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The incredible power of ignoring everything
The Washington Post: Fyodor Dostoevsky, the 19th Century Russian author, once famously challenged his brother to try out a strange task: Don't think about a polar bear right now. “Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute,” Dostoevsky writes in “Winter Notes on Summer Impressions.” Since then, people have puzzled over what happens in the brain when we try intentionally to ignore things. Can we actually succeed in ignoring certain information -- and improve our focus on everything else?
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The Trollable Self-Driving Car
Slate: On Feb. 14, a Google self-driving car attempted to pass a municipal bus in Mountain View, California. The bus did not behave as the autonomous car predicted, and the self-driving car crashed into it while attempting to move back into its lane. The Google car was traveling at the stately speed of 2 mph, and there were no injuries. Google released a statement accepting fault and announcing that it was tweaking its software to avoid this type of collision in the future. There is good reason to believe, though, that tweaks to the software might not be enough. What led the Google car astray was the inability to correctly guess out what the bus driver was thinking and then react to it. ...
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New Critique Sees Flaws in Landmark Analysis of Psychology Studies
The New York Times: A landmark 2015 report that cast doubt on the results of dozens of published psychology studies has exposed deep divisions in the field, serving as a reality check for many working researchers but as an affront to others who continue to insist the original research was sound. On Thursday, a group of four researchers publicly challenged the report, arguing that it was statistically flawed and, as a result, wrong. The 2015 report, called the Reproducibility Project, found that less than 40 studies in a sample of 100 psychology papers in leading journals held up when retested by an independent team.
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Who Still Opposes Gay Marriage, and Why
Pacific Standard: People who are particularly committed to the idea of marriage and family as the bedrock of society tend to be opposed to gay marriage. On the face of it, this seems counterintuitive, even hypocritical: Why would you resist the extension of an institution you revere? Well, newly published research suggests a tired stereotype deserves much of the blame. Those same fiercely monogamous people, it finds, tend to be predisposed to associate gays with promiscuity. ...
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: When the Spatial and Ideological Collide: Metaphorical Conflict Shapes Social Perception Tali Kleiman, Chadly Stern, and Yaacov Trope In this study, the researchers examined what happens when physical and abstract aspects of a metaphor are in conflict. Participants categorized pictures of past presidents Bill Clinton (a liberal-left Democrat) and George W. Bush (a conservative-right Republican) using a left-hand button press for pictures of Clinton and a right-hand button press for pictures of Bush (compatible condition) or vice versa (incompatible condition). Participants also completed a category-breadth assessment.
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Daydreaming Can Have a Dark Side
While someone is zoning out, their mind isn’t just blank. Instead, people who are daydreaming may be intensely ruminating on their future accomplishments, hopes, and goals. Research on daydreaming and other mind wandering has shown that this can help people generate innovative solutions to problems, an idea that the business world has started catching on to. But research is also showing that daydreaming can have a dark side. Several studies have shown that spontaneous thoughts can be open and expansive, allowing the mind to creatively “wander” through different topics, helping people come up with expected solutions to problems.
