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Sirens in the Grocery Aisles
The Huffington Post: On his long sea journey back home following the fall of Troy, the Greek war hero Odysseus sailed perilously close to the Sirens. The Sirens were beautiful and seductive creatures who used their enchanting songs to lure sailors into shipwrecks on the rocky coast. Odysseus yearned to hear the Sirens' song, but he also knew that his weak will was no match for their potent temptation, so he ordered his crew to plug their ears and lash him to the ship's mast -- and never to untie him no matter what he pleaded. He did plead to be released, and his crew did ignore his pleas as ordered -- and only in that way did Odysseus control his desires and avoid destruction. ...
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Tip-of-the-tongue moments not tied to memory decline
Chicago Tribune: Did you ever want to say something, but the word or name gets "stuck on the tip of your tongue?" Don't worry. Those lapses may not be a sign of dementia - just age, suggests a new study. Researchers found those tip-of-the-tongue experiences become more common as people age, but are not related to worsening memory overall. "Our major finding is that they seem to be independent," Timothy Salthouse, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health. Salthouse is the Brown-Forman Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Studies had found that tip-of-the-tongue experiences are more common among older people.
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A “Blame Bias” Distorts Our Judgment
Scientific American Mind: When a bad deed makes headlines, the first thing we want to know is whether the perpetrator did it “on purpose.” Intention matters in our moral judgments, as we intuitively realize and many studies confirm. Now studies suggest that this focus on the cause of an event can distort our understanding of the damage done—and knowing harm has been inflicted can even change the way we view the victims, ascribing them pain and consciousness when none might exist.
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How poverty depletes brain power
Deseret News: People in poverty tend to make worse decisions than those who are not in poverty — they eat less healthy foods, have weaker relationships, and tend to be late for appointments. While it would be easy to conclude that making bad decisions is the root cause of poverty, new research is showing that poverty itself may cause poor decisions. In a recent study published in the journal Science, researchers found that people who normally function at the same level of cognitive ability make worse decisions when money is tight.
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Moral in the Morning, But Dishonest in the Afternoon
Our ability to exhibit self-control to avoid cheating or lying is significantly reduced over the course of a day, making us more likely to be dishonest in the afternoon than in the morning, according to findings published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “As ethics researchers, we had been running experiments examining various unethical behaviors, such as lying, stealing, and cheating,” researchers Maryam Kouchaki of Harvard University and Isaac Smith of the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business explain.
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Northeastern researchers experiment with fear at Newton haunted house
The Boston Globe: NEWTON — A squad of elite fear specialists will descend into the slightly musty basement of a Victorian house Friday night to take up haunting positions. Their preferred instrument of terror? Insights from the science of emotion. The monsters and ghouls in this unusual haunted house are Northeastern University psychology researchers who spend their days generating emotional responses in the laboratory, to probe what’s happening in the brain when people experience visceral feelings.
