Social Science posts
- March 17, 2013
- 11:30 PM
- 135 views
Games, culture, and the Turing test (Part II)
by Artem Kaznatcheev in Evolutionary Games Group
This post is a continuation of Part 1 from last week that introduced and motivated the economic Turing test. When discussing culture, the first person that springs to mind is Joseph Henrich. He is the Canada Research Chair in Culture, Cognition and Coevolution, and Professor at the Departments of Psychology and Economics at the University [...]... Read more »
Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Bowles, S., Camerer, C., Fehr, E., Gintis, H., & McElreath, R. (2001) In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies. American Economic Review, 91(2), 73-78. DOI: 10.1257/aer.91.2.73
- March 16, 2013
- 03:21 PM
- 37 views
Big Tobacco Easily Evades “Light” Cigarette Ban
by Dirk Hanson in Addiction Inbox
Color coding allows smokers to easily identify their former brands.
The tobacco industry has once again made a mockery of the Food and Drug Administration’s attempts to ban ‘light” cigarettes from the marketplace, by simply eliminated the objectionable wording and substituting an easily-decoded color scheme. In a brochure prepared for cigarette retailers marked “For trade use only: not to be shown or distributed to customers,” tobacco giant Philip Morris wrote that “some cigarett........ Read more »
Connolly Gregory N, & Alpert Hillel R. (2013) Has the tobacco industry evaded the FDA's ban on 'Light' cigarette descriptors?. Tobacco control. PMID: 23485704
- March 16, 2013
- 11:45 AM
- 146 views
Are Imaginary Social Norms Increasing School Violence?
by Eric Horowitz in peer-reviewed by my neurons
Part of the price we pay for living in a civilized society is that our daily decisions are subject to the influence of social norms. These beliefs about social acceptability not only keep middle-aged men from dressing like Justin Beiber, they can influence behaviors that affect a person’s health, academic performance, or likelihood of voting. [...]... Read more »
Henry, D., Dymnicki, A., Schoeny, M., Meyer, A., Martin, N., & , . (2013) Middle school students overestimate normative support for aggression and underestimate normative support for nonviolent problem-solving strategies. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 43(2), 433-445. DOI: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2013.01027.x
- March 15, 2013
- 09:20 PM
- 161 views
The heat(map) is on... The colours of canine welfare.
by Cobb & Hecht in Do You Believe In Dog?
Hey Julie, All those conferences sound completely AMAZING! I love that both dog urine and poo are totally appropriate topics for us to discuss in our conversations. All the other scientists are so jealous right now!I hope you've been well since getting home again. We've just been through the longest heatwave ever recorded in Melbourne over the past fortnight (9 days over 30oC / 90oF in a row) and today it's finally cooled off, hooray! I haven't posted you the TimTams I promised you on Twitt........ Read more »
Fratkin JL, Sinn DL, Patall EA, & Gosling SD. (2013) Personality Consistency in Dogs: A Meta-Analysis. PloS One, 8(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0054907
Gosling Samuel D., Augustine Adam A, Vazire Simine, Holtzman Nicholas, & Gaddis Sam. (2011) Manifestations of Personality in Online Social Networks: Self-Reported Facebook-Related Behaviors and Observable Profile Information. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 14(9), 483-488. DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2010.0087
Seligman Martin E. P., Ernst Randal M., Gillham Jane, Reivich Karen, & Linkins Mark. (2009) Positive education: positive psychology and classroom interventions. Oxford Review of Education, 35(3), 293-311. DOI: 10.1080/03054980902934563
- March 15, 2013
- 11:35 AM
- 187 views
Why People on Cell Phones Are the Worst
by Elizabeth Preston in Inkfish
If it were urgent, maybe we could be more forgiving. But the subject of that phone call one table away at Starbucks never seems to be vital. A bathroom renovation, maybe. Or a phrase-by-phrase recounting of a text message dialogue with an ex. If you suspect overheard phone conversations are inherently more awful than people talking face to face, you're right: research shows that these conversations reach across our espresso cups, grab our attention, and don't let go.
