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Virtuous Behaviors Sanction Later Sins
Scientific American: Anyone who has ever devoured a triple-chocolate brownie after an intense workout knows how tempting it can be to indulge after behaving virtuously. A new study suggests, however, that we often apply this thought process to inappropriate scenarios, giving ourselves license to act in unhealthy or antisocial ways. Researchers in Taiwan gave a sugar pill to 74 smokers, misleading half of them to think it was a vitamin C supplement. All the participants then took an unrelated survey and were told they could smoke if they desired. Read the whole story: Scientific American
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In Recognizing Faces, the Whole is Not Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts
How do we recognize a face? To date, most research has answered “holistically”: We look at all the features—eyes, nose, mouth—simultaneously and, perceiving the relationships among them, gain an advantage over taking in each feature individually. Now a new study overturns this theory. The researchers—Jason M. Gold and Patrick J. Mundy of the Indiana University and Bosco S. Tjan of the University of Southern California—found that people’s performance in recognizing a whole face is no better than their performance with each individual feature shown alone. “Surprisingly, the whole was not greater than the sum of its parts,” says Gold.
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Preschool Has Big Advantages for the Disadvantaged
It may seem obvious that preschool helps kids perform better in later grades. But most studies to date have produced limited conclusions about how the preschool environment impacts a child’s academic success. A recent Psychological Science study has filled in some of those gaps. In the study, Elliot Tucker-Drob analyzed a data set that included 1,200 fraternal and identical twins from 600 families. The focus on twins allowed Tucker-Drob to fully account for family-to-family variation as well as genetic influences. He also evaluated each child at two, four, and five years of age to make sure that achievement gaps attributed to preschool didn’t already exist before the preschool years.
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Want to Limit Aggression? Practice Self-Control!
Feeling angry and annoyed with others is a daily part of life, but most people don’t act on these impulses. What keeps us from punching line-cutters or murdering conniving co-workers? Self-control. A new review article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, examines the psychological research and finds that it’s possible to deplete self-control—or to strengthen it by practice. Criminologists and sociologists have long believed that people commit violent crimes when an opportunity arises and they’re low on self-control. “It’s an impulsive kind of thing,” says Thomas F.
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The Last Piece Of Chocolate You Eat Is The Best, Says Study
The Huffington Post: A new study published in the journal Psychological Science reveals that the last bite of chocolate you eat will probably taste the best. The study, authored by Ed O'Brien and Phoebe C. Ellsworth of the University of Michigan, piggybacked off previous studies about salient endings. One forerunner had demonstrated that students felt greater affection for their school when reminded about graduation than students not reminded of graduation. The authors explain, in relation to food: Imagine that your favorite restaurant is closing, and you final meal tastes especially delicious.
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Decision-Making Under Stress: The Brain Remembers Rewards, Forgets Punishments
TIME: If you’re trying to make an important decision while the baby is crying, the boss is shouting on the phone and the cat has chosen this moment to think outside the box, you might want to take a breather and wait. A new review shows that acute stress affects the way the brain considers the pros and cons, causing it to focus on pleasure and ignore the possible negative consequences of a decision. The research has implications for everything from obesity and addictions to finance, suggesting that stress may modify the way people make choices in predictable ways.
