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The Biological Response to Beauty and Ugliness in Art [Excerpt]
Scientific American: Our attraction to faces, and particularly to eyes, appears to be innately determined. Infants as well as adults prefer to look at eyes rather than other features of a person’s face, and both infants and adults are sensitive to gaze. The direction of a person’s gaze is very important in our processing of the emotions displayed by that person’s face, because the brain combines information from gaze with information from facial expressions.
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Major League Baseball Copes With Climate Change
The Huffington Post: On June 30, Washington Nationals ace Stephen Strasburg had his shortest outing of the season, lasting only three innings against the Atlanta Braves at Turner Field. What knocked him out of the box? Record-breaking heat. The 24-year-old All Star pitcher had prepared by drinking copious amounts of water the night before. He retreated to the air-conditioned clubhouse between innings. No matter. The temperature at 4 p.m. game time that Saturday afternoon was 104 degrees, the official high that day was 106 -- the hottest in Atlanta's history -- and by the fourth inning the temperature on the field was around 120. Read the whole story: The Huffington Post
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Health gem
The Irish Times: If you do one thing this week . . . take a wakeful rest after learning Could taking a wakeful rest after learning help memory? Experiments where people were asked to remember prose suggest that it could. In the recent study, published in Psychological Science, adult participants were told short stories. That was followed by 10 minutes where some rested awake but undistracted, while others played a non-verbal spot-the-difference game. Those who had the wakeful rest remembered more of the story’s information a week later. Read the whole story: The Irish Times
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How Urban Parks Enhance Your Brain
The Atlantic: A couple weeks ago the folks at Cracked told readers that "living in a city makes you dumber." There are a number of flaws here — beyond the obvious one of getting your science news from Cracked — but the research at the center of the claim has some relevance to cities worth considering nonetheless. What it tells us is not so much a story about the hazards of city living as it is about the benefits of city parks. The original study at issue here, which I'm familiar with from earlier work, was published back in 2008 in Psychological Science.
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L’ozio rende tristi (Idleness saddened)
La Stampa: Chissà cosa direbbe Bertrand Russell, l’autore della raccolta di saggi intitolata “Elogio dell’ozio” sapendo che chi si trastulla nel dolce far nulla in realtà è più triste di chi invece s’impegna in una qualche attività, anche semplice, o un hobby. C’è da dire che in verità Russell non proponeva di starsene in panciolle tutto il giorno, ma di impegnarsi in attività lavorative per 4 ore al giorno in modo da avere il tempo di pensare, socializzare eccetera – e questa potrebbe anche essere una meta a cui molti vorrebbero poter arrivare. Ma l’uomo moderno – a parte qualche eccezione – a stare fermo proprio non ci riesce.
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Wobbly Chairs May Affect Your Values
Scientific American: A wobbly chair is more than just annoying. Believe it or not, it can influence your values, or beliefs about others. Past studies have shown a link between physical objects and our emotions. Carry a cold drink at a party and you’re likely to consider other guests cold and offputting. Hold a warm drink, and you tend to perceive those same people as warm and welcoming. In a new study, subjects sat either on wobbly chairs or stable chairs. While seated, they were asked to gauge the stability of several celebrity relationships, for example, Jay-Z and Beyonce.
