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A Long-Term Approach to Studying Antisocial Behavior
Some people respond to life’s pressures by engaging in criminal behavior; others don’t. Psychological scientists are trying to figure out why criminals are different, but much of the existing research that connects personal characteristics to antisocial behavior has measured personality and behavior simultaneously, making it difficult to establish a causal relationship. A longitudinal study of Estonian adolescents that was recently published in the European Journal of Personality may be an important addition to the literature on antisocial behavior.
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My, What Big Teeth You Have! Threatening Objects Appear Closer
When we're faced with things that seem threatening, whether it’s a hairy spider or an angry mob, our goal is usually to get as far away as we can. Now, new research suggests that our visual perception may actually be biased in ways that help motivate us to get out of harm’s way. Our bodies help us respond to threats by engaging our fight-or-flight response and enabling us to act quickly: Our heart rate and blood pressure ramp up, and we produce more of the stress hormone cortisol. But research suggests that the body may also demonstrate its preparedness through certain perceptual biases.
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Q&A With Zoë Chance
Zoë Chance is a lecturer in marketing at the Yale School of Management. Her research includes consumer behavior, focusing on decision making and social welfare. We invited our Facebook and Twitter followers, as well as students, to submit questions based on Chance's research, and here is what she had to say. In reference to the research article in Psychological Science, "Giving Time Gives You Time" : Is there a relationship between the amount of time given or volunteered and the amount of time received? We didn’t find a relationship between the amount of time given or volunteered and the amount of time received — at least between 10 and 30 minutes.
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Could boredom be curable?
The Boston Globe: You're driving to work one morning when you find yourself stuck in a traffic jam. You’re sitting in math class, listening to your teacher explain the afternoon’s lesson. You’re labeling envelopes to send out party invitations, letter after letter after letter. What do these seemingly unrelated experiences share? They have the potential to be unbelievably boring. Boredom is more than just one of life’s minor irritations. It has been implicated in drug use and alcoholism, problematic gambling and compulsive behavior—and has even been tied to potentially lethal errors in job execution.
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Rethinking the Classic ‘Obedience’ Studies
Pacific Standard: They are among the most famous of all psychological studies, and together they paint a dark portrait of human nature. Widely disseminated in the media, they spread the belief that people are prone to blindly follow authority figures—and will quickly become cruel and abusive when placed in positions of power. It’s hard to overstate the impact of Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments of 1961, or the Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971. Yet in recent years, the conclusions derived from those studies have been, if not debunked, radically reinterpreted.
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Negative Thoughts? Toss ’em
Discovery News: If you've ever been told to imagine releasing negative thoughts, only to find the same thoughts popping into your head minutes later, quit imagining and start physically throwing those thoughts away, researchers recommend following a new study published in Psychological Science. "At some level, it can sound silly," study co-author Richard Petty of Ohio State University said in a press release. "But we found that it really works -- by physically throwing away or protecting your thoughts, you influence how you end up using those thoughts.
