-
Know Thy Avatar: Good and Evil in the Gaming World
The 2013 Ben Stiller film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a remake of a 1947 Danny Kaye movie of the same name, which was itself based on a popular James Thurber story, first published in The New Yorker in 1939. The enduring appeal of this tale reflects the human urge to try on another identity, to be someone else for a time, to play act. Walter Mitty is an ordinary, boring fellow going about his very ordinary day, but in his rich heroic daydreams he is everything from assassin to fighter pilot to ER surgeon extraordinaire. It’s all good fun. But is it possible that such complete immersion in novel and extraordinary identities might have unintended consequences?
-
Perspectives on Behavioral Priming and Replication
The January 2014 issue of Perspectives in Psychological Science features a special section focused on behavioral priming research and attempts at replication. The five articles included in the special section explore issues including the potential role of moderators in hampering the replication of priming effects and whether direct replications are truly feasible. In addition, researchers discuss the fundamental importance of theory to understanding when, why, and how priming effects occur.
-
The Retirement Fear Factor
If you’re like a majority of American adults, you aren’t putting away enough money to keep your current standard of living when you retire. When you’re young, retirement seems light years away. But most financial advisers have far less patience for middle-aged workers who lack a strong savings plan. But for many workers, fear — rather than complacency — may be the reason certain individuals are not putting enough money away, according to a recently published study. In fact, anxiety about retirement can actually disrupt an individual’s capacity to digest information about retirement planning, Oklahoma State University psychological researchers found.
-
Students Remember More With Personalized Review, Even After Classes End
A computer-based individualized study schedule boosted students’ recall on subsequent tests.
-
Memory Wizards
CBS: You may -- or may not -- recall that a few years back, we brought you a story about a handful of people with memories that are almost unimaginable: name virtually any date in their lives, and they can tell you what they were doing that day, the day of the week, sometimes even the weather -- all within seconds. It’s a kind of memory that is brand new to science -- literally unheard of just a decade ago. After our story aired, the scientists studying this phenomenon were flooded with calls and emails. We were so intrigued, we decided to follow the research to see what further study might reveal about these remarkable memories and what it may mean for the rest of us.
-
Remembrance of News Past
The New York Times: WITHIN just over a year we’ve seen the Newtown shootings, the bombing at the Boston Marathon and the rescue of the kidnapped women in Cleveland. But which details of these events will you remember in a year? In five years? Will you remember the names of the perpetrators or the victims, the places where they happened, or the month and the year? It won’t surprise you to learn that the very recent news events are the ones we remember best. The Japanese psychologist Terumasa Kogure found sharp drops in recollection at four years and eight years after an event, but sometimes we’ll remember the details of far older news stories.
