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Trying to Be Less Stupid: The Hard Work of Brain Science
National Geographic: Michael Gazzaniga was still a graduate student when he helped make one of the most intriguing discoveries of modern neuroscience: that the two hemispheres of the brain not only have different functions, but also operate independently—the so-called split-brain phenomenon. A lover of fine wine and conversation, Gazzaniga, today a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is also that rarity: a scientist whose life and work cross over into the humanities.
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The Prius as an Oddly-Shaped Status Symbol
The Atlantic: The mid-2000s Toyota Prius was a weird-looking box of metal: Viewed from the front, it sloped upward with swollen curves. From the back, it was chunky and pug-nosed. But from a marketing perspective, the Prius’s visual oddness was a selling point. While other car companies designed their hybrid vehicles to blend in with the inoffensive smoothness of the typical midsize car, Toyota sculpted the Prius to stand out. Its aesthetic distinctiveness is one reason for the car’s success in the past decade: In 2010, nearly half of all hybrids sold in the U.S. were Priuses.
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Sound of Intellect: The Psychology of the Elevator Pitch
The Huffington Post: Richard Nelson Bolles, a former Episcopal pastor, decided to self-publish his advice for job hunters in 1970, in the midst of a tough job market for newly minted college graduates. The handbook, What Color Is Your Parachute?, immediately gained popularity by word of mouth and was soon on its way to the bestseller list. In the decades since, it has become the bible for young professionals entering the world of work. It has been revised almost every year and has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Clinical Psychological Science: An Assessment of Emotional Reactivity to Frustration of Goal Pursuit in Euthymic Bipolar I Disorder Michael D. Edge, Sandy J. Lwi, and Sheri L. Johnson Do euthymic people with bipolar disorder display greater levels of emotional reactivity than people without bipolar disorder? Participants with euthymic bipolar disorder and participants without bipolar disorder played a computer game that was meant to induce frustration.
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The Right Face for the Job
Picking a leader should be about assessing the experience and skills an individual can bring to the table, but a new study finds that getting ahead may be easier for people with the right facial features. In a study published in The Leadership Quarterly, psychological scientists from Carnegie Mellon University, Warwick Business School, and West Point Military Academy found that people were surprisingly good at matching leaders’ faces to their real professions. Study authors Christopher Y. Olivola, Dawn L. Eubanks, and Jeffrey B. Lovelace suggest that we may be choosing leaders, at least in part, based on unconscious biases towards certain facial features.
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Hungry? Don’t Go Shopping.
Hunger is one of our most basic and primitive drives. When we are deprived of food, for whatever reason, we become intensely focused on satiating that craving. We want calories, and we want them now. Everything else—including time and money—is merely an aid for finding and acquiring rich, caloric food. This makes sense. It’s survival. Yet beyond this fundamental drive for satiety and nutrition, surprisingly little is known about hunger’s influence on our behavior. New research suggests that hunger’s power may extend beyond eating and nutrition, indeed that it may influence judgments and decisions completely unrelated to those stomach pangs.
