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New Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Science Research (IBSS) Competition
The Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Science Research (IBSS) has a two new support opportunities for Interdisciplinary research projects under solicitation number NSF 12-614. Proposals for: 1. IBSS Large Interdisciplinary Research Projects. Large interdisciplinary research projects may be supported by awards as large as $1,000,000. 2. IBSS Interdisciplinary Team Exploratory Projects. Exploratory research by emerging multidisciplinary teams may be supported by awards as large as $250,000. View complete information about the Program Solicitation NSF 12-614 online.
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Testing Can Be Useful for Students and Teachers, Promoting Long-Term Learning
Pop quiz! Tests are good for: (a) Assessing what you’ve learned; (b) Learning new information; (c) a & b; (d) None of the above. The correct answer? According to research from psychological science, it’s both (a) and (b) – while testing can be useful as an assessment tool, the actual process of taking a test can also help us to learn and retain new information over the long term and apply it across different contexts. New research published in journals of the Association for Psychological Science explores the nuanced interactions between testing, memory, and learning and suggests possible applications for testing in educational settings.
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Building Emotions
Emotions like anger, sadness, and fear have traditionally been thought of as innate, discrete entities, each with its own biological core: An event (seeing a snake) triggers a particular hardwired emotion (fear) and its corresponding behavioral and physiological responses (an adrenaline surge, screaming, running away). As Lisa Feldman Barrett has found, however, this view is not well supported by the scientific literature, and so she has developed a model that is more in line with the data.
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Can You Trust Nexi?
People face this predicament all the time—can you determine a person’s character in a single interaction? Can you judge whether someone you just met can be trusted when you have only a few minutes together? And if you can, how do you do it? Using a robot named Nexi, Northeastern University psychology professor David DeSteno and collaborators Cynthia Breazeal from MIT’s Media Lab and Robert Frank and David Pizarro from Cornell University have figured out the answer. The findings will be published in the journal Psychological Science.
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Därför skrattar vi åt hemska saker (That’s why we laugh at terrible things)
Sveriges Television: Humorns beståndsdelar Kan man skämta om vad som helst? Den frågan har komiker ställt sig i alla tider. Nu visar ny forskning att det funkar att gå över gränsen. Men bara lite. Komikern Özz Nujen vet hur det känns att ta ett skämt för långt. - Det har jag gjort tusentals gånger. Men det värsta var nog när jag skämtade om elfte september i New York. Jag berättade att en av mina släktingar dog i attacken. När jag sen sa att det var han som körde planet då blev det knäpptyst. - Och mitt skämt om att man inte direkt ställde sig upp och gjorde vågen efter tsunamikatastrofen gick inte heller hem hos alla.
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The Unexpected Impact of Coded Appeals
The New York Times: After signing into law the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson famously told an aide, “we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.” Indeed, the Johnson-Goldwater contest was notable in two important respects related to race: it featured the first appearance in almost a century of racial animus as a central dimension of partisan conflict in a presidential election, and it was the last time a Democrat received a majority of the white vote. Attention to matters of race has surged in recent weeks with the appearance of a pair of purportedly race-coded ads.
