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We Can’t Blame Everything on Powerful Men
Scientific American: There’s certainly been no shortage of news headlines proclaiming that we can now add former CIA director General David Petraeus to the list of powerful men who have been brought down by very well-publicized sex scandals. It’s particularly dismaying to see how many of these headlines are broadly asserting, as news outlet headlines often do in these situations, that there must be some sort of inextricable link between power, masculinity, and infidelity. These claims imply (or sometimes even explicitly state) that there’s something inherent about masculinity that leads powerful men to behave unethically, whereas powerful women would never fall victim to such an effect.
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Q & A With Psychological Scientist Jaime Napier
Jaime Napier is an assistant professor of psychology at Yale University. Her research focuses on political and religious ideologies. We invited our Facebook and Twitter followers, as well as students, to submit questions based on Napier's research, and here is what she had to say. In reference to the research article, "Why Are Conservatives Happier Than Liberals?": Are there any significant differences between the gaps in happiness in the United States and other countries? Was the gap larger or smaller in other nations or relatively similar?
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Daydreaming really is the key to solving complex problems
The Telegraph: Daydreaming really is the key to solving complex problems, a new study has found. Some of the most important scientific breakthroughs ever made - by everyone from Einstein to Newton - came about as the geniuses behind them allowed their minds to wander. Now research by modern day scientists has shown that mere mortals can also improve their problem-solving ability in the same way. The study showed that people who returned to a difficult task after taking a break and doing an easy task boosted their performance by around 40 per cent.
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Neuroscience: Under Attack
The New York Times: This fall, science writers have made sport of yet another instance of bad neuroscience. The culprit this time is Naomi Wolf; her new book, “Vagina,” has been roundly drubbed for misrepresenting the brain and neurochemicals like dopamine and oxytocin. Earlier in the year, Chris Mooney raised similar ire with the book “The Republican Brain,” which claims that Republicans are genetically different from — and, many readers deduced, lesser to — Democrats. “If Mooney’s argument sounds familiar to you, it should,” scoffed two science writers.
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Sadness And Shopping Are A Bad Mix On Black Friday
Forbes: If Thanksgiving left you sad you may want to consider leaving your credit cards at home before you hit the stores for Black Friday. When it comes to keeping long-term financial consequences in mind, sadder but wiser is just not true. Research, just published in Psychological Science, shows that sadness “made people more myopic, and therefore willing to forgo greater future gains in return for instant gratification.” What the researchers did was induce a sad mood by having subjects watch a short video about a boy’s mentor dying. Then they had subjects make decisions that pit short-term gain against larger long-term gains. The results? Read the whole story: Forbes
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An Indirect Damage of Terror Attacks: Higher Traffic Fatalities
The Atlantic: On Friday, convicted terrorist Adis Medunjanin was sentenced to life in prison for plotting an attack on the New York City subway system several years back. Public transit has been the target of a number of similar efforts in the post-9/11 era: Madrid trains in 2004, London subway and buses in 2005, the Moscow metro in 2010. Fortunately, in the case of Medunjanin and his cohorts, law enforcement spoiled the plan before its execution. Society doesn't need any additional incentive to prevent a terror attack beyond avoiding the tragedy itself. When the focus of such attacks is public transit, however, stopping them doesn't just save the lives directly at stake.
