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Why Is Scaring People So Much Fun?
Pacific Standard: For some children, sleepovers are bonding experiences between friends where the night’s pajama-inducing tranquility and intimacy facilitates more meaningful connections. For other children, sleepovers are dystopian nightmares spent in the residential equivalent of that hotel in the Shining. These children find their daylight friends transformed into sadists under cover of night. In a mix of partial shame and partial pride, I must admit that sleepovers with me were like the latter. I loved (and still love) to scare the devil out of people (not infrequently by convincing them the devil was already inside them).
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Can Authoritarianism Lead to Greater Liking of Out-Groups? The Intriguing Case of Singapore Arne Roets, Evelyn W. M. Au, and Alain Van Hiel Authoritarians are people with a tendency to submit to authorities who are deemed to be legitimate and to confirm to norms endorsed by society. They often show a general aggressiveness and dislike of people who do not conform to societal norms, such as out-groups and minorities.
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Superforecasters: The Art of Accurate Predictions
Will Venezuela cut gasoline subsidies? Will the US Federal Reserve raise interest rates before the end of the year? Your guess is as good as mine, unless you happen to be what University of Pennsylvania psychology professor Philip Tetlock has identified as a “superforecaster.” When we decide to change jobs, make an investment, or launch a business, we make that decision based on what we think the future will hold. The problem is, we’re just not that good at accurately anticipating the future. We’re susceptible to hindsight bias, we’re overconfident about what we really know, and our predictions are often self-serving.
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Boys and Girls, Constrained by Toys and Costumes
The New York Times: A web search for Halloween costumes of scientists produces only boys wearing lab coats and goggles. A search for nursing costumes turns up girls in skirts with stethoscopes. Cats and cupcakes are also girls, while sharks and astronauts are boys. The same gender division exists not just in toys — blue toolboxes and trucks for boys, pink play kitchens and dolls for girls — but also in nearly every other children’s product, including baby blankets, diapers and toothbrushes. ... Lynn Liben of Penn State University and Lacey Hilliard of Tufts University studied preschool students. In some of the classrooms, teachers made no distinctions between boys and girls.
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Here’s the simple strategy extroverts use to win people over
Business Insider: Scientists as well as laypeople have long known that extroverts tend to do a better job of connecting with other people, especially when they first meet them. Yet until recently, no one's been able to pinpoint what exactly extroverts do that helps them build strong social ties. Now, new research from Duke University, cited by the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that the answer is surprisingly simple: It's a matter of mimicry, or copying the body language of your conversation partner. Read the whole story: Business Insider
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Three Words You Shouldn’t Say About Yourself
Medium: When we interact with other people, what do we want? As I started to study that question, I came across a wonderful quote. “There are two kinds of people in the world,” Robert Benchley wrote. “Those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t.” Psychologists have a bad habit of oversimplifying people. If I truly wanted to capture the richness of the human condition, I needed more than two categories. Imagine my delight, then, when I found evidence that around the world, there are not two… but three styles of interaction. Read the whole story: Medium
