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Kids Show How Society Thinks
Psychological scientist Margaret Beale Spencer says that children can teach us a lot about the society in which they’re raised. “Our children are always near us because we are a society, and what we put out there, kids report back. You ask the question, they’ll give you the answer.” In 2010, CNN commissioned Spence to lead a pilot study examining children’s attitudes toward race. The test she designed involved 133 black and white children from different economic and regional backgrounds in the United States. The young students in Spencer’s study saw drawings of five children whose skin color ranged from dark to light.
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We Feel Hurt Even When Strangers Ignore Us, Study Shows
Huffington Post: No one likes feeling left out, and a new study shows that even being ignored by a stranger hurts. The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, is based on the idea that people need to feel connected to be happy, and that a person can be negatively affected when even a stranger doesn't acknowledge his or her presence, researchers said. To test this idea, researchers from Purdue University, Ohio University and the Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata in Argentina conducted a study that involved making eye contact with passers-by. Read the full story: Huffington Post
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Mother’s love can prevent illness in middle age
The Telegraph: Experts say that a mum who nurtures and cares for her kids can set them up in good health right, even if they've grown up in grinding poverty. Research has already proven that kids who grow up in poor areas are more likely to suffer from chronic illness in adulthood, but US researchers were puzzled why some children bucked this trend. A closer look at adults who'd come from a deprived background revealed that a stressful childhood increased the chances of a kid suffering illnesses such as diabetes, a stroke or high blood pressure later in life. Read the full story: The Telegraph
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Senior Citizens Extending Health and Wellness with Video Games
Yahoo News: To promote staying sharp and remaining active as you age, http://www.SeniorsGuideOnline.com is encouraging seniors to play video games. Research and studies show that video games on the Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360 rank high in strengthening senior health and physical abilities. Video games are not just for kids anymore and there is a new generation of gamers who are having fun while staying young – Senior Citizens. Seniors have become one of the strongest and enthusiastic users of the Nintendo Wii. Currently many Independent Living, Assisted Living and Skilled Nursing Home have a TV, if not an entire room dedicated to the Nintendo Wii and its activity games.
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Do The Funky…Pigeon
You could read Emma Ware’s PhD thesis to find out how social dynamics influence the behavior of pigeons…or, you could watch her dance. Ware was the Social Science winner of the 2011 Dance Your PhD Contest, sponsored by Science and TEDxBrussels. Her dance shows that when confronted when an unresponsive female pigeon on a prerecorded video, the courtship behavior of male pigeons decreased. Courtship behavior also decreased in response to a nine-second delay in the female’s response. In contrast, the male’s courtship behavior didn’t decrease in response to one-second delays, three-second delays, or spatial manipulations.
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The Pupils are the Windows to the Mind
The eyes are the window into the soul—or at least the mind, according to a new paper published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Measuring the diameter of the pupil, the part of the eye that changes size to let in more light, can show what a person is paying attention to. Pupillometry, as it’s called, has been used in social psychology, clinical psychology, humans, animals, children, infants—and it should be used even more, the authors say. The pupil is best known for changing size in reaction to light.
