Girls as competitive as boys, study shows: Girls are just as competitive as boys, even as toddlers, but they use different tactics to get what they want, a new study suggests. [Telegraph]
Your Brain Lies to You: With time, this misremembering only gets worse. A false statement from a noncredible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications gain strength. [NYT]
June 27th, 2008 at 10:28 am
This article is filed under Blog, Psychology.
Why Bond had his wicked way with women: Those who had more partners, and more short-term relationships, scored higher on the dark triad. They are narcissistic self-obsession, thrill-seeking and callous psychopathy, and Machiavellian exploitation and deceitfulness. [Guardian]
My Amygdala, My Self: Intrigued (and alarmed) by the new science of “neuromarketing,” our correspondent peers into his own brain via an MRI machine and learns what he really thinks about Jimmy Carter, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bruce Springsteen, and Edie Falco. [Atlantic]
Female chimpanzees play a subtle mating game: They found that chimpanzees varied wildly in the extent of their calls during mating, but noticed a pattern that had never been spotted before. Audio recordings revealed that females were more vocal during sex if there were other high-ranking males around, but that they toned the noise down significantly when aggressive females were nearby. [Guardian]
Neanderthink: Desperation With a Difference: Women are devastated by failing relationships, says Nando Pelusi, Ph.D., while men flail more over unattainable relationships. [Psychology Today]
June 19th, 2008 at 10:38 am
This article is filed under Blog, Psychology.
Can happiness be bad for your child?: Richard Layard, a professor at the London School of Economics and a peer in the House of Lords, goes so far as to say that teaching “the secrets of happiness” should be the central purpose of schools. It looked like sabotage, then, when it was revealed early this week that researchers had discovered that sad children could concentrate better than happy ones and so cope better with tasks demanding attention to detail — which real learning generally does. [Mercator]
Your personality isn’t necessarily set in stone: Tweaking the way you interpret and react to the world can be a transformative experience, freeing you up to act in new ways. At first, it feels awkward, even bizarre. But with new behaviors come new experiences, creating a feedback loop that, over time, reinforces the transition. [Psychology Today]
Gay men and straight women have similar brains, study says: The brains of gay men resemble those of straight women, according to research published today that provides more evidence of the role of biology in sexual orientation. [LA Times]
June 17th, 2008 at 11:00 am
This article is filed under Blog, Psychology.
Live longer, hang out with young people: Hanging out with younger, healthier people might help the elderly to live longer, suggests a study of fruit flies. The research also supports the notion that old people are more likely to thrive if with a younger peer group, or with their children and grandchildren, than if they are with their aged peers in a home. [Telegraph]
Social Networking in the Digital Age: It turns out that we’re becoming ever more social animals, looking to spend time together in real life, even as we also spend more time in the isolated activity of interacting with digits on screens. The number of us attending business conferences continues to rise, even though information can be shared at low cost in real time digitally, and despite the costs and hassles of travel. [WSJ]
Stiff upper lip best way to deal with shock: The popular assumption is that talking about a terrifying experience, such as a terrorist attack or natural disaster, can be therapeutic and helpful. But new evidence suggests “getting it off your chest” may not be the right thing to do. [Telegraph]
June 4th, 2008 at 10:49 am
This article is filed under Blog, Psychology.
Abuse in childhood may change the way genes work: What is more, this lack of attention, the researchers discovered, had chemically altered a gene controlling an important stress hormone. It was a striking case of how nurture affects nature. And it made the researchers curious about whether the same could be happening in humans. Now, by studying the brains of suicide victims, they have begun to explore that question. [Economist]
The Neurobiology of Trust: Our inclination to trust a stranger stems in large part from exposure to a small molecule known for an entirely different task: inducing labor. [Scientific American]
Don’t look now: In 2005, the Journal of Nonverbal Behaviour studied passengers on commuter trains in the United States. It found that commuters were much more likely to make eye contact with passers-by in suburban stations, but as the train neared stops in the city, eye contact was avoided. [New Statesman]
May 22nd, 2008 at 10:43 am
This article is filed under Blog, Psychology.
