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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Learning Efficiency: Identifying Individual Differences in Learning Rate and Retention in Healthy Adults Christopher L. Zerr, Jeffrey J. Berg, Steven M. Nelson, Andrew K. Fishell, Neil K. Savalia, and Kathleen B. McDermott People differ in their ability to learn new information, not only in how much and for how long they retain it but also in how quickly they learn. Zerr and colleagues tested the relationship between quickness of initial learning and long-term retention.
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Conspiracy Beliefs Linked With Search for Certainty and Social Connection
Research shows that conspiracy theories may appeal to people looking to make sense of random events and to alleviate social alienation. But those beliefs may reinforce those motives instead of fulfilling them.
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Psychological Research May Offer a Route to Greener Travel
The researchers used a ‘stage-of-change’ model originally designed as a smoking cessation intervention.
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The Sunk Cost Fallacy Is Ruining Your Decisions. Here’s How
If you’ve ever let unworn clothes clutter your closet just because they were expensive, or followed through on plans you were dreading because you already bought tickets, you’re familiar with the sunk cost fallacy. “The sunk cost effect is the general tendency for people to continue an endeavor, or continue consuming or pursuing an option, if they’ve invested time or money or some resource in it,” says Christopher Olivola, an assistant professor of marketing at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business and the author of a new paper on the topic published in the journal Psychological Science.
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Don’t Find Your Passion — Cultivate It, Psychologists Say
When students enter college, many are told it’s an arena “to find your passion” -- that in classroom lectures, late-night debates with roommates, student clubs and/or literature, you will unearth the thing -- your career, your calling, an area that will sustain your mind and soul. It’s just waiting to be discovered, that thing you can explore with boundless motivation. But perhaps that’s poor advice, at least according to psychologists from Stanford University and Yale-NUS College, in Singapore. Passions are not necessarily inherent, waiting to be found, but rather they are cultivated, the researchers argue in a new paper to be published in the journal Psychological Science.
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Cynicism isn’t as smart as we think it is
In the fourth century BC, cynics wanted to live like dogs. The Cynics were Greek philosophers who rejected conventional ideas about money, power, and shelter. Instead, they advocated living simply, aligned with nature. The founder of this school of thought, Antisthenes, purportedly lived on the streets of Athens, ate raw meat, and preached a life of poverty (though sometimes he just barked at people from a platform). The word cynic even stems from the Greek word for dog—”kynos.” Today, cynicism has come to mean something very different than it did to the ancient Greeks.
