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Confidence Spills Over Across Unrelated Decisions
Research on metacognition, or “thinking about thinking,” has explored important puzzles about how humans monitor and control their thoughts. One of these puzzles is why people’s beliefs don’t match with reality -- such as why, for example, people are often overconfident in their performance on perceptual or memory tasks. New research by Dobromir Rahnev (Georgia Institute of Technology) and his colleagues has identified one possible reason for poor metacognition.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Conceptual Conditioning: Mechanisms Mediating Conditioning Effects on Pain Marieke Jepma and Tor D. Wager Although researchers know that classical conditioning can modify pain responses, the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. Participants were conditioned to pair specific shapes with symbolic indicators of a high or low temperature. Participants' skin conductance responses were then measured as they completed a test phase in which the shapes preceded contact heat treatments.
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23rd Biennial Congress on Human Ethology
The 23rd Biennial Congress on Human Ethology, sponsored by the International Society for Human Ethology (ISHE) and the University of Stirling, will be held at the University of Stirling, Scotland, from August 1–5, 2016. The 2016 academic program will include several invited speakers, other oral presentations, and a poster session. Confirmed plenary speakers include Malinda Carpenter, Robin Dunbar, David Perrett and Benoist Schaal. The cultural program will include a banquet dinner and extracurricular activities. ISHE provides financial support for students who are first author presenters of accepted conference proposals.
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Justificaciones autoadministradas: Haciendo (hacer) algo malo sintiéndose bien
Shaul Shalvi1, Francesca Gino2, Rachel Barkan3, y Shahar Ayal4 1 Departamento de Psicología, Universidad Ben-Gurion de Negev, Beersheba, Israel; 2 Escuela de Administración de Harvard, Universidad de Harvard; 3 Facultad Guilford Glazer de la Administración de Gerencia y Negocios, Universidad Ben-Gurion de Negev, Beersheba, Israel; 4Escuela de Psicología Baruch Ivcher, Centro Interdisciplinario Herzliya, Israel. Originalmente publicado en: Current Directions in Psychological Science, Vol.24 (2), 125-130, 2015.
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Safe Crossings: The Power of Eye Contact
It can be a dangerous world for pedestrians. Studies on French roads report that nearly 60% of drivers do not stop at all for pedestrians crossing the street at designated crosswalks. New research suggests that pedestrians may have a better shot at crossing safely if they make direct eye contact with oncoming drivers. Decades of research have shown that eye contact has a powerful effect in social interactions. People are far more likely to comply with requests — for example, donating money — when the person making the request looks them in the eye.
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Bilingualism and the Aging Brain
Bilingualism appears to have a positive influence cognitive reserve — the way the brain responds to neuropathological damage.
