A person’s character, more so than their actions, determines whether we find immoral acts to be ‘disgusting,’ according to new research in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
When thinking about a welfare recipient, people tend to imagine someone who is African American and who is lazier and less competent than someone who doesn’t receive welfare benefits, according to new findings in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Although powerful people often tend to decide and act quickly, they become more indecisive than others when the decisions are toughest to make, a new study suggests. The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
The degree to which other people divert your attention may depend on your social class, according to new findings published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Growing up in a warm family environment in childhood is associated with feeling more secure in romantic relationships in one's 80s, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The findings show that men who grew up in caring homes were more adept at managing stressful emotions when assessed as middle-aged adults, which helps to explain why they had more secure marriages late in life.
Learning to speed read seems like an obvious strategy for making quick work of all the emails, reports, and other pieces of text we encounter every day, but a new report shows that the claims put forth by many speed reading programs and tools are probably too good to be true.
Providing help to friends, acquaintances, and even strangers can mitigate the impact of daily stressors on our emotions and our mental health, according to new research published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Advertisers spend enormous amounts of time and money attempting to tailor their advertising campaigns to the needs of different demographic groups. After all, the concerns of first-year college students are going to be different from those of retired professionals. Even within a given demographic category, however, there are many individual differences, such as personality, that shape consumer behavior. A new study in Psychological Science, a publication of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that advertisements can be more effective when they are tailored to the unique personality profiles of potential consumers.
More than 4,000 psychological scientists, academics, clinicians, researchers, teachers, and administrators from 85 countries will gather in Chicago for the Association for Psychological Science’s 24th annual convention May 23-27, 2012 at the Sheraton Chicago. A concert with a former guitarist from the Black Eyed Peas and a five-time Grammy Award winning bassist will share the stage with musically talented scientists to discuss and explore music and the mind. Scientists will also present cutting-edge research on topics including: autism, ADHD, and the newest clinical treatments for mental health disorders; questions of incivility, ideology, and attitudes in politics; and the latest findings in decision-making science.
Perfume ads, beer billboards, movie posters: everywhere you look, women’s sexualized bodies are on display. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that both men and women see images of sexy women’s bodies as objects, while they see sexy-looking men as people.
Wouldn’t it be nice if all our decisions were the results of clear, rational, deductive reasoning? Of course they rarely are. A full range of emotions influence decision-making and experts in the field will look at fear and our transportation decisions following 9/11, psychic numbing and genocide and the effect of emotions on risky choices during the Association for Psychological Science annual convention in Chicago, from May 24-27, 2012.
People talk to their plants, pray to humanlike gods, name their cars, and even dress their pets up in clothing. We have a strong tendency to give nonhuman entities human characteristics (known as anthropomorphism), but why? A new report examines the psychology of anthropomorphism.
Study finds that taxing unhealthy foods leads to more reduced purchase of calories than subsidizing healthy foods.
There is something about the rhythm and texture of early cinema that has a very different “feel” than modern films. But it’s hard to put one’s finger on just what that something is. New research may help explain this elusive quality.
Infants born to bilingual mothers exhibit different language preferences than infants born to mothers speaking only one language. The results suggest that bilingual infants, along with monolingual infants, are able to discriminate between the two languages, providing a mechanism from the first moments of life that helps ensure bilingual infants do not confuse their two languages.
Male homosexuality doesn’t make complete sense from an evolutionary point of view. One possible explanation is what evolutionary psychologists call the “kin selection hypothesis.” Homosexuality may convey an indirect benefit by enhancing the survival prospects of close relatives.
Seeing someone perform a virtuous deed makes us feel good--an uplifting emotion known as “elevation.” New findings suggest that elevation may lead to helping behavior: Participants who viewed an uplifting TV clip spent almost twice as long helping a research assistant than participants who saw a neutral TV clip or a comedy clip.
ADHD, or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, is among the costliest of behavioral disorders. New research suggests that the culprit may be an old villain—lead—and what’s more it explains the causal pathway from exposure to disability.
The way highly anxious and avoidant individuals remember relationship events is based on their needs and goals for the relationship, but only if they were distressed when the memories were created.
Is it possible that directed prayer might spark forgiveness in those doing the praying—and in the process preserve relationships?
Research has documented that most men become much more jealous about sexual infidelity than they do about emotional infidelity. Women are the opposite, and this is true all over the world.
People's preferences for current versus later rewards may be influenced by fluctuating blood glucose levels: Volunteers who drank a regular soda containing sugar were more likely to select receiving more money at a later date while the volunteers who drank a diet soda were likelier to opt for receiving smaller sums of money immediately.
Thinking of the past or future causes us to sway backward or forward.
