Psychology posts
- May 15, 2013
- 09:47 AM
- 76 views
Have we become slower and dumber?
by Dorothy Bishop in bishopblog
Guest post by Patrick Rabbitt, commenting on an article that claimed that simple reaction time is slower now than in the Victorian era. Mundane differences in equipment sensitivity may be responsible... Read more »
Michael A. Woodley, Jan te Nijenhuis, & Raegan Murphy. (2013) Were the Victorians cleverer than us? The decline in general intelligence estimated from a meta-analysis of the slowing of simple reaction time. Intelligence. info:/http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2013.04.006
- May 15, 2013
- 09:46 AM
- 35 views
Male Black Widows Sniff Out Femme Fatales
by Miss Behavior in The Scorpion and the Frog
I am thrilled to announce that this month I am joining a new top-notch science blogging team at Scitable, Nature Education’s award-winning science education website! (But don’t worry, friends. I will continue to post here about animal physiology and behavior every Wednesday). Next week, Scitable will be launching eleven new blogs covering topics like neuroscience, genetics, oceanography, physics and more. I will be co-authoring an evolution blog called Accumulating Glitches together with Se........ Read more »
Johnson, J., Trubl, P., Blackmore, V., & Miles, L. (2011) Male black widows court well-fed females more than starved females: silken cues indicate sexual cannibalism risk. Animal Behaviour, 82(2), 383-390. DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.05.018
- May 15, 2013
- 08:30 AM
- 41 views
Why do people surrender dogs to animal shelters?
by CAPB in Companion Animal Psychology Blog
Five to seven million companion animals arrive at animal shelters in the US each year, and about half of these are animals being surrendered by their owners. Why do people surrender their pets? To find out, a new study by Jennifer Kwan and Melissa Bain compared dogs being relinquished at three Sacramento animal shelters to those dogs that were there simply to receive their vaccinations.The experimenter spent time at the shelters during the hours when relinquishments could take place, and w........ Read more »
Kwan, J., & Bain, M. (2013) Owner Attachment and Problem Behaviors Related to Relinquishment and Training Techniques of Dogs. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 16(2), 168-183. DOI: 10.1080/10888705.2013.768923
- May 15, 2013
- 07:02 AM
- 33 views
Shooting the messenger: The intergroup sensitivity effect
by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room
We have likely all heard the saying “Don’t shoot the messenger”. According to new research, we are more likely to shoot that unlucky messenger when they are an outgroup rather than ingroup member. While that makes sense (sort of) it’s an intriguing article. And likely a depressing article for those who would like to promote [...]
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The hypercorrection effect: Correcting misinformation and false belie........ Read more »
Esposo SR, Hornsey MJ, & Spoor JR. (2013) Shooting the messenger: Outsiders critical of your group are rejected regardless of argument quality. The British Journal of Social Psychology. PMID: 23316747
- May 14, 2013
- 04:04 PM
- 54 views
RDoC and the cross-roads of psychiatry
by Paul Whiteley in Questioning Answers
The Irish poet Brendan Behan is, I think, credited with the phrase: "There's no bad publicity except an obituary". One wonders how appropriate this phrase might be to the 'diagnostic Bible' (except that it isn't) which is DSM-V which is poised to make its entrance into the World in the coming days.The real Homer @ Wikipedia Indeed, the story of DSM-V even before it hits the diagnostic shelves of all good psychiatric bookshops, has the makings of an epic piece of poetry or literature, o........ Read more »
Ian B Hickie1, Jan Scott, Daniel F Hermens, Elizabeth M Scott, Sharon L Naismith, Adam J Guastella, Nick Glozier, & Patrick D McGorry. (2013) Clinical classification in mental health at the cross-roads: which direction next?. BMC Medicine, 126. info:/
- May 14, 2013
- 11:45 AM
- 52 views
“Human frontal lobes are exactly the size expected for a non-human brain scaled up to human size”
by Usman Paracha in SayPeople
Main Point:
Researchers have found that the size of the frontal lobes of the brain is not the only crucial factor of human intelligence.
Published in:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
Study Further:
Frontal lobes, as the name suggest, are present at the front of each cerebral hemisphere - either of the two symmetrical halves of the front part of the brain.
Researchers have reported in the new study that size of the brain’s frontal lobe is not the onl........ Read more »
Barton, R., & Venditti, C. (2013) Human frontal lobes are not relatively large. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1215723110
- May 14, 2013
- 06:12 AM
- 26 views
Ostracism Hurts: The Psychological Costs of Ignoring or Excluding Others
by Dan DeFoe in Psycholawlogy
People who ostracize – ignore or exclude – others incur psychological costs. Researchers who recently explored whether people suffer psychological costs when they comply with social directives to ignore or exclude cause others reached that conclusion. The pressure to ignore or exclude someone has become an “all too common” experience, and the authors noted [...]The post Ostracism Hurts: The Psychological Costs of Ignoring or Excluding Others appeared first on Psychol........ Read more »
Legate N, Dehaan CR, Weinstein N, & Ryan RM. (2013) Hurting you hurts me too: the psychological costs of complying with ostracism. Psychological science, 24(4), 583-8. PMID: 23447557
- May 14, 2013
- 04:13 AM
- 50 views
Engaging lecturers can breed overconfidence
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Can fluent presenters makelearning feel too easy?
