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Uncovering the Secrets of a Trustworthy Face
Scientific American: We tend to trust the people around us. We trust cab drivers and doctors with our lives, we trust chefs handling our food, and we trust strangers to watch our belongings while we step away. But trust is not like candy on Halloween, we do not just give it to anyone who knocks on our door. Psychologists have long been interested in understanding what leads people to trust others, and the face has long been at the center of this research. Some people just look trustworthy. Faces that look happy even when not smiling and those that have feminine and even baby-likefeatures tend to be trusted more.
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How Taking Photos Affects Your Memory of the Moment Later On
New York Magazine: Recently I transferred a stash of photos from my iPad to my computer. As the hundred-some photos flashed by on the screen, I found myself reliving the full panoply of emotions from memories long forgotten. Such is the power of photographs — which is why my friends and I are fans of the saying that if something wasn’t captured by camera, it’s like it never happened. To a certain extent, that may be true, and not just because old photos make it easier for us to reminisce about times gone by. In fact, recent research suggests that the act of photographing something helps us remember the visual aspects of the moment better, even if we never look at the photo again.
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What We Finally Got Around to Learning at the Procrastination Research Conference
The New York Times: The shuttle driver got lost on the way to the 10th Procrastination Research Conference, threatening to derail the schedule. Still by 9:20 a.m. last Thursday, the 60 or so attendees had already completed check-in at DePaul University, welcome remarks and the first of dozens of presentations. As they filed toward the coffee, their badges flashed their countries of origin — Germany, Turkey, Peru, India, Israel and Australia, among others. “I remember when I couldn’t get anyone to talk about procrastination. Look at us now,” said Joseph R. Ferrari, a professor of psychology at DePaul and this year’s conference chairman, who has published four books on procrastination.
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The neuroscience of inequality: does poverty show up in children’s brains?
The Guardian: With its bright colours, anthropomorphic animal motif and nautical-themed puzzle play mat, Dr Kimberly Noble’s laboratory at Columbia University in New York looks like your typical day-care centre – save for the team of cognitive neuroscientists observing kids from behind a large two-way mirror. The Neurocognition, Early Experience and Development Lab is home to cutting-edge research on how poverty affects young brains, and I’ve come here to learn how Noble and her colleagues could soon definitively prove that growing up poor can keep a child’s brain from developing. Read the whole story: The Guardian
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There are 3 types of smile – reward, affiliation, dominance
Wired: There are three distinct types of smile, a new study has revealed. People switch between 'reward', 'affiliation' and 'dominance' smiles, using different facial muscle combinations to make them, according to researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ... "When distinguishing among smiles, both scientists and laypeople have tended to focus on true and false smiles," said Paula Niedenthal, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Read the whole story: Wired
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: What's Worth Talking About? Information Theory Reveals How Children Balance Informativeness and Ease of Production Colin Bannard, Marla Rosner, and Danielle Matthews Greenfield's principle of informativeness suggests that children comment on things they find uncommon or uncertain rather than on things that are constant or can be assumed. The researchers quantified this tendency by performing a series of experiments in which 3-year-old children heard an experimenter describe images using noun-adjective combinations (e.g., bumpy road, old woman). The adjectives differed in their informativeness and unexpectedness.
