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New Research From Psychological Science
Hierarchical Encoding in Visual Working Memory: Ensemble Statistics Bias Memory for Individual Items Timothy F. Brady and George A. Alvarez Current models of visual working memory assume that people encode memories of objects individually. Yet, new research has shown that items surrounding an object can influence a person’s recollection of it. When observers were asked to recall the size of a single circle after viewing an image with multiple circles, they tended to report a larger size if the other circles were large and a smaller size if the surrounding circles were small.
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How to spot a fake smile: It’s all in the eyes
MSNBC: We all know that smiling faces sometimes tell lies, even without the Motown song there to remind us. But now there’s proof that those fake smiles may not be worth as much as the genuine article. In a study conducted at Bangor University in Wales, researchers had 36 undergrads play a game in which they won money from four opponents, each of whom would indicate the participants’ wins by displaying either a genuine or a polite smile. In a later phase of the game, participants chose which opponent they wanted to play.
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Women’s depression can erode their intimate relationships
Sify: Israeli researchers have found that a woman's depression can bring her relationship down. A depressed person can be withdrawn, needy, or hostile-and give little back. But there's another way that depression isolates partners from each other. It chips away at the ability to perceive the others' thoughts and feelings. It impairs what psychologists call "empathic accuracy" -and that can exacerbate alienation, depression, and the cycle by which they feed each other. Reuma Gadassi and Nilly Mor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Eshkol Rafaeli at Bar-Ilan University wanted to understand better these dynamics in relationships, particularly the role of gender.
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Does the “Empathy Gap” Encourage Torture?
Imagine that you work for a government agency and you are trying to get information from a suspected terrorist. As part of your interrogation you lock the detainee in a “cold cell.” A cold cell is a room where the temperature is near freezing, and the procedure is to keep the detainee there for up to five hours, with little or no clothing. Now try to get inside your suspect’s mind and body. What is he feeling? How much pain is he in, physically and psychologically? Does such an interrogation technique seem okay to you? When does his pain cross the line into immoral and illegal torture?
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Watch Your Language! Of Course–But How Do We Actually Do That?
Nothing seems more automatic than speech. We produce an estimated 150 words a minute, and make a mistake only about once every 1,000 words. We stay on track, saying what we intend to, even when other words distract us—from the radio, say, or a road sign we pass while driving. An upcoming study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows for the first time why we so rarely speak those irrelevant words: We have a “verbal self-monitor” between the mental production of speech and the actual uttering of words that catches any irrelevant items coming from outside of the speaker.
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Can Tylenol cure a broken heart?
The Boston Globe: I was intrigued by a new study published this week, which found that getting romantically rejected hurts, like "a jab in the arm with a red-hot poker," as Melissa Healy writes in this Los Angeles Times article article. Turns out, those going through a bad breakup can activate brain regions that sense physical pain simply by looking at a photo of their ex, according to the research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But does getting jilted really feel like a poker stab? And where does it hurt exactly -- in the big toe? The heart itself? Well, not exactly, says lead author Ethan Kross, a psychologist at the University of Michigan.
