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If It’s Hard to Say, It Must be Risky
We all have different criteria for what we consider risky. However, numerous studies have suggested that we tend to perceive familiar products and activities as being less risky and hazardous than unfamiliar ones. If something is familiar, the thinking goes, it is comfortable and safe. But how do we know if something is familiar? We often rely on a simple shortcut: If it is easy to perceive, remember or pronounce, we have probably seen it before. If so, will a product’s name and how easy it is to pronounce, affect how we view the product? Will it seem safer when its name is easy to pronounce?
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Study Indicates How We Maintain Visual Details In Short Term Memory
Working memory (also known as short term memory) is our ability to keep a small amount of information active in our mind. This is useful for information we need to know on-the-fly, such as a phone number or the few items we need to pick up from the grocery store. We hang on to the information for a brief period of time, just long enough to make a phone call or get through the checkout line, and then we forget it forever. We receive much of our information through our visual system, but it was unknown how much of this visual information is actively involved in short term memory. Psychologists John T. Serences from the University of California, San Diego, along with Edward F.
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The Liberating Effects of Losing Control
Self-control is one of our most cherished values. We applaud those with the discipline to regulate their appetites and actions, and we try hard to instill this virtue in our children. We celebrate the power of the mind to make hard choices and keep us on course. But is it possible that willpower can sometimes be an obstacle rather than a means to happiness and harmony? Tufts University psychologists Evan Apfelbaum and Samuel Sommers were intrigued by the notion that too much self-control may indeed have a downside—and that relinquishing some power might be paradoxically tonic, both for individuals and for society. They explored the virtue of powerlessness in the arena of race relations.
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Study shows males are more tolerant of same-sex peers
Women have traditionally been viewed as being more social and cooperative than men. However, there is recent evidence that this may not be the case. In fact, studies have shown that men maintain larger social networks with other males compared to women and tend to have longer lasting friendships with members of the same-sex than do women. Psychologist Joyce F. Benenson from Emmanuel College, along with her colleagues from Harvard University and the Université du Québec à Montréal wanted to compare males’ and females’ levels of tolerance towards same-sex peers.
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Read My Lips: Using Multiple Senses in Speech Perception
When someone speaks to you, do you see what they are saying? We tend to think of speech as being something we hear, but recent studies suggest that we use a variety of senses for speech perception—that the brain treats speech as something we hear, see and even feel. In a new report in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychologist Lawrence Rosenblum describes research examining how our different senses blend together to help us perceive speech. We receive a lot of our speech information via visual cues, such as lip-reading, and this type of visual speech occurs throughout all cultures.
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Born to be Wild? Thrill-Seeking Behavior May Be Based in the Brain
Sky diving and base jumping are not for everyone. However, for certain people, the more risk and adrenaline involved in an activity, the better! What draws some people to daredevil behavior while others shy away from it? Psychologists Jane E. Joseph, Xun Liu, Yang Jiang and Thomas H. Kelly from the University of Kentucky, along with Donald Lyman of Purdue University were interested in testing how the brains of sensation-seekers differ from those of us who avoid risky behavior. In these experiments, two sets of volunteers were recruited, high sensation seekers or low sensation seekers, based on their responses to personality surveys and risk-taking questionnaires.
