-
Could A More Individualistic World Also Be A More Altruistic One?
Individualism is that rugged frontier quality that reflects a mix of independence, valuing free expression, and eschewing close family ties relative to more distant relationships. And it is on the rise. Not just in the United States — which has long been ranked as one of the world's most individualist countries — but nearly everywhere. In a 2017 study examining five decades worth of data across 78 countries — from Norway to Nigeria, and Canada to Colombia — psychologists Henri Santos, Michael Varnum, and Igor Grossmann found that people increasingly report that they value friends more relative to family, want their children to be independent, and value free expression.
-
Polluted Air May Pollute Our Morality
Data from archival and experimental studies indicate that exposure to air pollution, either physically or mentally, is linked with unethical behavior such as crime and cheating.
-
Taking Playtime Seriously
Play is a universal, cross-cultural and necessary attribute of childhood, essential for development and essential for learning. Experts who study it say that play is intrinsic to children’s natures, but still needs support and attention from the adults around them. Children are natural players, right from the beginning. “It’s hard to imagine when an infant or a toddler isn’t playing,” said Catherine Tamis-LeMonda, a professor of applied psychology at New York University who studies play and learning in babies and young children. She cited, for example, the joys of mushing food, pulling books off a shelf or making noises rattling a paper bag.
-
Two psychologists followed 1000 New Zealanders for decades. Here’s what they found about how childhood shapes later life
In 1987, Avshalom Caspi and Terrie Moffitt, two postdocs in psychology, had adjacent displays at the poster session of a conference in St. Louis, Missouri. Caspi, generally not a forward man, looked over at Moffitt's poster and was dazzled by her science. "You have the most beautiful data set," he said. Not one to be easily wooed, Moffitt went to the university library after the meeting and looked up Caspi's citations. Yep, he'd do. "It was very nerdy," Caspi recalls. "We fell in love over our data." It's been a personal and scientific love affair ever since.
-
A Brainy New Way of Looking at Friendship
How do we choose our friends? Beyond family ties, there has always been something of a mystery as to why we form close bonds with certain individuals. Sometimes, it seems, two people just click. According to a new study, that fantastic feeling reflects the fact you and your bestie are, neurally speaking, mirror images of one another. "These results suggest that we are exceptionally similar to our friends in how we perceive, and respond to, the world around us," writes a research team led by psychologist Carolyn Parkinson of the University of California–Los Angeles.
-
Genes play a role in the likelihood of divorce
THAT the children of divorced parents are more likely, when they grow up, to get divorced themselves is well known. What is not known is how much this tendency is the result of nurture (with children manifesting, in later life, behaviours learned from their parents), and how much it is caused by nature (with children inheriting from divorced parents the sorts of genes that lead to marriage-breaking behaviour). That genes are important has, though, now been confirmed by a study published in Psychological Science by Jessica Salvatore and Kenneth Kendler of the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioural Genetics.
