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Crossing the Line: What Constitutes Torture?
Torture. The United Nations defines it as the “infliction of severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” But how severe is severe? That judgment determines whether or not the law classifies an interrogation practice as torture. Now, a study published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, condemns this method of classification as essentially flawed. The reason: The people estimating the severity of pain aren’t experiencing that pain—so they underestimate it. As a result, many acts of torture are not classified—or prohibited—as torture, say authors, Loran F.
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Physicians May Heal Themselves Differently .
The Wall Street Journal: Doctors weigh treatment options differently when they are deciding for themselves and when they are treating patients, according to a new study. Doctors were more likely to opt for treatments with a higher chance of death—but lower risk of serious side effects—for themselves than for their patients in a survey of 940 primary-care physicians evaluating one of two hypothetical medical scenarios. The results suggest that the "act of making a recommendation changes the psychological processes influencing their decisions," write the authors, from Duke University and the University of Michigan.
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3-D Avatars Could Put You in Two Places at Once
The New York Times: If Jim Blascovich and Jeremy Bailenson are right, here is what’s in store for you and your avatar very soon, probably within the next five years: 1) Without leaving your living room or office, you’ll sit at three-dimensional virtual meetings and classes, looking around the table or the lecture hall at your colleagues’ avatars. 2) Your avatar will be programmed to make a better impression than you could ever manage. 3) While your avatar sits there at the conference table gazing alertly and taking notes, you can do something more important: sleep. Read the whole story: The New York Times
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Actions and Personality, East and West
People in different cultures make different assumptions about the people around them, according to an upcoming study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The researchers studied the brain waves of people with Caucasian and Asian backgrounds and found that cultural differences in how we think about other people are embedded deep in our minds. Cultural differences are evident very deep in the brain, challenging a commonsense notion that culture is skin deep. For decades, psychologists believed that it's natural for humans to see behaviors and automatically link them to personality.
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Why comfort food can actually be good for your emotional health
Yahoo! News Canada: When Drew Barrymore goes through a bad breakup, there are two words that always make her feel better: Kraft Dinner. “[I] head straight for the carbs. Macaroni and cheese. Kraft. Deluxe. The kind with the cheese you squeeze out of a bag that takes at least a month to pass through your body,” the actress told Marie Claire in 2009. While the “Charlie’s Angels” star singles out her preference for the gooey stuff, she’s certainly not alone when it comes to seeking solace in comfort food. Countless heartbreaks have been soothed with a wooden spoon in one hand and a giant vat of carbohydrates in the other.
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Survey: Your Biggest Regrets, and How to Make Them Work for You
TIME: Regret is as universal an emotion as love or fear, and it can be nearly as powerful. So, in a new paper, two researchers set about trying to figure out what the typical American regrets most. In telephone surveys, Neal Roese, a psychologist and professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and Mike Morrison, a doctoral candidate in psychology at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, asked 370 Americans, aged 19 to 103, to talk about their most notable regret. Participants were asked what the regret was, when it happened, whether it was a result of something they did or didn't do, and whether it was something that could still be fixed.
