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Too Soon? Too Late? Psychological Distance Matters When It Comes to Humor
Research has pinpointed a sweet spot in comedy – you have to get the right mix between how bad something is and how distant it is to garner laughs rather than boos.
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Social Psychologists Espouse Tolerance and Diversity – Do They Walk the Walk?
Every ten years or so, someone will make the observation that there is a lack of political diversity among psychological scientists and a discussion about what ought to be done ensues. The notion that the field discriminates against and is skewed toward a liberal political perspective is worthy of concern; scholars, both within and outside the field, have offered various solutions to this diversity problem. As psychological scientists Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers point out, however, we have few of the relevant facts necessary to understand and address the issue.
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‘I Knew It All Along…Didn’t I?’ – Understanding Hindsight Bias
The fourth-quarter comeback to win the game. The tumor that appeared on a second scan. The guy in accounting who was secretly embezzling company funds. The situation may be different each time, but we hear ourselves say it over and over again: “I knew it all along.” The problem is that too often we actually didn’t know it all along, we only feel as though we did. The phenomenon, which researchers refer to as "hindsight bias," is one of the most widely studied decision traps and has been documented in various domains, including medical diagnoses, accounting and auditing decisions, athletic competition, and political strategy.
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‘That Giant Tarantula Is Terrifying, but I’ll Touch It’ – Expressing Your Emotions Can Reduce Fear
Can simply describing your feelings at stressful times make you less afraid and less anxious? Researchers investigate.
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Gender Equality Influences How People Choose Their Partners
Men and women clearly have different strategies for picking sexual partners, but the reason why differences exist is less clear. The classic explanation for these differences has been that men’s and women’s brains have evolved to make certain choices, but a new study in Psychological Science, a publication of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that evolution is only part of the answer. To be a ‘success’ in evolutionary terms, women need to have access to resources for raising offspring, and men need to have access to fertile females.
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When Do We Lie? When We’re Short on Time and Long on Reasons
Almost all of us have been tempted to lie at some point, whether about our GPA, our annual income, or our age. But what makes us actually do it? In a study forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychological scientists Shaul Shalvi of the University of Amsterdam and Ori Eldar and Yoella Bereby-Meyer of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev investigated what factors influence dishonest behavior. Previous research shows that a person’s first instinct is to serve his or her own self-interest. And research also shows that people are more likely to lie when they can justify such lies to themselves.