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How one researcher is studying that tingly, universal, unmistakable and unsettling phenomenon known as déjà vu
TED: Most of us know the feeling. You’re introduced to someone, you watch a new movie, or you walk down a street in an unfamiliar city, and then suddenly, you’re struck by the uncanny sensation that you’ve been through this all before. You know it’s impossible — there’s no way you could have encountered this person, film or street — yet it all seems so familiar. We call this “déjà vu,” a French phrase meaning “already seen,” first used in the early 20th century. Some researchers estimate that two-thirds of the population has experienced this phenomenon, which also may be accompanied by the conviction that you know what will happen next. Read the whole story: TED
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Familiar Faces Look Happier Than Unfamiliar Ones
People tend to perceive faces they are familiar with as looking happier than unfamiliar faces, even when the faces express the same emotion to the same degree.
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How Viewing Cute Animals Can Help Rekindle Marital Spark
Using evaluative conditioning, a team of researchers has developed an unconventional intervention for helping a marriage maintain its spark: pictures of puppies and bunnies.
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Unearned Fun Tastes Just as Sweet
We may be inclined to think that a fun experience will be all the more enjoyable if we save it until we’ve finished our work or chores, but new research shows that this intuition may be misguided.
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Investigating Emotional Spillover in the Brain
Scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison are discovering what happens in the brain when emotions from one event carry over to the next.
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New Research From Psychological Science
A sample of new articles exploring implicit sense of agency over somatosensory events and the motivational effects of contingent and noncontingent rewards.
