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The Confessions of Innocent Men
The Atlantic: Any good criminal-defense attorney will tell you to say four words if you are about to be arrested for murder: I want a lawyer. This is simple advice and should be easy to remember during an interrogation, but not everyone recalls it under the pressure of police questioning. Some people make matters worse for themselves in the face of strong evidence by providing an alibi or identifying another person as the perpetrator. Many succumb to the wiles of homicide detectives and implicate themselves to some lesser degree in the crime, heeding the admonition that a partial loss is better than going down for the whole thing.
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Remembering to Remember Supported by Two Distinct Brain Processes
You plan on shopping for groceries later and you tell yourself that you have to remember to take the grocery bags with you when you leave the house. Lo and behold, you reach the check-out counter and you realize you’ve forgotten the bags. Remembering to remember — whether it’s grocery bags, appointments, or taking medications — is essential to our everyday lives. New research sheds light on two distinct brain processes that underlie this type of memory, known as prospective memory. The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Ratio for a good life exposed as ‘nonsense’
ScienceNews: A 52-year-old, part-time graduate student with no previous training in psychology and little math education beyond high school has knocked a celebrated measure of the emotional mix needed to live well off its mathematical pedestal. Nicholas Brown, who is completing a master’s degree in applied positive psychology at the University of East London in England, teamed up with two colleagues to demolish the math at the heart of a widely cited October 2005 American Psychologist paper that claimed to identify the precise ratio of positive to negative emotions that enables life success. ...
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When Power Goes To Your Head, It May Shut Out Your Heart
NPR: Even the smallest dose of power can change a person. You've probably seen it. Someone gets a promotion or a bit of fame and then, suddenly, they're a little less friendly to the people beneath them. ... But if you ask Sukhvinder Obhi, a neuroscientist at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada, he might give you another explanation: Power fundamentally changes how the brain operates. Obhi and his colleagues, Jeremy Hogeveen and Michael Inzlicht, have a new study showing evidence to support that claim. Obhi and his fellow researchers randomly put participants in the mindset of feeling either powerful or powerless.
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Infused with faith: Religious ritual and hope for peace
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks begin this week, and it’s fair to say that attitudes range from guardedly hopeful to sneeringly cynical. After all, this conflict has been going on since the mid-20th century, with a lot of dashed promises along the way. It was just a year ago that missiles from Gaza were raining down daily on Israel. All of the final status issues are on the table, both sides agree—land, borders, settlements, Jerusalem. It’s widely assumed that the animosity and conflict between Palestine and Israel are fueled by these geopolitical issues, rather than by clashing religious values.
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Afraid to Get Tested? Slow Down and Think About It
The New York Times: Many patients are eager to search bottomless troves of health information on the Internet. But when it comes to learning whether they are at risk for certain diseases by getting a medical test, millions would rather just not know. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in three patients infected with H.I.V. do not get tested in sufficient time to benefit from existing treatments. The research literature is rife with studies of low rates for colonoscopies, mammograms and an array of genetic testing. ...
