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Time to Put Humor Under the Microscope
The Huffington Post: According to Dennett, humor evolved as a way for the mind to incentivize the discovery of mistaken leaps to conclusion -- or as he puts in his talk, it's "A neural system wired up to reward the brain for doing a grubby clerical job." This so-called "Hurley model" (named after lead author Matthew Hurley), makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. ... That's why when Pete, the scholarly half of our duo, began wondering what makes things funny, he launched the Humor Research Lab, aka HuRL.
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Spoiler Alert: Spoilers May Not Be That Bad
NPR: When you check social media and you're not caught up on your favorite TV show, say, you never know when you might encounter a spoiler. Somebody on Twitter, some blog says too much about what happened in a plot line. My big spoiler moment came when I saw a post about a death on "Downton Abbey" and I thought that everything was just ruined. But is it really that bad when this happens? ... Spoilers have become enough of a preoccupation for a university to study them. Psychology professor Nicholas Christenfeld is at the University of California, San Diego. He examined what effect spoilers have on people's enjoyment of stories. Read the whole story: NPR
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Does having a neat or sloppy desk influence the way you think?
Fox News: There seem to be two types of people in the world: those who keep their desks neat and those who don’t. Now, new research shows that whether your desk is messy or tidy may influence how you think. In a study published in the journal Psychological Science, researchers found that working at a clean and tidy desk promotes socially acceptable behaviors, like generosity and healthy eating, whereas working at a sloppy desk promotes out-of the-box thinking and an openness to new ideas.
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‘Give’ Gives Way as Word Usage Reflects Shift in Values
Pacific Standard: Remember those studies showing that books in recent decades have increasingly used words and phrases connoting self-absorption? Well, newly published research puts that troubling trend into a more comforting context. An analysis by psychologist Patricia Greenfield of the University of California-Los Angeles finds this trend can be traced back at least 200 years. And rather than suggesting our moral failings, it reflects a changing set of attitudes and priorities as Americans (and Brits) left the farm for the city.
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Practice at “Guesstimating” Can Speed Up Math Ability
A person's math ability can range from simple arithmetic to calculus and abstract set theory. But there's one math skill we all share: A primitive ability to estimate and compare quantities without counting, like when choosing a checkout line at the grocery store. Practicing this kind of estimating may actually improve our ability to do the kinds of symbolic math we learn in school, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Previous studies have suggested a connection between the approximate number system, involved in estimating, and mathematical ability.
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Psychological Adaptation to Urbanization, Technology Reflected In Word Usage Over Last Two Centuries
New research shows that as culture has evolved over the last two centuries -- with increasing urbanization, greater reliance on technology, and widespread availability of formal education -- so has human psychology. The findings are forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “This research shows that there has been a two-century long historical shift towards individualistic psychological functioning adapted to an urban environment and away from psychological functioning adapted to a rural environment,” says psychological scientist Patricia Greenfield of the University of California, Los Angeles, author of the new study.
