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The Negative In Positive Stereotypes
NPR: In an interview earlier this year, Sen. Harry Reid argued that it's time for a woman to run for president. "Women have qualities that we've been lacking in America for a long time," he told New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney. For instance, he said, "Women are much more patient." Reid's remarks reflect a positive stereotype — a belief that attributes a favorable characteristic to a group. In this case, it's that women have patience. Women are also stereotypically thought to be nurturing, Asian-Americans to be good at math, African-Americans to be good athletes, and so on.
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The Whites of Our Eyes
The New York Times: SEVERAL years ago, while browsing the campus bookstore, one of us, Professor Segal, encountered a display table filled with Squirtles. A Squirtle is a plush-toy turtle manufactured by the company Russ Berrie. They were adorable and she couldn’t wait to take one home. Afterward, Professor Segal began wondering why this toy was so attractive and suspected that its large, round eyes played a major role. It’s well known that a preference for large eyes emerges in humans by 5 months of age. But the Squirtle was even more appealing than many of its big-eyed competitors. Was there something else about its eyes?
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Looks could kill
The Economist: PEOPLE decide quickly how trustworthy a stranger is, based on what his face looks like. And experiments show that, regarding any particular individual, they generally come to the same conclusion. There really are, it seems, trustworthy and untrustworthy faces—though, surprisingly, there is little consensus among researchers as to whether someone whose face is deemed devious really is more likely to betray a trust. The perceivedly untrustworthy do, however, suffer for their phizogs. And a study published in this month’s Psychological Science suggests that in extreme cases—in America at least—this suffering may be fatal.
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Do Know-It-Alls Really Know It All?
NPR's Science Friday: Pre-rated stocks,” “fixed rate deduction,” and “annualized credit” sound like fairly weighty financial terms. So much so, that a number of self-described finance experts said they were familiar with them. However, these concepts were invented by researchers at Cornell University seeking to understand why people say they know things when they don’t—what the team refers to as “overclaiming.” The resulting study, published in the journal Psychological Science, indicates that the more people see themselves as experts, the more likely they are to feign knowledge of phony information.
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Beyond Simple Models of Self-Control
The adolescent brain is more “plastic” than it will ever be again and capable of remarkable adaptability in light of the many challenges that this developmental phase brings. Yet it is a peak time for accidental injury and death, in part because of diminished self-control – the ability to inhibit inappropriate desires, emotions, and actions in favor of appropriate ones. Findings of adolescent-specific changes in self-control and underlying brain circuitry are considered in terms of how evolutionary based biological constraints and experiences shape the brain to adapt to the unique challenges of adolescence.
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Regulation Across the First Decade of Life
Regulation – a multilayered construct defined by the interplay of excitation and inhibition –undergoes substantial development across the first decade of life, is supported by bottom-up processes, and matures in the context of parent-infant synchrony and the neurobiology of affiliation. The talk will chart a biobehavioral perspective on the development of regulation by providing insights from five birth cohorts each followed repeatedly across the first decade of life using careful behavioral observations and neurobiological assessments.
