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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: A Dissociation of Performance and Awareness During Binocular Rivalry Daniel H. Baker and John R. Cass In binocular rivalry, a different image is shown to each eye and awareness of the images alternates between eyes over time. Interestingly, researchers find that people still show some sensitivity to images presented to the suppressed eye. To determine how this might happen, the researchers measured participants' sensitivity to probes presented to a single eye during periods of suppression or dominance.
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Your brain sees things that you don’t
PBS: Your brain saw something in the black and white image above, even if you didn't. According to a study published this week in the online journal Psychological Science, the brain processes and understands visual input, even if we are unaware of it. Jay Sanguinetti, a doctoral candidate at the University of Arizona, showed study participants black and white silhouettes. Some were just shapes, but a few images were outlines of real objects, like the seahorses in the image above. He monitored their brains with an electroencephalogram -- which looks like a swimming cap with wires. They were shown the pictures for 170 milliseconds, which is less than a quarter of a second.
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Scholarly reflections on the ‘selfie’
Oxford University Press Blog: When Oxford Dictionaries chose ‘selfie’ as their Word of the Year 2013, we invited several scholars from different fields to share their thoughts on this emerging phenomenon. “Theory of mind may be foremost among the factors that set people apart from other species. Yet, to know that others have a mind (full of beliefs, expectations, emotions, perceptions — some the same and some different from one’s own) is not enough to be really successful as the social animal.
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Too Aware? The Downside of Mindfulness Revealed
LiveScience: "Mindfulness" is the watchword of gurus and lifestyle coaches everywhere. But too much awareness could prevent the formation of good habits, new research suggests. People high in mindfulness — a state of active attention to what's going on in the present moment — are worse at automatic learning, according to the study, which is being presented today (Nov. 12) at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego. Automatic processes lead to the formation of habits — both good and bad, said study researcher Chelsea Stillman, a doctoral student in psychology at the Georgetown University Center for Brain Plasticity and Recovery. ...
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Among U.S. presidents, LBJ tops charts in ‘grandiose narcissism’ study
Houston Chronicle: In a recent study of U.S. presidents' personality traits, Lyndon Johnson ranked highest in grandiose narcissism. While it frequently gets a bad rap, grandiose narcissism may predict both positive and negative leadership behaviors, according to a group of researchers who published a paper in October in Psychological Science. Grandiose narcissism, which is characterized by an extroverted, flamboyant style, is distinct from vulnerable narcissism, which is more associated with emotional sensitivity and vulnerability. The paper, titled "The Double-Edged Sword of Grandiose Narcissism: Implications for Successful and Unsuccessful Leadership Among U.S.
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Visual System ‘Prioritizes’ Information for Conscious Access
We are continuously flooded with sensory information from our physical environment – the sights, sounds, smells, feel of everything around us. We’re flooded with so much information, in fact, that we’re not consciously aware of much of it. “Considering that people are continuously presented with vast amounts of sensory information, a system is needed to select and prioritize the most relevant information,” Surya Gayet and colleagues write. The researchers surmised that, in the case of vision, visual working memory (VWM) may be that selection system.
