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Dear Science: Why can’t I tickle myself?
The Washington Post: Dear Science, Why do we only laugh when someone else tickles us? Why can't I tickle myself? Here's what science has to say: Your question touches on one of the great mysteries of the human mind. No joke. Our inability to tickle ourselves has to do with self-awareness. At all times, without even thinking about it, we are conscious of where our limbs are and what our body is doing. And that means no funny business. Read the whole story: The Washington Post
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Turns Out Lisa Kudrow, Sully Sullenberger, and a Bunch of Other Famous People Published Psychology Research
New York Magazine: Sometimes, scientific papers are deep, rich, challenging sources of new knowledge. You sit with them and underline stuff and take notes and come away a changed person. Other times, scientific papers are just plain fun. That’s firmly the category in which a recent Perspectives on Psychological Science paper sits. In it, Scott Lilienfeld of Emory University and Steven Jay Lynn of Binghamton University simply list 78 famous and pretty famous people who have, surprisingly, been published in the psychological literature. Read the whole story: New York Magazine
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Adults Value Overcoming Temptation, Kids Value Moral Purity
Is it better to struggle with moral conflict and ultimately choose to do the right thing or to do the right thing without feeling any turmoil in the first place? New research suggests that your answer may depend on how old you are. Findings from a series of four studies show that children view the person who feels no moral conflict as more “good,” while adults judge the person who overcomes moral conflict as more deserving of moral credit. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Sad movies help us bond with those around us—and alleviate pain
Science: If you were old enough to see a PG-13 movie in 1997, chances are you went to see Titanic. And chances are you cried. You might have even seen the film multiple times, doing your part to make it the highest-grossing sob fest in movie history. Now, a new study suggests why people want to see tragedies like Titanic over and over again: Watching dramas together builds social bonds and even raises our tolerance for physical pain. “Why on Earth would we waste so much of our time and money going back to novels and films that make us cry?” evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and his team asked at the beginning of the new study. ...
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The Weak Evidence Behind Brain-Training Games
The Atlantic: If you repeat a specific mental task—say, memorizing a string of numbers—you’ll obviously get better at it. But what if your recollection improved more generally? What if, by spending a few minutes a day on that simple task, you could also become better at remembering phone numbers, or recalling facts ahead of an exam, or bringing faces to mind? ... And they might be wasting their money, according to a team of seven psychologists led by Daniel Simons at the University of Illinois.
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Social Science Researchers Explore ‘Unethical Amnesia’
NPR: There's an old saying - one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Turns out, that's not insane. It's kind of normal. Many of us make the same mistake twice or many times, and for some people, it is an unethical act. NPR's social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam is here to talk about some research into this. Hi, Shankar. SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: Hi, Steve. INSKEEP: So why don't we learn from past mistakes? VEDANTAM: Well, I read an interesting study by Maryam Kouchaki at Northwestern, Steve, that offers some insight into this behavior.
