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Ryan Bogdan
Washington University in St. Louis psychweb.wustl.edu/people/ryan-bogdan What does your research focus on? My research investigates how genetic variation and environmental experience contribute to individual differences in brain function, behavior, and psychopathology. I am particularly interested in understanding how individual differences in reward and threat processing, as well as stress responsiveness, emerge and play a role in the development of depression and anxiety. The larger goal of my research is to contribute to our etiologic understanding of depression and anxiety. What drew you to this line of research and why is it exciting to you?
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Living With Less. A Lot Less.
The New York Times: I LIVE in a 420-square-foot studio. I sleep in a bed that folds down from the wall. I have six dress shirts. I have 10 shallow bowls that I use for salads and main dishes. When people come over for dinner, I pull out my extendable dining room table. I don’t have a single CD or DVD and I have 10 percent of the books I once did. ... Does all this endless consumption result in measurably increased happiness? In a recent study, the Northwestern University psychologist Galen V. Bodenhausen linked consumption with aberrant, antisocial behavior.
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Kasia M. Bieszczad
University of California, Irvine sites.uci.edu/kasiamb/ What does your research focus on? My primary research interests are in the neurobiology of learning and memory, with a particular focus on the neurobiological processes of information storage in the cerebral cortex. A critical issue in behavioral neuroscience is to find neural substrates that comprise the details of experience that form a memory. We all can identify with the notion that memories have content — they are about something. Yet the field has an incomplete understanding of how the details of “what memories are about” are actually represented in the brain.
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Girls May Leave Science Because They’re So Good At Everything Else
BuzzFeed: The argument that women are underrepresented in math and science careers because they're just not as good at math refuses to die, but a new study proposes an alternate explanation: women may be leaving these fields in greater numbers because they're more likely to be good at other things. In research published in Psychological Science, psychologist Ming-Te Wang and his coauthors measured the math and verbal abilities of 1,490 high school seniors and then followed up with them when they were 33. Read the whole story: BuzzFeed
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Lisamarie Bensman
Hilbert College What does your research focus on? My research focuses on sexual behavior, particularly orgasms. I examine the subjective aspects of these situations. How do individuals perceive their orgasm experiences and why? I am currently exploring the role of context in said perceptions. Orgasm experiences appear to be more satisfying when they occur in the partnered context (i.e., from sexual activity with another person) than in the solitary context (i.e., self-masturbation). Individuals report these partnered orgasms to be both physically and psychological more intense and enjoyable.
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Bracket Frenzy Moves Beyond College Basketball
NPR: March madness means NCAA brackets, along with brackets for practically everything else, from Star Wars characters to grooming products to public radio shows. What makes brackets so appealing? Barry Schwartz has spent a career studying the psychology of choice at Swarthmore College. Read the whole story: NPR
