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Why You’re Able to Spot a Friend in a Crowd, Even When You Can’t See Their Face
Pacific Standard: Have you ever surprised yourself by correctly recognizing a friend in a crowd, far, far away? Even if her face isn’t at all visible, there’s something about the way she’s standing or walking that gives her away instantly. New research by psychologists at the University of Texas-Dallas helps to confirm and explain that very common phenomenon. In a study published recently in the journal Psychological Science, researchers asked participants to look at photographs of people in different settings and clothing and to match them up, determining which ones were photos of the same person.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Adaptation to Faces and Voices: Unimodal, Cross-Modal, and Sex-Specific Effects Anthony C. Little, David R. Feinberg, Lisa M. DeBruine, and Benedict C. Jones Past research has shown that exposure to faces can alter subsequent perceptions of novel faces. The same adaptation effect has been shown for voices. In this study, the authors examined whether there is cross-modal adaptation between sound and visual stimuli. Participants' perception of female faces was assessed by having them rate the normality of masculinized or feminized faces.
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Conservatives & Liberals Equally Smug, Study Finds
LiveScience: The current government shutdown has both Republicans and Democrats laying blame, with each side claiming the other won't compromise. While science can't fix political gridlock, it can answer one big question: Is one side naturally more intransigent than the other? New research suggests not. In fact, political liberals and political conservatives are approximately equally convinced of the superiority of their views — though which views they feel smug about differ. Conservatives, for example, are certain their views on the income tax rate are superior, while liberals are sure they know best about government welfare programs.
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Why Are Hundreds of Harvard Students Studying Ancient Chinese Philosophy?
The Atlantic: Picture a world where human relationships are challenging, narcissism and self-centeredness are on the rise, and there is disagreement on the best way for people to live harmoniously together. It sounds like 21st-century America. But the society that Michael Puett, a tall, 48-year-old bespectacled professor of Chinese history at Harvard University, is describing to more than 700 rapt undergraduates is China, 2,500 years ago. Puett's course Classical Chinese Ethical and Political Theory has become the third most popular course at the university. The only classes with higher enrollment are Intro to Economics and Intro to Computer Science.
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Conjuring Up Our Own Gods
The New York Times: “Americans are obsessed with the supernatural,” Jeffrey J. Kripal, a scholar of religion, told me here at Esalen, an institute dedicated to the idea that “we are all capable of the extraordinary.” Surveys support this. In 2011, an Associated Press poll found that 8 in 10 Americans believed in angels — even 4 in 10 people who never went to church. In 2009 the Pew Research Center reported that 1 in 5 Americans experienced ghosts and 1 in 7 had consulted a psychic. In 2005, Gallup found that 3 out of 4 Americans believed in something paranormal, and that 4 in 10 said that houses could be haunted.
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The Cost of Racial Bias in Economic Decisions
When financial gain depends on cooperation, we might expect that people would put aside their differences and focus on the bottom line. But new research suggests that people’s racial biases make them more likely to leave money on the table when a windfall is not split evenly between groups. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “It has been suggested that race bias in economic decisions may not occur in a market where discrimination is costly, but these findings provide the first evidence that this assumption is false,” explain psychological scientists Jennifer Kubota and Elizabeth Phelps of New York University.
