-
Why Do People Avoid Facts That Could Help Them?
In our information age, an unprecedented amount of data are right at our fingertips. We run genetic tests on our unborn children to prepare for the worst. We get regular cancer screenings and monitor our health on our wrist and our phone. And we can learn about our ancestral ties and genetic predispositions with a simple swab of saliva. Yet there’s some information that many of us do not want to know.
-
Isolation Causes Loneliness. What Else Can It Do To Our Bodies?
Podcast interview with APS Member Julianne Holt-Lunstad. There's a cost to staying home, too. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a neuroscientist and social psychologist at Brigham Young University, explains the toll that social isolation can take. … Listen to full podcast at the link below.
-
Do Masks Mask Our Emotions? Not Necessarily, Says One Expert
The United Kingdom is the latest in a long list of countries to make mask wearing mandatory to slow down the spread of Covid-19, with face coverings compulsory on public transport starting Monday. Many more of us are opting to wear a mask while shopping, meeting friends and to medical appointments — even if it's not required. But how does wearing a mask shape how we interact or communicate with others? A smile is an easy way to defuse social tensions, but is this still possible when a mask is covering the bottom half of our face? And will the emotions of the people we encounter be harder to decode?
-
New Research in Psychological Science
A sample of research on cultural distance, gossip and lying, skill learning, air pollution and anxiety, and the reliability of task-functional MRI measures.
-
The Hard Truth Of Poker — And Life: You’re Never ‘Due’ For Good Cards
For many years, my life centered around studying the biases of human decision-making: I was a graduate student in psychology at Columbia, working with that marshmallow-tinted legend, Walter Mischel, to document the foibles of the human mind as people found themselves in situations where risk abounded and uncertainty ran high. Dissertation defended, I thought to myself, that’s that. I’ve got those sorted out. And in the years that followed, I would pride myself on knowing so much about the tools of self-control that would help me distinguish myself from my poor experimental subjects.
-
From Behind the Coronavirus Mask, an Unseen Smile Can Still Be Heard
In many places all over the world, a mask has become mandatory to slow down the spread of SARS-CoV-2. People wear one on the bus or train, during shopping trips or at doctor’s appointments. How does that practice change basic communication? Does a face covering impair social interaction? Facial expression and emotion researcher Ursula Hess, deputy dean for international affairs at the faculty of life sciences at Humboldt University of Berlin, provides some answers in this interview with Scientific American’s German-language sister publication Spektrum der Wissenschaft.
