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A Psychologist Explains Why 2018 Felt Like the Longest Year Ever
You might think that a year as chock full of newsworthy events as 2018 would feel like it blazed by in a flash. Yet for many of us, January feels like it was eons ago. So did 2018 fly by, or did it drag on? The answer is, strangely, both. Humans have a complicated relationship with time. Unlike physical matter and energy, we have no organ that directly detects time. Instead, our brains judge time indirectly, mostly through two processes—attention and memory. When we think about how time is currently progressing, time judgments are based primarily on attention.
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Considering Your Opponent’s Perspective Isn’t Likely to Change Your View
It's a piece of advice we've all received at one time or another: Don't judge someone until you have walked a mile in their shoes. It's based on the assumption that seeing things from another person's perspective can open our minds and bring us closer together. New research contradicts that axiom. It finds that temporarily adopting the point of view of a political opponent can actually harden our original positions. "Despite its well-known benefits, perspective-taking can inhibit, rather than facilitate, openness to change," writes a research team led by psychologist Rhia Catapano of Stanford University.
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What the ‘10-Year Challenge’ Might Say About You, and Me
Earlier this month out of nowhere came the “How Hard Did Aging Hit You Challenge” that flooded Instagram and Facebook. The game, better known as the “10-Year Challenge,” couldn’t have been easier: Simply post two photos side by side — an early profile photo from 2009 next to a recent one — as proof positive of how you’ve aged. Or, in many cases, miraculously not aged. It was fun to watch, especially considering how good many of my friends looked. I posted on their feeds. “Ageless!” “Gorgeous X2.” And, “Which is which?” The whole exercise seemed harmless, if a bit self-involved, despite some concerns about privacy.
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Game Brain Science: How Your Super Bowl Team Plays Can Sway What You Eat
The Super Bowl isn't just one of the biggest sporting events of the year. It's also one of the biggest eating events. And whether your team wins or loses the big game can influence how you enjoy your food – and how much of it you consume – even the day after. That's according to neuroscientist Rachel Herz, who is on the faculty at Brown University and Boston College and author of Why You Eat What You Eat. "Many, many chickens die for the Super Bowl, and it's estimated that people consume, in the four to five hours of the game alone, 2,400 calories," Herz notes, pointing to a popular estimate released by the Calorie Control Council.
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New Research From Psychological Science
A sample of research exploring income inequality and racial bias, support for resettling refugees, and self-referential stimuli in working memory.
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Girls Are More Engaged When They’re ‘Doing Science’ Rather Than ‘Being Scientists’
A psychological study suggests a way to keep gender stereotypes from discouraging girls’ persistence in science activities.
