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New Research From Psychological Science
A sample of new research exploring the social effects of gossiping about deviance, sex differences in kids’ use of spatial language, and sample-size planning for accurate statistical power.
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Standing is good for your mind as well as your body
The Economist: OFFICE desks at which you stand are all the rage. Abundant evidence suggests that sitting down for long periods is bad for health, and that working standing up is thus better for you. But is it better for the job? A piece of research just published in Psychological Science by Yaniv Mama of Ariel University, in Israel, and his colleagues, suggests it might be. Standing takes more effort than sitting does, and might therefore be expected to require more mental attention. The muscles involved have to be monitored and fine-tuned constantly by the brain. Psychological experiments suggest that attention is a finite resource.
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Appetizing Imagery Puts Visual Perception on Fast Forward
Images with appealing content seem to fade more smoothly relative to other images, even when they faded at the same rate.
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Feeling Sated Can Become a Cue to Eat More
Internal states, even feeling full, can be learned as cues to seek out food, research shows.
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The Case For Boredom
Science Friday: Neuroscientists will tell you that boredom gets a bad rap. Research is starting to show that the time we spend doing literally nothing could be extremely beneficial. Letting our minds wander could actually be the time we need to understand what we want from life, or spark the creative ideas that will move a long-stuck project forward. But if you’re always on your phone, whether it’s texting or checking Twitter, can you ever be bored enough for your mind to wander into brilliance? Read the whole story: Science Friday
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This psychologist could stop police racism before it happens
Wired: "Hey, man," says the officer sauntering up to your car. The nonchalant greeting might seem insignificant - but it's not. If you're white, that police officer is statistically more likely to lead with "Hello, sir." Jennifer Eberhardt, a social psychologist at Stanford University, heads a team of computational linguists, engineers and computer scientists, which is developing speech-recognition and transcript-analysis software for policing. Using machine intelligence, the system scans transcripts from body-camera footage to recognise patterns of racial disparity. Read the whole story: Wired