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What Do Polar Bears and Social Faux Pas Have in Common?
Scientific American: Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a psychological goldmine. If you can think it, chances are he wrote about it. But as far as I know, only once has his writing directly inspired psychological research—and it
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How Do You Get Doctors to Wash Their Hands?
Huffington Post: The field of medicine has understood the importance of hand washing for almost 200 years. The Hungarian Ignaz Semmelweis found that when people in an obstetric clinic washed their hands, incidence of infections
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13 Common (But Silly) Superstitions
LiveScience: If you are spooked by Friday the 13th, you’re in for a whammy of a year. This week’s unlucky day is the first of three for 2012. And it would come as no surprise
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Meet Your Brain
In December, 2.4 millions viewers watched APS Fellow Bruce Hood deliver the Royal Institution of Great Britain Christmas Lectures. The lectures were started in 1825 and target a teenage audience. They have been delivered by
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What Your Eyes Say About Who You Are
TIME: As you read these words, try paying attention to something you usually never notice: the movements of your eyes. While you scan these lines of text, or glance at that ad over there or
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Confidence Matters Just as Much as Ability
Huffington Post: A bulk of research shows that when people are put in situations where they are expected to fail, their performance does plummet. They turn into different people. Their head literally shuts down, and
