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Evolution of the Human Brain: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
With our uniquely large brains and extended childhoods, humans are a bit of an evolutionary puzzle. According to a recent article published in Perspectives in Psychological Science, romantic love and the pair-bonding that it motivates may be part of the answer to this evolutionary riddle. Researchers Garth Fletcher of Victoria University in Wellington New Zealand and collaborators Jeffry A. Simpson, Lorne Campbell, and Nickola C. Overall argue that the adaptation of romantic love may have played a key role in the evolution of our big, sophisticated brains and social aptitude. “Evolutionary adaptations typically have a jury-rigged nature, and romantic love is no exception,” says Fletcher.
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How Real Are Facebook Friendships?
The Atlantic: Editor of the New York Times Book Review Pamela Paul’s recent column “How to Be Liked By Everyone Online” describes how social media “has upended social and psychological norms” by changing some words to their opposite, or at least giving them a very different gist than they initially had. With Facebook, "to friend" has become a verb, and yet to do so, in the social-media sense, is a fairly passive act, Paul said. In real life, when a friendship ruptures, it’s a major event. But just as it’s easy to start a Facebook relationship, it’s virtually effort-free to end one. The personal investment on either side of “unfriending” somebody is infinitely lower than offline.
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We Know How You Feel
The New Yorker: Three years ago, archivists at A.T. & T. stumbled upon a rare fragment of computer history: a short film that Jim Henson produced for Ma Bell, in 1963. Henson had been hired to make the film for a conference that the company was convening to showcase its strengths in machine-to-machine communication. Told to devise a faux robot that believed it functioned better than a person, he came up with a cocky, boxy, jittery, bleeping Muppet on wheels. “This is computer H14,” it proclaims as the film begins.
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The Smart Way to Teach Children About Money
The Wall Street Journal: It’s time to rethink how we teach children about money. For all the effort parents put into helping their children understand dollars and cents, and for all the effort schools put into formal lessons in personal finance, most children still grow up into adults who can’t properly save, spend and budget. Now researchers—from psychologists to economists to communications experts—have started asking why. And the one theme that comes out of their research loud and clear is that we’re doing it all wrong. Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal
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The Toddlers Are on to You
Pacific Standard: Your toddler might be even more perceptive than you think. New research suggests that children as young as 13 months can understand that people's judgments of their peers aren't always true or accurate. The claim is likely to remain controversial, but if correct, it suggests that human beings develop a deep understanding of the social world around them much earlier than previously thought. At issue is what psychologists call theory of mind. Roughly speaking, that’s the ability to put ourselves in another’s shoes and reason based on their beliefs, even if those beliefs are demonstrably false.
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Your friends could predict your lifespan: study
CTV News: Giving new meaning to the oft-uttered exclamation that your friends know you better than you think, researchers from Washington University in St. Louis say close friends know each other well enough to have an idea of how long the other will live. "You expect your friends to be inclined to see you in a positive manner, but they also are keen observers of the personality traits that could send you to an early grave," says Joshua Jackson, PhD, assistant professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences.
