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Science on Swearing
Timothy Jay knows enough about curse words to make any seven-year-old jealous. The Boston Globe has called him the “Doctor of dirty words,” and he frequently appears in news stories — like this one from the Today Show — to discuss swearing. Even though swearing is frowned upon, research that Jay published in Perspectives on Psychological Science shows that profane language is everywhere, and it has an important purpose. Taboo words pack a lot of emotion, and this allows them to achieve certain goals, such as conveying frustration or humor, more easily than non-taboo words.
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APS Fellow Talks Psychological Science With the Dalai Lama
APS Fellow and Former Board member Elke Weber, Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University, and other behavioral and environmental scientists met with the Dalai Lama at the 23 Mind and Life Meeting in Dharamsala, India. The conference, titled “Ecology, Ethics and Interdependence” provided an opportunity to discuss environmental ethics and allowed for a dialogue between top scholars, activists and ecological scientists. Weber is an expert on behavioral models of decision-making under risk and uncertainty She studies psychologically and neurally plausible ways to model individual differences in risk taking and discounting, specifically in environmental decisions.
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Turn That Frown Upside Down
How can you make your day better? Turn that frown upside down. As corny as that phrase is, science can back it up. As part of the Wall Street Journal's "Is It True" video series, Christina Tsuei interviewed APS member George Bonanno about whether smiles really do improve your mood. Bonanno, author of “The Other Side of Sadness,” talked about the benefits of a spontaneous joy-filled smile. The video below also references a 2010 study published in Psychological Science, Cosmetic Use of Botulinum Toxin-A Affects Processing of Emotional Language.
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Is Violence Declining? APS Fellow Steven Pinker Says “Yes”
Violence is as an inherent part of human society. So if you looked at the number of violent deaths from prehistory to the present day, you would expect to see a pretty steady trend, right? Not so, says APS Fellow Steven Pinker. “Violence has been in decline for thousands of years,” he says. “We may be living in the most peaceful era in our species’ existence.” Pinker, who is a psychological scientist from Harvard University, collected his research on the subject in a new book called The Better Angels of Our Nature. He discussed the book in a recent lecture at Politics and Prose, a bookstore in Washington DC.
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<em>Better Angels</em>, Believe It or Not
Two World Wars, the Cold War, and the rise of terrorism must make the past century one of the most violent in the history of our species, right? Not according to Harvard psychologist and APS member Steven Pinker, who argues in his new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, that violence is declining. According to Pinker, we are actually living in the most peaceful era in human history. Watch Pinker’s TED talk on the myth of violence to learn more about why Pinker thinks our “better angels” are winning out. You can learn more about Pinker’s by reading coverage from The New York Times and Time.
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Spoiling the Ending Doesn’t Spoil the Story
People hate to know the ending before they’ve read the story or watched the movie. At least that’s what they think. A study in the September issue of Psychological Science reveals that contrary to this popular belief, knowing the ending actually enhances readers’ enjoyment of a story.
