-
Culture Influences Judgment of Others
LiveScience: European Americans are more likely than Asian-Americans to judge an individual's personality based on behaviors, such as presuming someone who, say, won't touch a door handle is neurotic, a new study suggests. The key is cultural, according to the researchers. European American culture emphasizes individual independence; meanwhile, Asian culture is more interdependent and more sensitive to social contexts. This difference means European Americans are inclined to account for someone's behavior by making assumptions about their personality, while Asians are not (at least not without some context), according to the researchers.
-
How People Lose 100 Pounds
I am in awe of people who make a decision to lose a huge amount of weight—75 pounds, 100, even more—and then do it. I’m not talking about The Biggest Loser contestants, who do it for money and fame. I mean those who, privately and without fanfare, commit themselves to diet and exercise, set a distant goal, and then slowly chip away—one difficult pound after another difficult pound after another. The payoff is so far away. How do they stay motivated for the long haul? How do they even get started? Classical theories of motivation fail to explain such long-range commitment.
-
Are Your Values Right or Left? The Answer Is More Literal Than You Think
Up equals good, happy, optimistic; down the opposite. Right is honest and trustworthy. Left, not so much. That’s what language and culture tell us. “We use mental metaphors to structure our thinking about abstract things,” says psychologist Daniel Casasanto, “One of those metaphors is space.” But we don’t all think right is right, Casasanto has found. Rather, “people associate goodness with the side they can act more fluently on.” Right-handed people prefer the product, job applicant, or extraterrestrial positioned to their right. Lefties march to a left-handed drummer. And those linguistic tropes?
-
Care About Climate? Wearing a Coat Today?
Discovery News: Opinions about climate may be as fickle as the winds. A simple shift in temperature and Columbia University social scientists found that opinions about future climate trends changed accordingly. In surveys of 1,200 people in the U.S. and Australia, many who thought the day was unusually warm were more likely to be concerned about global warming than they were on days they thought were unusually cold. "I'm not sure I'd say that people are manipulated by the weather," lead author Ye Li said in a press release by Columbia. "But for some percentage of people, it's certainly pushing them around." Read the whole story: Discovery News
-
Is ‘enhanced interrogation’ torture? Yes, say those given small dose
The Vancouver Sun: Those who approve "enhanced interrogation techniques" probably have a flawed idea of whether this constitutes torture, because few have felt the pain these methods can cause, researchers report. A study that gave its subjects a mild taste of such interrogation methods as solitary confinement, sleep deprivation and extreme cold found most respondents characterized what they felt as torture. Those who did not experience these techniques but were told about them generally underestimated how much pain they might cause, the researchers found.
-
Why people with a European background can’t help but judge a book by its cover
The Daily Mail: It is often said that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. But it seems that some of us can’t help but do just that. A study found people from European backgrounds are more likely to be guilty of jumping to conclusions than those with an Asian heritage. And brain scans show that these cultural differences are embedded deep within people’s minds. Read the whole story: The Daily Mail
