. Psychologists have found that when people are made to feel powerful, they believe more in the things they’re thinking. This leads to a bunch of wacky, seemingly contradictory behaviors, as Ohio State Ph.D. candidate Geoff Durso explained to Science of Us in an email: Feeling more powerful may make you kinder and more assertive, yet also more dishonest. ... For a study published this month in Psychological Science, Durso and his colleagues recruited 129 and 197 college students for two separate experiments.
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Memory Lane Has a Three-Way Fork
The Atlantic: In his magnum opus, In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust wrote that “remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.” That elegant line speaks to a simple truth: There are things you remember, and there are things you remember well. Even if you can recall a past event, your memories will vary considerably in how much detail they contain, and how correct those details are. In an elegant experiment, a team of neuroscientists led by Jon Simons at the University of Cambridge have shown that these aspects of our memories—our success at recalling them, their precision, and their vividness—depend on three different parts of the brain.
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Teaching Your Child Emotional Agility
The New York Times: It’s hard to see a child unhappy. Whether a child is crying over the death of a pet or the popping of a balloon, our instinct is to make it better, fast. That’s where too many parents get it wrong, says the psychologist Susan David, author of the book “Emotional Agility.” Helping a child feel happy again may offer immediate relief for parent and child, but it doesn’t help a child in the long term. “How children navigate their emotional world is critical to lifelong success,” she said. Read the whole story: The New York Times
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Do You See the Forest or the Tree? Neural Gain and Breadth Versus Focus in Perceptual Processing Eran Eldar, Yael Niv, and Jonathan D. Cohen How is the balance between focus and breadth determined during perceptual processing? The authors hypothesized that this balance is determined by neural gain such that high gain leads to perceptual processing being dominated by the most salient signal (focus), whereas low gain results in weak and strong inputs producing more equal neural activity (breadth).
