Press Releases
What Kind of Chocolate is Best? The Last You Taste, Says a New Study
Like to save the best for last? Here’s good news: If it’s the last, you’ll like it the best. That is the finding of a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “Endings affect us in lots of ways, and one is this ‘positivity effect,’” says University of Michigan psychologist Ed O’Brien, who conducted the study with colleague Phoebe C. Ellsworth. Graduation from college, the last kiss before going off to war: we experience these “lasts” with deep pleasure and affection—in fact, more than we may have felt about those places or people the day before. Even long painful experiences that end pleasantly are rated more highly than short ones ending painfully. ... More>
Older Drivers Can be Trained to Avoid Car Crashes
Why are older drivers, especially those over 70, involved in crashes primarily at intersections? You may tend to attribute this to cognitive or physical decline, such as slower reaction time or poor sight. These factors are undoubtedly part of the problem; however new research by some University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers have come up with another explanation - older drivers acquire bad habits, and those habits can be unlearned. “The effectiveness of our training program indicates that at least a major part of older drivers’ problems can be remediated,” says psychologist Alexander Pollatsek, who authored the article with Mathew R. E. Romoser, and Donald L. Fisher after analyzing two earlier studies. “A large percentage of not attending [to the hazards at intersections] is due to some strategy or mindset they’ve gotten into, rather than some problem with the brain,” he continues. “It’s a software problem, not a hardware problem.” The findings appear in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. ... More>
Grading The Online Dating Industry
The report card is in, and the online dating industry won't be putting this one on the fridge. A new scientific report concludes that although online dating offers users some very real benefits, it falls far short of its potential. ... More>
Right Hand or Left? How the Brain Solves a Perceptual Puzzle
When you see a picture of a hand, how do you know whether it’s a right or left hand? This “hand laterality” problem may seem obscure, but it reveals a lot about how the brain sorts out confusing perceptions. Now, a study which will be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science, challenges the long-held consensus about how we solve this problem. “For decades, the theory was that you use your motor imagination,” says Shivakumar Viswanathan, who conducted the study with University of California Santa Barbara colleagues Courtney Fritz and Scott T. Grafton. Judging from response times, psychologists thought we imagine flipping a mental image of each of our own hands to find the one matching the picture. These imagined movements were thought to recruit the same brain processes used to command muscles to move—a high-level cognitive feat. ... More>
A New Study Shows How to Boost the Power of Pain Relief, Without Drugs
Placebos reduce pain by creating an expectation of relief. Distraction—say, doing a puzzle—relieves it by keeping the brain busy. But do they use the same brain processes? Neuromaging suggests they do. When applying a placebo, scientists see activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. That’s the part of the brain that controls high-level cognitive functions like working memory and attention—which is what you use to do that distracting puzzle. ... More>
