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New Research From Psychological Science
Telling Things Apart: The Distance Between Response Keys Influences Categorization Times Daniël Lakens, Iris K. Schneider, Nils B. Jostmann, and Thomas W. Schubert Making gestures can help people organize their thoughts. To test whether space (e.g., the distance between two response keys) would affect how people categorized stimuli, researchers asked volunteers to perform a task in which they pressed one of two response keys to indicate the color of a word. If the keys were far apart, they responded faster on the incongruent trials in which the word did not match the color (e.g., the word “blue” printed in red ink).
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Le drapeau national fait-il voter à droite ?
Slate France: Avec la primaire d'Europe Ecologie - Les Verts et celle, dont on parle beaucoup moins,du Parti communiste, le temps des pré-scrutins pour l’élection présidentielle de 2012 est déjà venu. L’an prochain, dans la foulée de l’élection suprême, la France aura droit à des législatives. Alors, pour qui voterons-nous ? Pour reformuler la question d’une manière un peu plus scientifique, qu’est-ce qui décide de notre vote ? La vulgate des sciences politiques et de la psychologie dit qu’en démocratie le choix d’un candidat plutôt qu’un autre est le fruit d’un raisonnement. C’est sans doute vrai dans la majorité des cas mais pas toujours.
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Criminal Minds
The Chronicle of Higher Education: He was locked in a van in England with violent criminals, repeatedly, during his late 20s, says Adrian Raine, lifting a fork of salmon ravioli from his plate at a tony restaurant on Walnut Street. "I was at the maximum-security prison in Hull," says the psychologist, now in his 50s, and his job involved attaching polygraph-type sensors to the prisoners' skin to measure their agitation as he bothered them with loud sounds and flashes of light. His lab was in the back of the van, he says, "and the guards were very concerned these men would commandeer the vehicle and escape." Their solution?
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KSU study finds getting answers right on practice tests improves memory
Akron Beacon Journal: Kent State University graduate student Kalif Vaughn conducted an interesting experiment to determine if getting answers right on practice tests would improve recall not only of the thing you’re trying to remember, but things that trigger that memory and things associated with what you’re trying to remember. Vaughn and KSU Associate Professor Katherine Rawson tested students on how well they remembered the English equivalent of a Lithuanian word.
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Income disparity causes unhappiness – study
Reuters: As the rich get richer and the poor fall further behind, levels of happiness and satisfaction drop, but only among people with modest and lower incomes, a new study shows. The finding holds true for about 60 percent of Americans, according to research that will be published in the journal Psychological Science. "Income disparity has grown a lot in the U.S., especially since the 1980s. With that, we've seen a marked drop in life satisfaction and happiness," said Shigehiro Oishi, a psychologist at the University of Virginia. Read more: Reuters
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Smell of Success: Scents Affect Thoughts, Behaviors
LiveScience: WASHINGTON — Suit pressed, mind ready and resume in hand. When preparing for a job interview, most people take every precaution to convey the best impression possible. But aside from body odor, not many people pay attention to the odors that surround them. That onion-laden lunch could give your potential boss-to-be the wrong impression, according to new research presented in May at the Association for Psychological Science annual meeting. "There's a lot of research that's begun now, where people are looking at how the environment affects our well-being," said Jeannette Haviland-Jones, of Rutgers University in New Jersey.
