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Psychologists do some soul-searching
Nature News Blog: Psychologists are going through a period of intense self-reflection regarding the reliability of research in their field, fuelled by recently uncovered cases of fraud, failed attempts to replicate classic results, and calls from prominent psychologists to replicate key results in disputed fields. The latest volley in this debate is a special issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, consisting of 18 papers that outline the scope of the so-called “replicability crisis”, and potential ways of fixing it.
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Need a Self-Control Boost? Gargle with Sugar Water!
Forbes: If you’re struggling to keep your self-control on track, keep a bottle of lemonade made with real sugar handy. You won’t have to drink it, just swish and gargle when you’re feeling like giving up. That’s the finding of new research published in the journal Psychological Science. Researchers from the University of Georgia recruited 51 students who performed two tasks to test self-control. The first task, which previous research has shown to deplete self-control, was tediously crossing out all the Es on a page from a statistics book.
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Hurricanes and Hot Baby Names
The New York Times: In this year’s first-grade classes, teachers might notice an unusual number of Kimberlys, Karens and Kevins. This follows an earlier bump for Alexes and Amandas, and other names that start with A. Why? One factor might be...the weather. As part of our research on trends and how ideas catch on, my colleagues and I analyzed more than 125 years of data on the popularity of baby names. Many, many Jessicas, Jacobs, Rivers and even Maxxes. We found that names that begin with K increased 9 percent after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. And names that start with A were 7 percent more common after Hurricane Andrew in 1992. It wasn’t that people named their babies after the storms.
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Do You Feel Lucky?
The Wall Street Journal: Joe DeVito, a real-estate broker in Brooklyn, N.Y., has 18 active listings in ZIP Code 11219. Half of them have an eight in the asking price. Only one has a four. "They are priced for the luck and sold for the luck," Mr. DeVito says of homes in the Sunset Park neighborhood, where many of the residents are Asian. In Chinese culture, eight is considered to be a lucky number while four is believed to bring bad luck. Just like the lottery, real estate can be a numbers game in which superstition plays a role.
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How Communities Shape Our Morals
Scientific American Mind: In last month's column I recounted how my replication of Stanley Milgram's shock experiments revealed that although most people can be inveigled to obey authorities if they are asked to hurt others, they do so reluctantly and with much moral conflict. Milgram's explanation was an “agentic state,” or “the condition a person is in when he sees himself as an agent for carrying out another person's wishes.” As agents in an experiment, subjects shift from being moral agents in society to obedient agents in a hierarchy.
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Should you friend your boss on Facebook?
The Washington Post: In a sign of our changing times, a forthcoming white paper out of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton school bears the title, “OMG My Boss Just Friended Me.” The study will add to the small but growing body of academic research into how online relationships between colleagues inform, and are informed by, face-to-face interactions at the office. Eager to hear the results before they are officially published, I asked professor Nancy Rothbard, who worked on the study with researchers Justin Berg and Ariane Ollier-Malaterre, the obvious question: So? Should you and your boss be friends on Facebook? Read the whole story: The Washington Post
