Bzzt, bzzt. You check the supposed vibration in your pocket, yet no one has called or sent you an SMS.

Known commonly as a phantom vibration, this sensation has been felt by many and left them baffled.

But according to scientists, mobile users aren’t necessarily imagining things and the vibrations may not be “phantom” after all.

Some people believe there is a compulsive element to feeling the sensation, or believe that it occurs simply when there is friction in their pockets or they bump or brush up against something.

Others, such as psychologist and chairman of the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney, Alex Blaszczynski, believe it’s a sensation triggered by electrical signals.

“I expect it’s related to some of the electrical signals coming through in a transmission, touching on the surrounding nerves, giving a feeling of a vibration, ” Professor Blaszczynski said.

Read the whole story: The Sydney Morning Herald

Have you seen the photo of the dog that’s as big as a horse? How about the deer on top of a telephone pole? And do you know about the Hollywood actor who needed emergency medical help because of a gerbil that went where no gerbil had gone before?

That’s all a bunch of bunk, or course. But we’ve heard those stories, or seen those photos, so many times that they have become a part of our world, even if they are totally false.

These days we are bombarded with information, much of it incorrect, and long after the political campaigns are over a lot of it will still be buried in the part of our brain where we store our memories. And new research shows that the more intensely we believe something to be true, the more likely it will resurface in the future, even if we have learned it was false.

Read the whole story: ABC News

Anybody who knows me knows that I am a proud member of the Amazon Prime Cult. I only clean my house with products I can order through Amazon.com’s Prime service. In December, I chose holiday gifts for my family based on what I could order through Prime. I scoff at brick-and-mortar prices when I do make my way out into the world. And, dear Fools, I say this with as little bias as possible: You will one day join me. Convenience is king, and if history is any indicator of consumer shopping habits, Prime is the future.

In 1888, Richard Sears released the first Sears, Roebuck and Co. mailer to sell watches and jewelry. By 1894, he had expanded the catalog’s selection and declared it the “Book of Bargains: A Money Saver for Everyone.” Eventually the company released specialized versions of the catalog, including the iconic Wish Book.

Read the whole story: msnbc

Online dating has come a long way from its less-than-positive association with the personal ad. But is it actually a better way to meet that special someone?

In some ways yes — and in others, maybe not, according to a study on online dating released by the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest.

“Romantic relationships can begin anywhere. When Cupid’s arrow strikes, you might be at church or at school, playing chess or softball, searching for a partner at a party, or minding your own business on the train,” the authors write. “But sometimes Cupid goes on vacation, or takes a long nap, or kicks back for a marathon of Lifetime original movies. As a result, people go through stretches of time when desirable potential partners seem out of reach.”

Read the full story: Los Angeles Times

Bartels and his co-author William E. Herman wanted to find out whether self-handicapping, reduces negative emotional responses to failure.  An example of self-handicapping would be thinking to yourself that you are not good at public speaking, and then doing poorly on a presentation. Bartels and Herman studied participants’ responses to scenarios that incorporated academic failure with and without self-handicapping. They also measured participants’ fear of failure.

The researchers found that for students high in fear of failure, self-handicapping reduced the intensity of negative emotions associated with actually failing.

Would the world be more peaceful if women were in charge? A challenging new book by the Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker says that the answer is “yes.”

In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Pinker presents data showing that human violence, while still very much with us today, has been gradually declining. Moreover, he says, “over the long sweep of history, women have been and will be a pacifying force. Traditional war is a man’s game: tribal women never band together to raid neighboring villages.” As mothers, women have evolutionary incentives to maintain peaceful conditions in which to nurture their offspring and ensure that their genes survive into the next generation.

Skeptics immediately reply that women have not made war simply because they have rarely been in power. If they were empowered as leaders, the conditions of an anarchic world would force them to make the same bellicose decisions that men do. Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, and Indira Gandhi were powerful women; all of them led their countries to war.

Read the full story: CNN

People who are numerate are more comfortable thinking about numbers and are less influenced by other information, says Ellen Peters of Ohio State University, the author of the new paper. For example, in one of Peters’s studies, students were asked to rate undergraduates who received what looked like different test scores. Numerate people were more likely to see a person who got 74% correct and a person who got 26% incorrect as equivalent, while people who were less numerate thought people were doing better if their score was given in terms of a percent correct.

People make decisions based on this sort of information all the time. For example, “A lot of people take medications,” Peters says. Every drug has benefits and potential risks, and those can be presented in different ways. “You can talk about the 10 percent of the population that gets the side effect or the 90 percent that does not.” How you talk about it will influence how dangerous the drug seems to be, particularly among people who are less numerate.

Other research has shown that only less numerate people respond differently to something that has a 1 in 100 chance of happening than something that has a 1 percent chance of happening. The less numerate see more risk in the 1 in 100 chance—even though these numbers are exactly the same. This has implications for how policy makers and others should communicate about the risks of medicines, earthquakes, climate change, and the stock market.

“Numbers are really just abstract symbols, and we have to bring meaning to them somehow,” Peters says. Think of all the very different ideas that can go with the number nine: 9°F, $9 billion, and a 9 percent chance of a tsunami. “In general, people who are numerate are better able to bring consistent meaning to numbers and to make better decisions,” Peters says. “It suggests that courses in math and statistics may be the educational gift that keeps on giving.”

www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10409289.2011.628606

Facebook can help you accumulate hundreds of instant friends, but people with low self-esteem should limit their woeful comments or risk losing their cyber pals, a study reports.

While the social media site is a convenient outlet to share feelings and maintain friendships, researchers have found people who had a poor opinion of themselves were more likely to post negative messages that irritated their existing online friends and alienated themselves further.

As part of their study, Canadian psychologists Amanda Forest and Joanne Wood asked a group of university students what they thought of Facebook, a website that has revolutionised social media and has more than 800 million members worldwide.