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Inside the Psychologist’s Studio: Mahzarin Banaji
Like its quasi-namesake (that would be Inside the Actor's Studio), the Inside the Psychologist's Studio series traditionally has focused on more senior luminaries who look back at their accomplishments. In a departure from that format, we bring you a fascinating, wide-ranging forward-looking, intergenerational conversation that promises to leave you even more confident about the future of psychological science. Rebecca Saxe is a scientist at MIT, where she got her PhD in 2003. Already, she has made exciting contributions to our understanding of how infants become social beings, what goes wrong in brain development to produce autism, and how we make moral decisions.
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Conflict Between the Mind and Body Helps People Think Outside the Box
Yahoo Finance: Think of the old saying, "grin and bear it." Can forcing a smile really have a positive impact on how people see the world, even to the point of becoming more open-minded? According to new research from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, the answer is yes. The study shows that when bodily expressions are in conflict with one's actual feelings – such as recalling a happy memory while frowning or listening to sad music while smiling – people become more likely to accept and embrace atypical ideas.
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Depressed People Find It Hard to Stop Reliving Bad Times
MSN Health: June 7 (HealthDay News) -- A new study suggests that depressed people suffer from an inability to rid themselves of negative thoughts because they can't turn their attention to other things. "They basically get stuck in a mindset where they relive what happened to them over and over again," said study co-author Jutta Joormann of the University of Miami in an Association for Psychological Science news release. "Even though they think, 'Oh, it's not helpful, I should stop thinking about this, I should get on with my life,' they can't stop doing it." The study authors gave tests designed to gauge mental flexibility to 26 depressed people and 27 people who had never been depressed.
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You can pay attention without actually doing so
Times of India: But a new study has found that they are not inextricably linked as previously thought, and are actually two separate things, that is, your brain can pay attention to something without you being aware that it's there. We wanted to ask, can things attract your attention even when you don't see them at all? Po-Jang Hsieh, of Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore and MIT, said. Hsieh co-wrote the study with Jaron T. Colas and Nancy Kanwisher of MIT. To test this, Hsieh and his colleagues came up with an experiment that used the phenomenon called visual pop-out. They set each participant up with a display that showed a different video to each eye.
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When the Melody Takes a Detour, the Science Begins
The New York Times: In the middle of a World Science Festival panel on Saturday night, the guitarist Pat Metheny took a sudden U-turn from the program he had planned. Instead of performing one of his innovative compositions, plucked from any of the phases of his career as a style-shifting jazz omnivore, Mr. Metheny, performing with the bassist Larry Grenadier, decided on the spot to play a jazz standard. And not just any jazz standard, but an especially ubiquitous one: "Autumn Leaves." Read more: The New York Times
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Why So Much Abuse Is Allowed to Continue in Residential Care
TIME: The stories are beyond horrifying: an autistic boy crushed to death by a "restraint" gone awry; a disabled woman's diaper pulled aside as she is raped; an elderly woman left to lie on a urine-soaked box spring for six days after being beaten. In two of the nation's largest states, major media investigations this spring revealed hellish conditions in institutions for the disabled: The New York Times exposed ongoing violations, including physical and psychological abuse, in state-run homes for the developmentally disabled, while the Miami Herald uncovered similar tales of maltreatment and neglect in assisted-living homes for the elderly. Read more: TIME
