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How Winning Leads to Cheating
Scientific American: We live, for better or for worse, in a competition-driven world. Rivalry powers our economy, sparks technological innovation and encourages academic discovery. But it also compels people to manipulate the system and commit crimes. Some figure it’s just easier—and even acceptable—to cheat. ... Similarly, participants who had simply won a lottery did not end up cheating when they reported the outcome of the dice roll but participants who had outplayed their peers in a trivia competition (again, controlled for selection bias) did later overclaim their winnings.
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The Fascinating Science Behind ‘Talking’ With Your Hands
The Huffington Post: If someone has ever made fun of you for making elaborate hand gestures while talking -- or you've seen footage of yourself speaking, only to be horrified by your flailing forearms -- don't be too concerned. According to psychologists, those gestures probably are helping you express your thoughts more effectively. "Hand gestures are really a powerful aspect of communication, from both the speaker's and the listener's end," Dr. Carol Kinsey Goman, body language expert and author of The Nonverbal Advantage: Secrets and Science of Body Language at Work and The Silent Language of Leaders, told The Huffington Post. ...
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PBS Doc “Memory Hackers” Shows The Future Of Memory Manipulation
Fast Company: Total Recall, Inception, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Once the realm of science fiction, advances in technology, neurochemistry, and cognitive science are redefining what memory is, enabling us to erase old memories and implant new ones. The Nova documentary Memory Hackers, premiering tonight on PBS, recounts the scientific breakthroughs over the last 70 years that have lead to our current understanding of where and how long-term memories are formed, stored, and recalled. ... "We stumbled upon Julia Shaw’s research through a graduate student," says Bicks.
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What journalists get wrong about social science: full responses
Vox: I recently asked several psychologists and social scientists a simple question: "What do journalists most often get wrong when writing about research?" Here are their responses. ... W. Keith Campbell, professor, University of Georgia Given the tight deadlines and the complexity of much of the work, I think the media generally try to and mostly succeed at covering psychology well. Short, fast turnaround stories are generally hyped or set into a narrative. But it is supposed to be news/entertainment and not a scientific journal. And, frankly, it is often we psychologists and our university media people who (over)simplify and hype the research in the first place. ...
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Americans Recognize ‘Past Presidents’ Who Never Were
A memory study suggests that a majority of Americans incorrectly think that Alexander Hamilton was a US president, and many believe the same about Benjamin Franklin, Hubert Humphrey, and John Calhoun.
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Feeling sleepy? You may confess to a crime you didn’t commit
Science: Didn't get your 40 winks last night? Better not get yourself arrested, or you may admit to a crime you didn't commit. False confessions are surprisingly easy to extract from people simply by keeping them awake, according to a new study of sleep deprivation. It puts hard numbers to a problem that criminal law reformers have worried about for decades. The “crime” in question took place in a sleep lab run by Kimberly Fenn at Michigan State University in East Lansing. Together, she and Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist at the University of California (UC), Irvine, and two of their Ph.D. students recruited 88 Michigan State students to take part in an experiment. ...