I’m Not Lying, I’m Telling a Future Truth. Really.: Touching up scenes or past performances induces none of the anxiety that lying or keeping secrets does, these studies find; and embroiderers often work to live up to the enhanced self-images they project. The findings imply that some kinds of deception are aimed more at the deceiver than at the audience, and they may help in distinguishing braggarts and posers from those who are expressing personal aspirations, however clumsily. [NYT]
Abuse as a child ‘makes adults more likely to commit sucide’: Survivors of child abuse may be more likely to kill themselves as adults because their early experiences change the way a critical gene works in the brain, according to new research that could shed light on the biology of suicide. [Times]
Can You Become a Creature of New Habits?: So it seems antithetical to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation. But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks. [NYT]
May 7th, 2008 at 9:31 am
This article is filed under Blog, Psychology.
Appetite may be the ultimate mind-body problem: So researchers are studying rat junkies—and human subjects, too—in the hopes that a deeper understanding of appetite will yield strategies to obstruct it. The studies explore psychology as well as physiology because, as every dieter knows, appetite afflicts the mind as much as the body. Hunger and craving may originate in the flesh, but they manifest in that zone of consciousness where want and need are easily confused. To clarify the difference, it helps to distinguish between “brain hunger”—the mind’s desire to eat for pleasure—and “stomach hunger”—the body’s demand to eat for energy. [Psychology Today]
Mind games may improve our performance at work: A daily regime of mental gymnastics can improve people’s intelligence and make them better at their jobs, a study has shown. Volunteers who took part in tests found that they had better memories, were able to reason more effectively and could solve tougher problems. [Times]
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:21 am
This article is filed under Blog, Psychology.
Social status is hard-wired into our brains: Leaders and followers show differences in brain activity which could help explain why low ranking people tend to be more sick, and die sooner, than high rankers. The discovery that class and hierarchy is built into the brain chimes with a famous sketch on The Frost Report in the sixties in which John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett showed how the upper, middle and lower classes “know their place.” [Telegraph]
For the Brain, Cash Is Good, Status Is Better: New research shows for the first time that we process cash and social values in the same part of our brain (the striatum)—and likely weigh them against one another when making decisions. So what’s more important—money or social standing? It might be the latter, according to two new studies published in the journal Neuron. [Scientific American]
The Perfect Trap: Perfectionism can lead to physical and emotional stress. A guide to giving up the unattainable. [Psychology Today]
April 25th, 2008 at 9:06 am
This article is filed under Blog, Psychology.
Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness After All: To put it in today’s terms, owning an iPod doesn’t make you happier, because you then want an iPod Touch. Relative income — how much you make compared with others around you — mattered far more than absolute income, Mr. Easterlin wrote. The paradox quickly became a social science classic, cited in academic journals and the popular media. It tapped into a near-spiritual human instinct to believe that money can’t buy happiness. As a 2006 headline in The Financial Times said, “The Hippies Were Right All Along About Happiness.” But now the Easterlin paradox is under attack. [NYT]
Self-belief in sport ‘as good as performance-enhancing drugs’: Self-belief can improve sporting success as much as illegal performance-enhancing drugs, according to psychologists. English footballers who miss penalties, women who underperform at mathematics tests and black minorities who fare worse at IQ tests are all examples of groups who have been burdened with self fulfilling prophecies, say the researchers. [Telegraph]
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:22 am
This article is filed under Blog, Psychology.
Scientists find secret ingredient for making (and losing) lots of money - testosterone: In the film Wall Street, which symbolised the excess of the 1980s, the most successful traders were odious alpha-males with aggression seeping from every pore. But stereotypes often have a kernel of truth, and researchers from Cambridge University have concluded what everyone outside the City has always suspected. Money doesn’t make the world go round: it’s testosterone. The more that traders have, the richer they’ll become - up to a point. [Guardian]
Face gives away sexual intentions, new study says: All the subtlety of a well-prepared chat-up line can be ruined by a man’s face, which speaks louder than any words to reveal his sexual intentions. A woman can tell at a glance if the man approaching to woo her is merely after her body or wants a more meaningful relationship, a study indicates. [Times]
The Gambler’s Gamble: A gambler usually wagers more after taking a loss, in the misguided belief that a run of bad luck increases the probability of a win. We tend to cling to the misconception that past events can skew future odds. [Psychology Today]
April 15th, 2008 at 9:10 am
This article is filed under Blog, Psychology.
