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Do The Funky…Pigeon
You could read Emma Ware’s PhD thesis to find out how social dynamics influence the behavior of pigeons…or, you could watch her dance. Ware was the Social Science winner of the 2011 Dance Your PhD Contest, sponsored by Science and TEDxBrussels. Her dance shows that when confronted when an unresponsive female pigeon on a prerecorded video, the courtship behavior of male pigeons decreased. Courtship behavior also decreased in response to a nine-second delay in the female’s response. In contrast, the male’s courtship behavior didn’t decrease in response to one-second delays, three-second delays, or spatial manipulations.
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Why Relationships End
In case you missed it, the cameras were rolling at the APS 23rd Annual Convention in Washington, DC. Watch Judith Biesen from the University of the Pacific present her poster session research on “Sexual Satisfaction and the Decision to Terminate a Romantic Relationship.” Biesen and her coauthors assessed how two factors — the ascription to certain life roles (i.e. marital role, occupational role, parental role) and topics chosen for a problem-solving discussion) — moderated the relationship between sexual satisfaction and relationship termination.
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A Conversation About Music, Mind, and Health
What effect does music have on the brain, and what can music teach us about the brain? In this video 24th APS Annual Convention Speaker Aniruddh Patel and music therapist Barbara Reuer speak with David Granet of the University of California's Health Matters about music, cognition, and health. Scientists are just beginning to understand music’s implications for language acquisition, emotions, social skills, learning, and memory. Watch the interview to learn more about music and the mind, including research published in Psychological Science showing that music and other synchronized activities encourage cooperation.
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Good Reason to Dwell on What Might Have Been
Don’t beat yourself up for daydreaming about what would have happened if you’d chosen a different career, bought a different house, or committed to a different partner. Research suggests that thinking about what might have been helps us find meaning in past events we can no longer change. Laura Kray of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley is an expert in counterfactual research. In this clip from the Haas School, Kray discusses some of the research she will present at the 24th APS Annual Convention. In one experiment, Kray and her coauthors asked participants to write about a turning point in their lives.
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When Kids Know Better
In case you missed it, the cameras were rolling at the APS 23rd Annual Convention in Washington, DC. Watch Alia Martin from Yale University and Kelcey Wilson from Quinnipiac University present their poster session research on “When Kids Know Better: Paternalistic Helping in 3-Year-Old Children.” One challenge we face in helping others is that sometimes the best way to help is by not doing what is requested. Martin, Wilson, and collaborators showed that 3-year-old children can override a communicated request and, as a result, provide the most useful means of helping another person to achieve her goal.
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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 prominent scientists including David Attenborough and Richard Dawkins. Hood’s three-part lecture series, entitled “Meet Your Brain,” explores how the human brain functions, interprets the outside world, and guides social interaction. The first lecture, “What’s in your head?” explains how the human brain constructs its own version of reality. In this clip about how the eyes and the brain work together, Hood makes some surprising observations about human vision.
