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Toddlers Object When People Break the Rules
We all know that, for the most part, it’s wrong to kill other people, it’s inappropriate to wear jeans to bed, and we shouldn’t ignore people when they are talking to us. We know these things because we’re bonded to others through social norms – we tend to do things the same way people around us do them and, most importantly, the way in which they expect us to do them. Social norms act as the glue that helps to govern social institutions and hold humans societies together, but how do we acquire these norms in the first place?
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Meditation, Exercise Could Protect You From The Flu
The Huffington Post: Who knew meditation could be so handy during cold and flu season? A small new study finds that mindfulness meditation and moderate exercise seem to have protective effects against cold and flu, with people who engage in the practices having less severe, shorter and fewer symptoms of acute respiratory infection -- and fewer days missed from work due to the sickness -- than people who don't engage in either practice. Specifically, undergoing mindfulness training was linked with a 40 to 50 percent decrease in symptoms, while exercise was linked with a 30 to 40 percent decrease in symptoms, researchers reported, compared with people who did neither activity.
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Rethinking Labels Boosts Creativity
Scientific American Mind: To become more inventive, new research suggests, we should start thinking about common items in terms of their component parts, decoupling their names from their uses. When we think of an object—a candle, say—we tend to think of its name, appearance and purpose all at once. We have expectations about how the candle works and what we can do with it. Psychologists call this rigid thinking “functional fixedness.” Tony McCaffrey, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, developed a two-step “generic parts technique,” which trains people to overcome functional fixedness.
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When Romance Is a Click Away
The Wall Street Journal: For many men and women looking for new love at midlife and beyond, the place to go is obvious: the Internet. But how best to navigate cyberspace in pursuit of romance? Eli J. Finkel, a professor of social psychology at Northwestern University, recently co-wrote a study about the benefits and limitations of online dating. We spoke to Dr. Finkel from his office in Evanston, Ill. Here are edited excerpts of that conversation: WSJ: People at midlife and beyond are the fastest-growing segment using Internet dating sites. Why is that? DR.
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We’re All Climate-Change Idiots
The New York Times: CLIMATE CHANGE is staring us in the face. The science is clear, and the need to reduce planet-warming emissions has grown urgent. So why, collectively, are we doing so little about it? Yes, there are political and economic barriers, as well as some strong ideological opposition, to going green. But researchers in the burgeoning field of climate psychology have identified another obstacle, one rooted in the very ways our brains work. The mental habits that help us navigate the local, practical demands of day-to-day life, they say, make it difficult to engage with the more abstract, global dangers posed by climate change.
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Stop bullying the ‘soft’ sciences
Los Angeles Times: Once, during a meeting at my university, a biologist mentioned that he was the only faculty member present from a science department. When I corrected him, noting that I was from the Department of Psychology, he waved his hand dismissively, as if I were a Little Leaguer telling a member of the New York Yankees that I too played baseball. There has long been snobbery in the sciences, with the "hard" ones (physics, chemistry, biology) considering themselves to be more legitimate than the "soft" ones ( psychology, sociology). It is thus no surprise that many members of the general public feel the same way.
