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Evolution of the Human Brain: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
With our uniquely large brains and extended childhoods, humans are a bit of an evolutionary puzzle. According to a recent article published in Perspectives in Psychological Science, romantic love and the pair-bonding that it motivates may be part of the answer to this evolutionary riddle. Researchers Garth Fletcher of Victoria University in Wellington New Zealand and collaborators Jeffry A. Simpson, Lorne Campbell, and Nickola C. Overall argue that the adaptation of romantic love may have played a key role in the evolution of our big, sophisticated brains and social aptitude. “Evolutionary adaptations typically have a jury-rigged nature, and romantic love is no exception,” says Fletcher.
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Need to Solve a Personal Problem? Try a Third-Person Perspective
Why is it that when other people ask for advice about a problem, we always seem to have sage words at the ready, but when we ourselves face a similar situation, we feel stumped about what to do? In a 2014 Psychological Science article, researchers Igor Grossmann (University of Waterloo) and APS Fellow Ethan Kross (University of Michigan) suggested that people’s tendency to reason more wisely about others’ social problems than they do about their own is a common habit — one they referred to as Solomon’s Paradox. In a series of studies, the researchers not only found evidence of Solomon’s Paradox, but also identified a way that this reasoning bias can be eliminated.
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Feeding Mental Health Through Nutritional Interventions
Depression treatments include both psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy, but a burgeoning area of research points to another potent therapy: nutrition
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News Anchor Brian Williams and the Science of Memory
Memory distortion has become a hot topic this week in the wake of NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams’s admission of falsely recounting one of his experiences during coverage of the Iraq War. For years, Williams talked about riding in a helicopter that was ultimately forced down after taking fire during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. But this week he publicly apologized and admitted that he had been mistaken after reports surfaced that he was not in that particular aircraft, but in a following helicopter. Williams said he made a mistake in recalling the incident, having conflated video he had seen with his own experience.
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Countering “Neuromyths” in the Movies
After a head injury sustained in a plane crash, CIA assassin Jason Bourne wakes up floating in the Mediterranean Sea with two bullets in his back, a Swiss bank account code implanted in his hip, and no memory of who is or how he ended up in the open ocean. Bourne is afflicted with no memory whatsoever of his identity or life before the accident. Even with the severe retrograde amnesia Bourne experiences in the movie The Bourne Identity, it’s dubious that he would also lose all sense of his identity. In fact, complete memory loss after a head injury — often reversed after another blow to the head — is a common but rather preposterous representation of brain damage or amnesia.
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Inside the Psychologist’s Studio: Paul Ekman
He created an "atlas of emotions" with more than 10,000 facial expressions. His research on identifying deception and hidden demeanor is used to train law enforcement and security personnel around the world. He was even the inspiration for a television drama series. APS William James Fellow Paul Ekman reflects on his storied career in an interview for the Inside the Psychologist’s Studio video series. The interview, filmed before a live audience last May at the 2014 APS Annual Convention in San Francisco, was conducted by APS Past President Robert Levenson.