Psychologist Veronica Ga........ Read more »
Galván, V., Vessal, R., & Golley, M. (2013) The Effects of Cell Phone Conversations on the Attention and Memory of Bystanders. PLoS ONE, 8(3). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0058579
- March 15, 2013
- 10:30 AM
- 67 views
When Does Depression Become A Disease?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
When does sadness cease to be a normal emotional response, and become a mental disorder? Can psychiatrists ‘draw the line’ between healthy and sick moods, and if so, where? An important new study offers an answer: When does depression become a disorder? Using recurrence rates to evaluate the validity of proposed changes in major depression [...]... Read more »
Wakefield JC, & Schmitz MF. (2013) When does depression become a disorder? Using recurrence rates to evaluate the validity of proposed changes in major depression diagnostic thresholds. World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), 12(1), 44-52. PMID: 23471801
- March 13, 2013
- 02:40 AM
- 258 views
Brain Lateralization - Logical Left vs Creative Right
by Vivek Misra in Beautiful Mind
Broad generalizations are often made in popular psychology about one side or the other having characteristic labels, such as "logical" for the left side or "creative" for the right. These labels need to be treated carefully; although a lateral dominance is measurable, both hemispheres contribute to both kinds of processes.In psychology and neurobiology, the theory is based on what is known as the lateralization of brain function. So does one side of the brain really control specific functions? A........ Read more »
Ross, E., & Monnot, M. (2008) Neurology of affective prosody and its functional–anatomic organization in right hemisphere. Brain and Language, 104(1), 51-74. DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2007.04.007
George MS, Parekh PI, Rosinsky N, Ketter TA, Kimbrell TA, Heilman KM, Herscovitch P, & Post RM. (1996) Understanding emotional prosody activates right hemisphere regions. Archives of neurology, 53(7), 665-70. PMID: 8929174
Dehaene, S. (1999) Sources of Mathematical Thinking: Behavioral and Brain-Imaging Evidence. Science, 284(5416), 970-974. DOI: 10.1126/science.284.5416.970
Dehaene, S., Piazza, M., Pinel, P., & Cohen, L. (2003) THREE PARIETAL CIRCUITS FOR NUMBER PROCESSING. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 20(3-6), 487-506. DOI: 10.1080/02643290244000239
Hecht, D. (2010) Depression and the hyperactive right-hemisphere. Neuroscience Research, 68(2), 77-87. DOI: 10.1016/j.neures.2010.06.013
Devinsky, O. (2009) Delusional misidentifications and duplications: Right brain lesions, left brain delusions. Neurology, 72(1), 80-87. DOI: 10.1212/01.wnl.0000338625.47892.74
- March 11, 2013
- 10:11 AM
- 402 views
Where Does Culture Shock Come From?
by Eric Horowitz in peer-reviewed by my neurons
Culture is a powerful thing. It not only affects how much time you spend at work, how you treat others around you, and how much beer you consume before the age of 20, it can also influence the emotions you experience on a day-to-day basis. The simple story of how culture influences emotions is that [...]... Read more »
Boiger, M., Mesquita, B., Uchida, Y., & Feldman Barrett, L. (2013) Condoned or Condemned: The Situational Affordance of Anger and Shame in the United States and Japan. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. DOI: 10.1177/0146167213478201
- March 8, 2013
- 04:24 PM
- 137 views
Good ELF in English-medium instruction
by Ray Carey in ELFA project
Note: this is the first in a series of posts reviewing the doctoral dissertation of Jaana Suviniitty, Lectures in English as a Lingua Franca: Interactional Features. The early posts of this blog have been dealing with the internationalisation of higher education in Finland, especially with current events in Aalto University. But Aalto’s Business School isn’t [...]... Read more »
Suviniitty, Jaana. (2012) Lectures in English as a Lingua Franca: Interactional Features. Doctoral dissertation, University of Helsinki. info:/
- March 8, 2013
- 04:10 AM
- 204 views
Migrant women’s empowerment in the city
by Ingrid Piller in Language on the Move
It is international women’s day today and the world’s women are on the move like never before: according to figures from the International Institute for Migration, women constitute 49% of the world’s 214 million transnational migrants. It is often assumed … Continue reading →... Read more »
Dreby, J., & Schmalzbauer, L. (2013) The Relational Contexts of Migration: Mexican Women in New Destination Sites. Sociological Forum, 28(1), 1-26. DOI: 10.1111/socf.12000
- March 7, 2013
- 01:30 PM
- 155 views
A Nepalese Odysseus: XDR-TB is in South Texas
by Rebecca Kreston in BODY HORRORS
The Wall Street Journal has a superb write-up of a Nepalese man infected with extremely drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) who is currently detained at the US border in South Texas.
