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Psychological Science Explains Uproar over Prostate-Cancer Screenings
WASHINGTON— The uproar that began last year when the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force stated that doctors should no longer offer regular prostate-cancer tests to healthy men continued this week when the task force released their final report. Overall, they stuck to their guns, stating that a blood test commonly used to screen for prostate cancer, the PSA test, causes more harm than good -- it leads men to receive unnecessary, and sometimes even dangerous, treatments. But many people simply don’t believe that the test is ineffective.
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The Mobile App Is Back!
The APS Convention App is ready for download! Attendees can stay tuned with up-to-the-minute information at the convention: For information on sessions you may want to attend, click on the events or poster sessions tab. To add a session to your itinerary, click the desired event and then click the star in the upper right hand corner of your screen. This will add the event to the My Schedule tab. (To remove an event, simply click the star icon again to delete) Want information on a speaker or author?
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Wrongful Convictions Can Be Reduced Through Science, But Tradeoffs Exist
WASHINGTON – Many of the wrongful convictions identified in a report this week hinged on a misidentified culprit -- and a new report in a top journal on psychological science reveals the paradox of reforms in eyewitness identification procedure. In our efforts to make sure that good guys don’t get locked up, we could let more bad guys go. In the May issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, leading scholars in psychology and the law explore and debate various aspects of eyewitness identification procedures, providing a scientific foundation for this important social issue.
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Planet in a Jar: Studying Behavior on a Worldwide Scale
No jar exists that is large enough to contain Planet Earth. Most social and behavioral scientists who study the planet as a whole concede that they can’t set up controlled experiments like scientists who study animals or humans in the laboratory. But one sociologist believes that scientists can build that jar — inside a supercomputer. Dirk Helbing, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, has a goal to build what he calls a Living Earth Platform — a simulator that replicates everything that is happening on Earth. With this simulator, researchers could tackle questions about how human societies function on a planetwide scale.
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Advertising: Why we think sexy men are men and sexy women are objects
Toronto Star: Society has grown accustomed to depictions of scantily clad women being used to sell everything from hamburgers to SUVs, now a study has found that at a basic cognitive level, both men and women see images of sexy women’s bodies as objects, while sexy-looking men are viewed as people.
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Learn something new – your brain will thank you
CNN: The idea that learning a new skill - say juggling, cooking, or playing guitar - can be like an addiction is no joke. I should know. As a college professor/scientist, who has written about the dynamics of narcotics and self-control, I have spent the last 3 1/2 years all but addicted to learning to play guitar. Despite lacking anything that might remotely resemble musical talent, I find no day is complete without at least a little bit of time on the guitar. Even listening to music can be a little like a drug. A brain imaging study that came out last year proved what many scientists long suspected: Listening to music can lead the brain to release the neurotransmitter dopamine.
