-
New Research on Sensation and Perception From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research on sensation and perception published in Psychological Science. Discrimination and Categorization of Actions by Pigeons Yael Asen and Robert G. Cook Recognizing different types of behaviors is essential for an animal's survival. In this study, researchers examined if and how pigeons classify actions by training them to discriminate among walking and running animal models. Pigeons' knowledge of movement in one animal transferred into knowledge of movement in models of other animals. Additionally, pigeons' movement discrimination abilities remained intact even when the direction of the movement was reversed and the speed of the movement altered.
-
Buying presents will earn you brownie points AND encourage you to help others
Daily Mail: Thinking about giving and not receiving motivates people to help others, according to a new university study. We are often told to ‘count our blessings’ and be grateful for what we have. And research shows that doing so makes us happier. But will it actually change our behavior towards others? A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that thinking about what we’ve given, rather than what we’ve received, may lead us to be more helpful toward others.
-
Killer Resume Tip: Highlight Potential Over Achievement
The Wall Street Journal: It’s not what you have achieved, but what you might achieve. A new study by scholars at Stanford and Harvard found that in a wide variety of settings people get more excited about individuals with potential and promise than those with actual, proven performance — and are more willing to hire and pay more for these high-potential candidates. (We’ve noted here that many companies prefer to hire– and even pay a premium for– snazzy outsiders, rather than promote tried-and-true insiders, even though the latter often perform better.
-
Inequality and trust sit the test
Sydney Morning Herald: If you search ''buy an essay'' on Google a multitude of websites will pop up offering stress-free ways to complete a looming assignment. They promise teams of ''experienced writers'' on hand to write your essay - some even offer a money-back guarantee if you're not satisfied. The going rate seems to be about $US10 a page, although express services that promise essays in a few hours can cost three or four times that. One website that caught my attention audaciously claimed a focus was ''on professionalism, integrity and honesty''. Its heartwarming goal was to ''make your academic life joyful and easier''.
-
Still Puritan After All These Years
The New York Times: “I THINK I can see the whole destiny of America contained in the first Puritan who landed on those shores,” the French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville wrote after visiting the United States in the 1830s. Was he right? Do present-day Americans still exhibit, in their attitudes and behavior, traces of those austere English Protestants who started arriving in the country in the early 17th century? It seems we do. Consider a series of experiments conducted by researchers led by the psychologist Eric Luis Uhlmann and published last year in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
-
Americans Want to Live in a Much More Equal Country (They Just Don’t Realize It)
The Atlantic: The inequality of wealth and income in the U.S. has become an increasingly prevalent issue in recent years. One reason for this is that the visibility of this inequality has been increasing gradually for a long time--as society has become less segregated, people can now see more clearly how much other people make and consume. Owing to urban life and the media, our proximity to one another has decreased, making the disparity all too obvious. In addition to this general trend, the financial crisis, with all of its fall out, shined a spotlight on the salaries of bankers and financial workers relative to that of most Americans.
