-
BATMAN Gear for the Real World
The United States Air Force is taking a page from an iconic comic. As an intern in the Human Performance Wing at Wright Paterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, psychological scientist Andre Garcia, from George Mason University, worked on the BATMAN team. Though Garcia tends to think of team BATMAN (which stands for Battlefield Air Targeting Man-Aided kNowledge) as being more like Alfred, Batman’s loyal butler who was always there to help the caped crusader with all of his high-tech gizmos.
-
Save the Nerves for the Night Before
Four days left, 4 more psychological science highlights: Counting down to the Olympic Opening Ceremony, with research insights on sports and performance. #4. In Olympic competition, the margin between winning the gold and sitting in the stands often comes down to fractions of a second. Olympic athletes will be doing everything they can to gain even the slightest competitive edge. Researchers have found that feeling tense the night before a game could actually be part of gaining that edge. Recent research conducted at Northwestern University investigated whether feelings of tension play a part in swimming performance.
-
Boosting New Memories With Wakeful Resting
Too often our memory starts acting like a particularly porous sieve: all the important fragments that should be caught and preserved somehow just disappear. So armed with pencils and bolstered by caffeine, legions of adults, especially older adults, tackle crossword puzzles, acrostics, Sudoku and a host of other activities designed to strengthen their flagging memory muscles. But maybe all they really need to do to cement new learning is to sit and close their eyes for a few minutes.
-
Psychologie: Der Kompass des Bösen (Psychology: The compass of evil)
ORF Austria: Mehr als 50 Jahre ist es her, dass der US-Psychologe Stanley Milgram die Barbarei zum wissenschaftlichen Untersuchungsgegenstand erklärt hat. Forscher bieten nun eine Neuinterpretation seiner klassischen Experimente an: Grausam wird der Mensch nicht nur durch Gehorsam - sondern auch durch soziale Identifikation. "Ich habe ein einfaches Experiment an der Yale-Universität durchgeführt, um herauszufinden, wie viel Schmerz ein gewöhnlicher Mitbürger einem anderen zufügen würde, einfach weil ihn ein Wissenschaftler dazu aufforderte", notierte Stanley Milgram 1974 in einer Rückschau. Read the whole story: ORF Austria
-
Silly Sports Rituals? Think Again
Five days left, 5 psychological science highlights: Counting down to the Olympic Opening Ceremony, with research insights on sports and performance. #5. Have you seen Michelle Jenneke’s prerace routine? How about Stephanie Rice before she swims? When a event begins, there is no telling how it will end. How can players cope with the unpredictability Olympic competition? The rituals that athletes count on to win a tip off or sink a game-winning shot — like the college basketball shorts Michael Jordan used to wear under his NBA uniform — might be more than just mere superstitions. Gregg Steinberg, Austin Peay State University, studies human performance in sports.
-
Flummoxed by Failure—or Focused?
The Wall Street Journal: Many people think of intelligence as static: you are born with lots of brains, very few, or somewhere in between, and that quantum of intelligence largely determines how well you do in school and in life. The astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has never liked this view. "I hardly ever use the word intelligence," says Mr. Tyson, who directs the Hayden Planetarium in New York. "I think of people as either wanting to learn, ambivalent about learning or rejecting learning." He speaks from experience: As a young man, he was booted from one doctoral program but managed to get into another and complete his Ph.D.