Traveling in all of the modern ways known to man – by foot, car, boat and plane – the man ventured from his home in Nepal, traipsing through South Asia, flying to Brazil and hoofing it through Central America until reaching the southernmost tip of Texas.... Read more »
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2012) Public health interventions involving travelers with tuberculosis--U.S. ports of entry, 2007-2012. MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report, 61(30), 570-3. PMID: 22854625
- March 7, 2013
- 02:42 AM
- 13 views
A Nepalese Odysseus: XDR-TB is in South Texas
by Rebecca Kreston in BODY HORRORS
The Wall Street Journal has a superb write-up of a Nepalese man infected with extremely drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) who is currently detained at the US border in South Texas. XDR-TB is resistant to four of the major types of antibiotics that are used to treat and control TB infections and this man is the first [...]... Read more »
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2012) Public health interventions involving travelers with tuberculosis--U.S. ports of entry, 2007-2012. MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report, 61(30), 570-3. PMID: 22854625
- March 6, 2013
- 11:20 AM
- 176 views
Hey Hey! We’re The Monkeys!
by Miss Behavior in The Scorpion and the Frog
A tamarin rock star (photographed by Ltshears at Wikimedia)Our moods change when we hear music, but not all music affects us the same way. Slow, soft, higher-pitched, melodic songs soothe us; upbeat classical music makes us more alert and active; and fast, harsh, lower-pitched, dissonant music can rev us up and stress us out. Why would certain sounds affect us in specific emotional ways? One possibility is because of an overlap between how we perceive music and how we perceive human voic........ Read more »
Snowdon, C., & Teie, D. (2009) Affective responses in tamarins elicited by species-specific music. Biology Letters, 6(1), 30-32. DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2009.0593
- March 5, 2013
- 12:16 PM
- 205 views
Monkeys Reject Food From People Who Are Mean To Fellow Humans
by Jalees Rehman in Fragments of Truth
When we observe an interaction between two other human beings (Person A and Person B), we sometimes draw conclusions about the personality traits or character of these two individuals. For example, if we see that Person A is being rude to Person B, we may be less likely to trust Person A, even though we are merely "third-party" evaluators. i.e. not directly involved in the interaction. Multiple studies with humans have already documented such third-party social evaluation, which can ev........ Read more »
Anderson, J., Kuroshima, H., Takimoto, A., & Fujita, K. (2013) Third-party social evaluation of humans by monkeys. Nature Communications, 1561. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2495
- March 5, 2013
- 07:47 AM
- 197 views
Following the Nerd Herd – The Stereotype Revisited
by Anouk Vleugels in United Academics
“I was such a nerd in high school.” Most people who’ve been on a few first dates will recognize this line. Having nerd qualities, apparently, is nothing to be ashamed of anymore; it shows you’re quirky, unique and intelligent.. Nerds are fun now. So whatever happened to getting stuffed into the trash can for being different? And what exactly did the nerd evolve into?... Read more »
Eglash, R. (2002) Race, Sex, and Nerds: FROM BLACK GEEKS TO ASIAN AMERICAN HIPSTERS. Social Text, 20(2 71), 49-64. DOI: 10.1215/01642472-20-2_71-49
Bucholtz, M. (2001) The Whiteness of Nerds: Superstandard English and Racial Markedness. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 11(1), 84-100. DOI: 10.1525/jlin.2001.11.1.84
Quail, C. (2011) Nerds, Geeks, and the Hip/Square Dialectic in Contemporary Television. Television , 12(5), 460-482. DOI: 10.1177/1527476410385476
- March 4, 2013
- 09:13 PM
- 140 views
How Many English Tweets are Actually Possible?
