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In the wake of a natural disaster, donation decisions aren’t clear-cut
Ars Technica: On November 8, Typhoon Haiyan swept through the Philippines, leaving a trail of disaster in its wake. Since then, private donors, nonprofits, and governments from around the world have pledged tens of millions of dollars to assist survivors and help rebuild the storm-stricken nation. But understanding which disasters get relief is a tricky business, and donation-related decisions aren't well understood. A new study in the journal Psychological Science suggests that donors may be focusing on misleading measures when they decide how much to give—or whether to give at all.
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Experiencing Awe Increases Belief in the Supernatural
Awe-inspiring moments -- like the sight of the Grand Canyon or the Aurora Borealis -- might increase our tendency to believe in God and the supernatural, according to new research. The new findings -- published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science -- suggest that awe-inspiring sights increase our motivation to make sense of the world around us, and may underlie a trigger of belief in the supernatural.
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Frequent Tests Can Enhance College Learning, Study Finds
The New York Times: Grading college students on quizzes given at the beginning of every class, rather than on midterms or a final exam, increases both attendance and overall performance, scientists reported Wednesday. The findings — from an experiment in which 901 students in a popular introduction to psychology course at the University of Texas took their laptops to class and were quizzed online — demonstrate that the computers can act as an aid to teaching, not just a distraction. Moreover, the study is the latest to show how tests can be used to enhance learning as well as measure it.
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The secrets of the world’s happiest cities
The Guardian: Daniel Gilbert, Harvard psychologist and author of Stumbling On Happiness, explained the commuting paradox this way: "Most good and bad things become less good and bad over time as we adapt to them. However, it is much easier to adapt to things that stay constant than to things that change. So we adapt quickly to the joy of a larger house, because the house is exactly the same size every time.
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Is Drinking Alone An Early Warning Sign?
The rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous are full of stories, many of them about early drinking days. The vast majority of alcoholics first experimented with drinking as teenagers, and usually for social reasons—to fit in with their friends, to overcome shyness and feel more comfortable in gatherings, and so forth. But every once in a while, someone will tell a different sort of tale—an often wrenching tale of drinking alone from the very beginning, without friends, without social pleasure, just to drink. Such early, solitary drinking is rare, but not unheard of. Of course, most people start drinking for social purposes, and most of those go on to lives of moderate social drinking.
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We All Start Out As Scientists, But Some of Us Forget
Mother Jones: Up until fairly recently, scientists, writers and philosophers alike have viewed human babies as little more than primitive adults. Through love and attention, babies were to be shaped into autonomous thinkers—like us. It was almost as if their brains were like new computers, whose software we needed to install over time. But in the past few decades, explains University of California-Berkeley psychologist Alison Gopnik, science has turned this view on its head. Not only are babies' brains structurally quite different from those of adults, but they also function in a way that makes them better than adults at learning new things.