Given the importance of identifying risk factors for such diseases early in life, a new study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, looked at the relationship between low SES and cortisol in children over a 2-year period. The researchers hypothesized that living in a low SES environment would increase cortisol trajectories over time.
If we really want something, that desire may influence how we view our surroundings.
Men who smelled shirts of ovulating women subsequently had higher levels of testosterone than men who smelled shirts worn by non-ovulating women, suggesting that testosterone levels may be responsive to smells indicating when a woman is fertile.
There may be a strong link between our political affiliation and how we react to certain labels. Democratic, Republican, and Independent volunteers support a mandatory environmental surcharge if it is described as an “offset,” while only Democratic volunteers support the surcharge when it is labeled as a “tax.”
New research indicates that amputation of the hand results in distorted visuospatial perception (i.e., figuring out where in space objects are located) of the area within reach of our hands.
New findings reveal that when gesture and speech convey the same information, they are easier to understand than when they convey different information. In addition, these results indicate that gesture and speech form an integrated system that helps us in language comprehension.
Is there any redeeming value in the hours that teens spend transfixed by these video games? According to a new study regular gamers are fast and accurate information processors, not only during game play, but in real-life situations as well.
Are you a verbal learner or a visual learner? Chances are, you’ve pegged yourself or your children as either one or the other and rely on study techniques that suit your individual learning needs. However, a new report finds no evidence for the learning styles hypothesis.
A new study reveals that mothers whose negativity was most strongly linked with their child’s challenging behaviors were those with the poorest working memory skills.
Psychologists suggest that it may be detrimental to the developing brain to push it toward maturity too soon.
Many studies have focused on parents as being the best avenue for preventing adolescent marijuana use. According to a new meta-analysis, there is in a fact a strong, reliable link between parental monitoring and decreased marijuana usage in adolescents.
Recent studies investigating the question of parental control in the West and in East Asian countries suggest that extreme meddling by parents can have negative effects on their children’s psychological development in both of those regions, although the effects may not be uniform.
Technological advances are being made every day, making many of our lives easier and allowing information to be more accessible and available. However for some people, such as the aging population, technological progress can in fact be more limiting.
There are areas in the brain devoted to our arms, legs, and various parts of our bodies. The way these areas are distributed throughout the brain are known as “body maps” and now there is evidence that these maps may influence how we perceive our physical bodies.
The swine flu (H1N1) pandemic has received extensive media coverage this year. The World Health Organization, in addition to providing frequent updates about cases of infection and death tolls, recommends hyper vigilance in daily hygiene such as frequent hand washing or sneezing into the crook of our arms. News reports at all levels, from local school closures to airport screenings and global disease surveillance, continue to remind us of the high risk.
Angry words and gestures are not the only way to get a sense of how temperamental a person is. According to new findings, a quick glance at someone’s facial structure may be enough for us to predict their tendency towards aggression.
In a new twist on the adage "power corrupts," researchers at UC Berkeley and USC have found a direct link among supervisors and upper management between self-perceived incompetence and aggression.
The prevalence of mental health disorders in this country has nearly doubled in the past 20 years. Who is treating all of these patients? Clinical psychologists and therapists are charged with the task, but many are falling short by using methods that are out of date and lack scientific rigor.
Van Gogh cut off his ear. Sylvia Plath stuck her head in the oven. Were they simply mad or brilliant? According to new research, maybe both: Volunteers with a specific variant of neuregulin 1 scored higher on a creativity assessment than volunteers with a different form of neuregulin 1.
Does “use it or lose it” apply to foreign languages? Although it may seem we have absolutely no memory of a neglected language, new research suggests this “forgotten” language may be more deeply engraved in our minds than we realize.
We are faced with making decisions all the time. Often, we carefully deliberate the pros and cons of our choices, before making a final decision. However, a new study suggests that cognitive stress, such as distraction, can influence this balanced, logical approach to decision making.
Reading a book by Franz Kafka ––or watching a film by director David Lynch ––could make you smarter. According to research by psychologists at UC Santa Barbara and the University of British Columbia, exposure to surrealism enhances the cognitive mechanisms that oversee implicit learning functions.
Researchers provided a nationally-represented sample of adults with an online survey about the US Supreme Court's ruling on physician-assisted suicide.
In a new study in Psychological Science, researchers found that priming infants with subtle cues to affiliation increases their tendency to be helpful.
Weighty. Heavy. What do these words have to do with seriousness and importance? Why do we weigh our options, and why does your opinion carry more weight than mine? New research suggests that we can blame this on gravity.
According to a recent study, it appears humans are not actually capable of "turning off" another language entirely--knowledge of a second language actually has a continuous impact on native-language reading.
Cognitive decline was long seen as an inevitable consequence of aging, but recent years have seen a surge of interest in activities and products touted to forestall this outcome. What is the truth?
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