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This Is Your Mind on Music
Music is just sound – structured, organized sound. Yet it has surrounded us, moved us, and echoed in our memories throughout the history of our species. Three of the world’s leading psychologists and neuroscientists in the study of music, and one of the world’s leading musicians, will discuss the psychological systems and “orchestra of brain regions” through which music enriches our lives at the Association for Psychological Science’s 24th annual meeting in Chicago, May 24-27, 2012. Why Our Minds Groove to a Beat Whether it’s reggaeton, house, salsa, or bluegrass, one thing is clear: people love moving to the beat of music.
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Q & A With Psychological Scientist Linda Bartoshuk
APS Past President Linda Bartoshuk is a leading taste researcher at the University of Florida. We invited our Facebook and Twitter followers to ask Bartoshuk questions about her research – here is what she had to say: Is there a link between supertasters and people who have phantom taste, since the more taste buds you have the stronger some tastes are? This is a wonderful question and I wish we had the data to answer it. Phantom tastes are created in the brain by release of inhibition. That is, normally taste input from one taste nerve inhibits input from other taste nerves.
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American Academy of Arts and Sciences Names New Members
Congratulations to eleven APS members who were recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences: Shari Seidman Diamond Northwestern University Edward Francis Diener University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Alice Hendrickson Eagly Northwestern University Thomas D. Gilovich Cornell University Shinobu Kitayama University of Michigan Kathleen McCartney Harvard Graduate School of Education Elizabeth Phelps New York University Robert M. Seyfarth University of Pennsylvania Yaacov Trope New York University Henry M. Wellman University of Michigan Luigi Zingales University of Chicago
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Helping the Earth Through Understanding Human Psychology
How do people take in information about how humans affect the Earth? What influences the decisions they make and the perspectives they accept? Journal articles and video of psychological scientists talking with the Dalai Lama show how psychological science can help us create a healthier planet. How Human Decisions Impact the Earth Elke Weber, Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University, and other behavioral and environmental scientists discussed decision-making and the environment with the Dalai Lama at the 23rd Mind and Life Meeting in Dharamsala, India in November 2011.
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Gender Roles in the Workplace — Who Wins Praise for Assertiveness?
Research studying the effects of agentic behavior on women has focused almost exclusively on White women, with few studies examining the effect on Black females. A recent study by Livingston, Rosette, and Washington aims to fill this gap in the literature. The scientists found that Black women get social approval for being assertive and aggressive leaders. But the researchers suggest that Black women may face additional barriers to advancement, and that more research is needed to better understand the complex interaction of gender, race, and the workplace.
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A New Way to Study Clinical Psychological Science
Founding Editor Alan E. Kazdin wants APS’s newest journal, Clinical Psychological Science (CPS), to be a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, international publication that draws from a variety of fields and methods. “It’s not that we want diversity for diversity’s sake,” Kazdin says. “We want to solve problems, and that’s what requires the diversity.” Traditionally, clinical journals have been highly specialized. Such journals are great for finding the latest research on a specific subject, such as addiction, or personality disorders, but until recently, there has not been a single journal that collects the latest research in all areas of clinical psychology.
