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When is a Face Hot or Not?
Boston Magazine: Why does Johnny Depp look so good in eyeliner? Why is the girl next door rarely ever also a Victoria’s Secret model? If somebody wanted to make Will Ferrell into a model, exactly which bits of his face would need to be tweaked to make it happen? These are the sorts of questions that keep attractiveness researchers awake at night. But now, there’s a solution. Published online last week in Psychological Science by face researcher-turned-vision scientist Chris Said at NYU and Alexander Todorov, who happens to be Said’s former Ph.D. adviser, is an amazingly comprehensive new statistical model for facial attractiveness. Yes, hotness can be measured and predicted.
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Spoilers: une brève réflexion
Le Nouvelliste: Sun is bad for you. Everything our parents said was good is bad. Sun, milk, red meat… college.» – Annie Hall Les spoilers c’est mal. C’est là une des idées reçues les plus tenaces qui soient. Pourquoi lire 1984 ou regarder The Usual Suspects en connaissant d’avance la choquante et fascinante surprise finale? Mais encore, pourquoi pas? En effet, une nouvelle etude de la University of California at San Diego révèle que les spoilers, au contraire, augmentent le plaisir! Lire plus: Le Nouvelliste
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Scientific U-Turn: Male Bisexuality Is Real
LiveScience: A famous study conducted in 2005 proclaimed that male bisexuality is an illusion. Despite study participants claiming to be attracted to members of both sexes, when the subjects were hooked up to genital sensors and shown same-sex male and same-sex female pornography, individuals were only seriously aroused by one type or the other. The results were taken as evidence that, in terms of arousal, men are either gay, straight or lying.
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Kate Winslet and Ryan Gosling have the stuff of heroes. How about the rest of us?
Los Angeles Times: It's the stuff movies are made of, but this time it was real life: Actress Kate Winslet reportedly rescued billionaire Richard Branson's elderly mother from a burning home on Branson's private island in the Caribbean. And actor Ryan Gosling allegedly put himself in the middle of a heated New York City street fight, breaking it up. Should we consider these two celebrities heroes? And are most other people capable of the same -- of putting themselves in harm's way to help someone else?
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Anger Gives You a Creative Boost
Scientific American: We all know anger is bad… right? Generally, it’s unpleasant to feel and it often leads to undesirable outcomes. After all, when was the last time you lost your temper with your boss and was pleased with the outcome? However, perhaps you can also think of times when anger wasn’t so bad. Perhaps, in some contexts, feeling angry was actually beneficial. This counterintuitive idea was pursued by researchers Matthijs Baas, Carsten De Dreu, and Bernard Nijstad in a series of studies recently published in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
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Be all you can be
St. Albert Gazette: It is estimated that, each week, three billion hours are spent worldwide playing video games. It’s a $30-billion industry with appeal that crosses international boundaries. World of Warcraft alone has logged almost six million years worth of gamers’ time globally. But why? What is it about the electronic arts that satiate the gamers’ thirst? Until now, most research has been dedicated towards investigating the effects of gaming, both beneficial and detrimental. We know, for instance, that video games can increase reaction time, visual acuity and the body’s dopamine levels.