Eloquent and engaging scientific communicators in the mould of physicist Brian Cox make learning seem fun and easy. So much so that a new study says they risk breeding overconfidence. When a presenter is seen to handle complicated information effortlessly, students sense wrongly that they too have acquired a firm grasp of the material.
Shana Carpenter and her colleagues showed 42 students a one-minute video of a science lecture about calico ........ Read more »
Carpenter, S., Wilford, M., Kornell, N., & Mullaney, K. (2013) Appearances can be deceiving: instructor fluency increases perceptions of learning without increasing actual learning. Psychonomic Bulletin . DOI: 10.3758/s13423-013-0442-z
- May 14, 2013
- 01:49 AM
- 46 views
Teacher Expectations Have a Stronger Impact On Low-Income Students
by Eric Horowitz in peer-reviewed by my neurons
In their 1968 book Pygmalion in the Classroom, Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson presented their groundbreaking research that showed teacher expectations are self-fulfilling prophecies. If two students start the school year at the same achievement level, the student the teacher is told is a high achiever will make more gains than the student the teacher believes is [...]... Read more »
Sorhagen, N. (2013) Early teacher expectations disproportionately affect poor children's high school performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105(2), 465-477. DOI: 10.1037/a0031754
- May 13, 2013
- 11:11 AM
- 67 views
How to Convince People WiFi Is Making Them Sick
by Elizabeth Preston in Inkfish
All it takes is an antenna on a headband. If you've got a breathless video report on the dangers of wireless internet connections, that will help your case. It doesn't take much, though, to turn an ominous hint into a real headache.
Some people consider themselves sensitive to electromagnetic fields. They report symptoms such as burning skin, tingling, nausea, dizziness, or chest pain, and they blame their malaise on nearby power lines, cell phones, or WiFi networks. A recent Slate arti........ Read more »
Witthöft, M., & Rubin, G. (2013) Are media warnings about the adverse health effects of modern life self-fulfilling? An experimental study on idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields (IEI-EMF). Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 74(3), 206-212. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychores.2012.12.002
- May 13, 2013
- 09:43 AM
- 48 views
Bingeing and Purging: Keeping the “Positives” and Eliminating The Negatives?
by Liz in Science of Eating Disorders
I have been fascinated and perplexed by reports of the seemingly invigorating and anxiety reducing effects of bingeing and purging (purging by self-induced vomiting). Personally, I cringe at the idea of self-induced vomiting and have always wanted to avoid vomiting at all costs, including during food poisoning. The insight from recent blog entries and the subsequent comments has made an impact on me. I see that the motivation to engage in bingeing/purging (b/p-ing) behavior ........ Read more »
Avena, N., Rada, P., Moise, N., & Hoebel, B. (2006) Sucrose sham feeding on a binge schedule releases accumbens dopamine repeatedly and eliminates the acetylcholine satiety response. Neuroscience, 139(3), 813-820. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2005.12.037
- May 13, 2013
- 08:56 AM
- 36 views
Who pays the biggest price for managing emotional displays in the workplace?
by Alex Fradera in BPS Occupational Digest
Understanding workplace demands on our emotions is one of our popular topics. Recent research combines two issues we've reported on previously: surface acting, the form of emotional labour that involves expressing emotions you don't genuinely feel, and affect spin, a measure of the variability of a person's emotional experiences. The paper suggests that overall, surface acting places greater demands on people high in affect spin.Daniel Beal and colleagues ran their study with 64 restaurant serve........ Read more »
Beal, D., Trougakos, J., Weiss, H., & Dalal, R. (2013) Affect Spin and the Emotion Regulation Process at Work. Journal of Applied Psychology. DOI: 10.1037/a0032559
- May 13, 2013
- 07:02 AM
- 31 views
Maybe you really should use PowerPoint in court!
by Doug Keene in The Jury Room
PowerPoint is often maligned but new research shows a courtroom PowerPoint effect that is nothing to dismiss! When Plaintiff attorneys used PowerPoint slides, mock jurors thought the Defendant was more liable for the alleged behavior. When the Defense used PowerPoint slides, the Defendant was less liable in the eyes of the mock jurors. Seriously? Because [...]
