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Psychologists Put “Character” Under the Microscope–and it Vanishes
Scientific American: What can science reveal about our “character” — that core of good, or evil, that shapes our moral behavior? The answer, according to a new book, is that there may not be much of a core, after all. In “Out of Character,” scientists David DeSteno and Piercarlo Valdelsolo argue that how we think about character — a conception that dates back to at least the ancient Greeks — is deeply flawed. Our moral behavior, to a surprising degree, is shaped by the context in which we find ourselves. Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook spoke recently with DeSteno about the book, and the broader implications of the new science. Read the whole story: Scientific American
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Muggle Psychology: Connecting With Wizards
I read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone aloud to my youngest son, when he was about nine years old. We read every morning on the couch in the family room, while we waited for the school bus to arrive. I can recall watching his face as I narrated the young wizard’s adventures—and wondering how he was experiencing the magical world of Hogwarts. I wanted him to get lost in the world of wizardry, to feel Harry’s sense of wonder and fear the menacing Lord Voldemort’s power. Being transported away to fictional worlds is one of the joys of life, an experience so common that we rarely stop to ask why it’s so. Why do we even have this kind of other-worldly experience?
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Immunity in the Mind
Do our own prejudices and perceptions of people help defend our bodies against infectious disease? An article published in the April issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that our brains contain a sort of "behavioral immune system" that defends against disease even before disease-causing pathogens reach our bodies. Mark Schaller, of the University of British Columbia, who co-authored the article with Justin H.
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El poder encamina a la infidelidad
El Colombiano: Ellos lo son, lo ha reconocido la sociedad. Pero ¿y de ellas qué? Infidelidad. Que los unos y las otras lo sean... hoy no parece raro. ¿Qué los motiva? El poder juega. Un detonante a la luz de un nuevo estudio en Psychological Science , journal de la Association for Psychological Science. Mujeres poderosas también les hacen trampa a sus parejas, aunque los medios periodísticos se ocupen solo de políticos, deportistas o empresarios que son pillados.
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Monkeys show ability to remember things
The Washington Post: Monkey see, monkey recall – at least for a couple of minutes. Ben Basile of Emory University in Atlanta placed five rhesus monkeys in front of a touchscreen that briefly showed a blue square and two red ones. After an interval of up to two minutes, the blue square reappeared in a different place, and the monkeys were prompted to replicate the pattern in its new position by tapping the screen to place red squares. Their success rate was significantly better than chance, showing for the first time that they are able to recall things from recent memory. This is more advanced than recognizing a familiar object, and it could be a precursor to long-term memory.
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On 9/11, Americans may not have been as angry as you thought they were
On September 11, 2001, the air was sizzling with anger—and the anger got hotter as the hours passed. That, anyway, was one finding of a 2010 analysis by Mitja Back, Albrecht Küfner, and Boris Egloff of 85,000 pager messages sent that day. The researchers employed a commonly used tool called Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, or LIWC, which teases out information from the frequency of word usages in texts. But were Americans really so angry? Clemson University psychologist Cynthia L. S. Pury wasn’t out to answer this question when she made the discovery that was just published online in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
