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New Research From Psychological Science
A sample of research exploring competition and inequality, religiosity and trust, differences between visual memories and visual perception, and confidence and information seeking.
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You Share Everything With Your Bestie. Even Brain Waves.
A friend will help you move, goes an old saying, while a good friend will help you move a body. And why not? Moral qualms aside, that good friend would likely agree the victim was an intolerable jerk who had it coming and, jeez, you shouldn’t have done this but where do you keep the shovel? Researchers have long known that people choose friends who are much like themselves in a wide array of characteristics: of a similar age, race, religion, socioeconomic status, educational level, political leaning, pulchritude rating, even handgrip strength.
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Kristina Olson is first psychologist to win NSF’s Waterman award
Calling Kristina Olson a path-breaking researcher doesn’t begin to describe all the doors this year’s winner of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) most prestigious prize for young scientists has opened. A social and developmental psychologist at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle, Olson is the first person from her discipline to win the 42-year-old Alan T. Waterman Award. She’s also the first woman since 2004 to receive the $1 million prize. Although scientists from every field that NSF supports are eligible, only three social scientists—the previous two were men—have ever captured the Waterman, named after NSF’s first director.
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Why American Students Haven’t Gotten Better at Reading in 20 Years
Every two years, education-policy wonks gear up for what has become a time-honored ritual: the release of the Nation’s Report Card. Officially known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, the data reflect the results of reading and math tests administered to a sample of students across the country. Experts generally consider the tests rigorous and highly reliable—and the scores basically stagnant. --- Cognitive scientists have known for decades that simply mastering comprehension skills doesn’t ensure a young student will be able to apply them to whatever texts they’re confronted with on standardized tests and in their studies later in life.
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Cliches about only being as old as you feel are starting to have scientific backing
We’ve heard all the cliches about aging: “You’re as young [or old] as you feel.” “Age is just a number.” “You’re not getting older, you’re getting better.” “Seventy is the new 50.” Well-intentioned, perhaps. Offensive, to some. Patronizing, to be sure. But could they be true? Maybe science has started to catch up with these tired phrases. Researchers have discovered that many people feel good about themselves as they get older. One study, for example, found that as people get older, they consistently say they feel younger — much younger — than their actual age.
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Ask Me First: What Self-Assessments Can Tell Us about Autism
Just moments earlier, the teenager had been laughing so hard he was in tears. He had spent the day doing improv and other drama-based activities—part of a six-week summer camp in Boston designed to help children with autism build social skills. But when his mother showed up and asked about his day, the boy clammed up. “Do you mean you just sat in a corner and stared at the wall all day?” psychologist Matthew Lerner asked him. It was the summer of 2006 and Lerner had launched the program with a colleague two years earlier. He had witnessed the boy’s giggle fit and hoped to prompt more of a response. “Yes,” the boy replied.