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Park, J., & Feigenson, N. (2013) Effects of a Visual Technology on Mock Juror Decision Making. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 27(2), 235-246. DOI: 10.1002/acp.2900
- May 13, 2013
- 05:47 AM
- 52 views
Experience leads to the growth of new brain cells
by Perikis Livas in Tracing Knowledge
How do organisms evolve into individuals that are distinguished from others by their own personal brain structure and behaviour? Scientists in Dresden, Berlin, Münster, and Saarbrücken have now taken a decisive step towards clarifying this question. Using mice as an animal model, they were able to show that individual experiences influence the development of new neurons, leading to measurable changes in the brain. The results of this study are published in Science on May 10th. The DFG-........ Read more »
Britta Grigull. (2013) Experience leads to the growth of new brain cells. Max Planck Institute for Human Development. info:/
- May 13, 2013
- 05:30 AM
- 48 views
Quasi-magical thinking and superrationality for Bayesian agents
by Artem Kaznatcheev in Evolutionary Games Group
As part of our objective and subjective rationality model, we want a focal agent to learn the probability that others will cooperate given that the focal agent cooperates () or defects (). In a previous post we saw how to derive point estimates for and (and learnt that they are the maximum likelihood estimates): , […]... Read more »
Masel, J. (2007) A Bayesian model of quasi-magical thinking can explain observed cooperation in the public good game. Journal of Economic Behavior , 64(2), 216-231. DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2005.07.003
- May 13, 2013
- 04:10 AM
- 47 views
Occupational hazard - links between professions and suicide risk have changed over time
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Suicide rates have fallen among farmers
Among the various risk factors for suicide, psychologists have recognised for some time that a person's occupation plays an important part. Suicide rates have tended to be unusually high in professions that provide ready access to guns, drugs, or open water, such as in farming, medicine, dentistry and maritime careers.
A new analysis has examined whether this still holds true. Stephen Roberts and his colleagues accessed the UK suicide rates for dozens ........ Read more »
Roberts, S., Jaremin, B., & Lloyd, K. (2012) High-risk occupations for suicide. Psychological Medicine, 43(06), 1231-1240. DOI: 10.1017/S0033291712002024
- May 12, 2013
- 08:00 PM
- 52 views
The Inadvertent Psychological Experiment
by TheCellularScale in The Cellular Scale
Escape from Camp 14 is deeply disturbing, and I highly recommend it. Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine HardenEscape from Camp 14 is a chilling tale of Shin Dong-hyuk's escape from a North Korean prison camp. What is so interesting about Shin Dong-hyuk's story as written by Blaine Harden is that he was born inside this North Korean prison camp. Apparently they allow breeding between prisoners as a reward for 'good behavior.'Escape from Camp 14 reveals the obscene violations of human rights that occur........ Read more »
Lee YM, Shin OJ, & Lim MH. (2012) The psychological problems of north korean adolescent refugees living in South Korea. Psychiatry investigation, 9(3), 217-22. PMID: 22993519
- May 12, 2013
- 06:51 AM
- 49 views
An interesting case report on autism and diet
by Paul Whiteley in Questioning Answers
Nodding syndrome.Ever heard of it? Well, up until a few days ago I hadn't. That is before coming across articles on the topic by Richard Idro and colleagues* (open-access) and Angelina Kakooza-Mwesige and colleagues** (open-access). Whilst not specifically my line of expertise or interest, I was intrigued to read about how nodding and other symptoms of the epileptic variety, at least in some cases, seemed to be precipitated by food and showed a potential nutritional angle.Curving spacetime&........ Read more »
Herbert, M., & Buckley, J. (2013) Autism and Dietary Therapy: Case Report and Review of the Literature. Journal of Child Neurology. DOI: 10.1177/0883073813488668
- May 12, 2013
- 02:00 AM
- 59 views
Quasi-magical thinking and the public good
by Marcel Montrey in Evolutionary Games Group
Cooperation is a puzzle because it is not obvious why cooperation, which is good for the group, is so common, despite the fact that defection is often best for the individual. Though we tend to view this issue through the lens of the prisoner’s dilemma, Artem recently pointed me to a paper by Joanna Masel, […]... Read more »
Masel, J. (2007) A Bayesian model of quasi-magical thinking can explain observed cooperation in the public good game. Journal of Economic Behavior , 64(2), 216-231. DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2005.07.003
- May 11, 2013
- 01:19 AM
- 51 views
Welcome To Introduction To Psychology
by Jesse Marczyk in Pop Psychology
In my last post, I mentioned a hypothetical relatively-average psychologist (caveat: the term doesn’t necessarily apply to any specific person, living or dead). I found him to be a bit strange, since he tended to come up with hypotheses that … Continue reading →... Read more »
Cornwell, R., Palmer, C., Guinther, P., & Davis. H. (2005) Introductory Psychology Texts as a View of Sociobiology/Evolutionary Psychology’s Role in Psychology. Evolutionary Psychology, 355-374. info:/
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