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You think you’re clairvoyant, but your brain is just tricking you
Have you ever felt as though you predicted exactly when the light was going to turn green or sensed that the doorbell was about to ring? Imagine the possibility that these moments of clairvoyance occur simply because of a glitch in your mind’s time logs. What happened first — your thought about the doorbell or its actual ringing? It may have felt as if the thought came first, but when two events (ringing of doorbell, thought about doorbell) occur close together, we can mistake their order. This leads to the sense that we accurately predicted the future when, in fact, all we did is notice the past.
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Why the UK Just Appointed a Minister for Loneliness
There's a new minister in the United Kingdom, and the position's theme song might as well be The Beatles' hit song "Eleanor Rigby," which implores the public to "look at all the lonely people." More than 9 million people in the United Kingdom report that they often or always feel lonely, according to a December 2017 report from the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness. This report prompted U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May to appoint politician Tracey Crouch as the new minister of loneliness yesterday (Jan. 17), according to The New York Times. In doing so, the government is acknowledging years of research showing that loneliness can be detrimental to people's health.
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Santos course breaks enrollment record
When professor of psychology and Head of Silliman College Laurie Santos decided to teach “Psychology and the Good Life,” she expected more than 100 students to enroll. Her classes tended to be popular, after all. What she did not expect was that “Psychology and the Good Life” would soon become the most popular class in the history of Yale College, with an enrollment surpassing 1,200. The class, offered for the first time this semester, focuses on psychological bases for methods to increase happiness and reduce stress.
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Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders
Intelligence makes for better leaders—from undergraduates to executives to presidents—according to multiple studies. It certainly makes sense that handling a market shift or legislative logjam requires cognitive oomph. But new research on leadership suggests that, at a certain point, having a higher IQ stops helping and starts hurting. Although previous research has shown that groups with smarter leaders perform better by objective measures, some studies have hinted that followers might subjectively view leaders with stratospheric intellect as less effective.
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New Research From Psychological Science
A sample of new research exploring: judgment, uncertainty, and optimism; processing of object-scene relations; and orienting biases in visual attention.
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The compassion deficit
The morning Chris Sampson performed his extraordinary act of compassion began in ordinary fashion, as such mornings usually do. It was an April weekday, rush hour in Edmonton's Churchill LRT station, a drowsy crowd gathered on the platform. Mr. Sampson, a 27-year-old college student in the second year of an electrical apprenticeship, was standing by the elevators and listening to a podcast on earbuds when, farther down the platform, two men began fighting. He edged closer to see what was happening. Then, as one of the men turned away, the second sucker-punched him in the head. The victim lost consciousness and fell onto the tracks as the warning bell clanged that the train was coming. Mr.
