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In Defense of Wishful Thinking
Scientific American: In my most recent post and others—and in chats with George Johnson and Robert Wright on Bloggingheads.tv—I rail against biological determinism and defend free will. Some critics accuse me of letting wishful thinking cloud my judgment when it comes to these issues. They say that objective reality is objective reality, regardless of our subjective attitudes toward it.
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Cook: The importance of trusting your instincts
Statesman: Are humans liberal or conservative by nature? Scientists have started to provide provocative answers by looking at the roots of morality. Influential psychologist Jonathan Haidt surveyed the world's cultures and suggested that virtually everyone is born with an innate propensity for five broad moral instincts: fairness, not harming others, loyalty to one's group, respecting authority and purity. And in psychological experiments, conservatives value all five of the instincts, yet liberals tend to put far more weight on the first two — fairness and not doing harm — while discounting the other three. It is easy to see how those play out in our political life.
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Violent Video Games, Behavior: Latest Evidence
Miller-McCune: A clear consensus exists among researchers that playing violent video games is a risk factor for aggressive attitudes and behavior. The Supreme Court today struck down a California law barring the sale of violent video games to children. By a vote of 7 to 2, the justices ruled that the law violated the First Amendment right to free speech. In a concurring vote, Justice Samuel Alito (joined by Chief Justice John Roberts) wrote that a more carefully crafted law restricting such sales might be constitutional.
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Gender Is Dead! Long Live Gender!
NPR: Conjure before your mind the image of a physics professor. Imagine what his life is like. Now pretend, for a few moments, that you are that person. Try to get a feel for what it is like to be him. Now let's start anew. This time think of a cheerleader. Picture her; imagine what her life is like. Now pretend to be her. Imagine what it is like to be her. When psychologist Adam Galinksy and his collaborator at Northwestern University asked subjects to carry out this sort of exercise, they made a startling finding. After the exercise, subjects were asked to characterize themselves.
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What do Canadian Hockey Fans and Anthony Weiner Have in Common?
LiveScience: Using a theory that could explain everything from helpful strangers to former Rep. Anthony Weiner's salacious tweeting to the riots that shook Vancouver after the city's hockey team lost the Stanley Cup, researchers are now suggesting that anonymity, power and booze are more alike than you might think. Whether you're hiding behind an anonymous user name in an online forum, riding the high of a political victory or are intoxicated, a new research review finds, the results are the same: A loss of inhibition can lead you to do great things — or make enormous mistakes.
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Adult sexting tied to power, ‘unlimited partners’
USA Today: Embattled Rep. Anthony Weiner, D.-N.Y., may have been the only person in the past week to gain national media attention for sending suggestive pictures of himself via social media, but his behavior follows a common pattern. Though research exists into so-called "sexting" by teens, including a widely publicized study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in 2009, studies on the sexting and online flirtation habits of adults are much more sparse. Some information does exist, albeit with widely varying estimates on how widespread the behavior is. Findings from Pew in October suggest 6% of adults have sent sexually explicit messages over the Internet.