by Jon Wilkins in Lost in Transcription
So, recently (last week, maybe?), Randall Munroe, of xkcd fame, posted an answer to the question "How many unique English tweets are possible?" as part of his excellent "What If" series. He starts off by noting that there are 27 letters (including spaces), and a tweet length of 140 characters. This gives you 27140 -- or about 10200 -- possible strings.
Of course, most of these are not sensible English statements, and he goes on to estimate how many of these there are. This analysis is base........ Read more »
C. E. Shannon. (1951) Prediction and Entropy of Written English. Bell System Technical Journal, 50-64. info:/
- March 4, 2013
- 11:56 AM
- 169 views
Speak to the Brain's Politics
by Persuasion Strategies in Persuasive Litigator
By Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm: Once more, over the cliff! Our lawmakers have had to make, or not make, some risky decisions lately. The "sequester," a poison pill of across-the-board cuts designed to force a spending compromise, has just done what no one believed it would do when it was created in 2011: It's gone into effect. That is widely expected to result in hundreds of thousands of layoffs, imperil effectiveness across federal programs, and potentially nudge our struggling economy back into recessi........ Read more »
Schreiber D, Fonzo G, Simmons AN, Dawes CT, Flagan T, Fowler JH, & Paulus MP. (2013) Red brain, blue brain: evaluative processes differ in democrats and republicans. PloS one, 8(2). PMID: 23418419
- March 4, 2013
- 12:26 AM
- 211 views
Is speaking English a civic duty?
by Ingrid Piller in Language on the Move
In today’s immigration countries, adherents of the “one nation, one language” idea face a unique ideological problem: to claim that the national language is a sign of national loyalty and incorporation into the nation while, simultaneously, disavowing any association between … Continue reading →... Read more »
Subtirelu, N. (2013) ‘English… it's part of our blood’: Ideologies of language and nation in United States Congressional discourse. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 17(1), 37-65. DOI: 10.1111/josl.12016
- March 3, 2013
- 09:17 PM
- 164 views
“It Wasn’t My Idea to Come Here”: Young Women Lack Ownership of the Idea to Immigrate
by Mark Rubin in Mark Rubin's Social Psychology Research Blog
Together with getting married and buying a house, the decision to immigrate is one of the most important decisions that a person can make. So, it’s important that immigrants feel that they have satisfactory input into the process of deciding whether or not to migrate. In some recent research, I looked at a very early stage of this decision-making process: ownership of the idea to immigrate.... Read more »
Rubin, M. (2013) “It wasn’t my idea to come here!”: Ownership of the idea to immigrate as a function of gender, age, and culture. International Journal of Intercultural Relations. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijintrel.2013.02.001
- March 3, 2013
- 09:09 AM
- 179 views
You Don’t Need to Watch Porn to Be Influenced by It
by Annemarie van Oosten in United Academics
Pornography use: It’s a topic of much debate. For starters, the frequent portrayals of sexual objectification of and violence against women in pornography have led to concerns about the influence that pornography may have on the sexual attitudes of its users. However, it seems that pornography can influence you even if you are not watching it yourself.... Read more »
Stewart, D., & Szymanski, D. (2012) Young Adult Women’s Reports of Their Male Romantic Partner’s Pornography Use as a Correlate of Their Self-Esteem, Relationship Quality, and Sexual Satisfaction. Sex Roles, 67(5-6), 257-271. DOI: 10.1007/s11199-012-0164-0
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