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Fewer Romantic Prospects May Lead to Riskier Investments
Encountering information suggesting that it may be tough to find a romantic partner shifts people’s decision making toward riskier options, according to new findings from a series of studies published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “Environmental cues indicating that one will have a relatively difficult time finding a mate can drive people to concentrate their investment choices into a few high-risk, high-return options,” says psychological scientist Joshua Ackerman of the University of Michigan, lead author on the research.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Infections and Elections: Did an Ebola Outbreak Influence the 2014 U.S. Federal Elections (and if so, How)? Alec T. Beall, Marlise K. Hofer, and Mark Schaller Did the Ebola outbreak influence the 2014 U.S. federal elections? In the second of three studies, the researchers analyzed state-specific preferences for Republican and Democratic candidates before and after the Ebola outbreak for 32 U.S. Senate elections held in 2014. They also examined the degree to which voters in each state typically favor Republican or Democratic candidates and the internet search volume for information related to Ebola.
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Brain Repurposes Itself to Learn Scientific Concepts
The human brain was initially used for basic survival tasks, such as staying safe and hunting and gathering. Yet, 200,000 years later the same human brain is able to learn abstract concepts, like momentum, energy and gravity, which have only been formally defined in the last few centuries. New research forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, investigates how the brain is able to acquire brand new types of ideas. Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University, Robert Mason and Marcel Just, used neural decoding techniques developed at CMU to identify specific physics concepts that advanced students recalled when prompted.
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Infants’ Brain Activity Shows Signs of Social Thinking
An innovative collaboration between neuroscientists and developmental psychologists that investigated how infants' brains process other people's action provides evidence directly linking neural responses from the motor system to overt social behavior in infants. The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study involved thirty-six 7-month-old infants, who were each tested while wearing a cap that used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure brain activity. During the experiment, each infant observed an actor reach for one of two toys. Immediately after, the baby was allowed to select one of the same toys.
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Clinical Psychological Science: Engaging With the Wrong People: The Basis of Selective Attention to Negative Faces in Social Anxiety Ben Grafton and Colin MacLeod Studies examining attentional bias toward negative social information -- a vulnerability factor for social anxiety -- have yielded inconsistent results. This is perhaps because attentional bias can be produced by enhanced engagement with negative stimuli or problems disengaging from threatening stimuli. Previous studies have failed to adequately distinguish between the two.
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Curiosity Leads Us to Seek Out Unpleasant, Even Painful, Outcomes
Curiosity is a powerful motivator, leading us to make important discoveries and explore the unknown. But new research shows that our curiosity is sometimes so powerful that it leads us to choose potentially painful and unpleasant outcomes that have no apparent benefits, even when we have the ability to avoid these outcomes altogether. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.