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New Research From Current Directions in Psychological Science
Fact and Fiction in Cognitive Ability Testing for Admissions and Hiring Decisions Nathan R. Kuncel and Sarah A. Hezlett Standardized tests of cognitive abilities are used to predict performance in educational and work settings. Group differences often occur with standardized cognitive tests, and these differences have been falsely attributed to predictive biases inherent to the tests. Although evidence suggests that test-score differences reflect developed-skill differences, it is important for scientists, citizens, and policymakers to critically examine these tests and their uses, due to the important implications they have for school and job placement.
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Age Is Just a Number: Believe You’re Younger and Your Health Will Follow
Maybe age really is just a number. How young or old someone feels has a huge influence on their health and how other people view them. An article published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reviews the research and suggests that feeling young can actually make you look young—and have the health of a younger person, too. Harvard psychological scientist Ellen Langer has been studying how the mind influences the body for over three decades. In one classic study, she had old men live in a retreat that was retrofitted to look like it was 20 years earlier, while they pretended that they were living in that year.
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Attractive People Attract More Attention…to Their Unique Personality Traits
Beautiful people get all of the breaks. For one thing, they're beautiful. Also, other people think their personalities are better, too. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that people not only see beautiful people more positively, but they also see the beautiful people's unique selves. That is, people see personality more accurately in pretty people than in people with average or not-so-good looks. Psychological scientists spent a lot of time about a half-century ago trying to figure out who is the best judge of personality.
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What Makes a Face Look Alive? Study Says It’s in the Eyes
The face of a doll is clearly not human; the face of a human clearly is. Telling the difference allows us to pay attention to faces that belong to living things, which are capable of interacting with us. But where is the line at which a face appears to be alive? A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that a face has to be quite similar to a human face in order to appear alive, and that the cues are mainly in the eyes. Several movies have tried and failed to generate lifelike animations of humans.
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Teacher Effort is Linked to Difficult Students’ Inherited Traits
Challenging students take up more of their teachers' time—and the difference between a tougher student and an easier one appears to be genetic, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study looked at young twins in the U.K. and asked their teachers how much of a handful they are. "Policy-wise, there's a lot going on, blaming teachers for what's going on in the classrooms," says Renate Houts of Duke University, who cowrote the study with Avshalom Caspi and Terrie E. Moffitt of Duke, Robert C. Pianta of the University of Virginia, and Louise Arseneault of King's College London.
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A Positive Mood Allows Your Brain to Think More Creatively
People who watch funny videos on the internet at work aren't necessarily wasting time. They may be taking advantage of the latest psychological science—putting themselves in a good mood so they can think more creatively. "Generally, positive mood has been found to enhance creative problem solving and flexible yet careful thinking," says Ruby Nadler, a graduate student at the University of Western Ontario. She and colleagues Rahel Rabi and John Paul Minda carried out a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. For this study, Nadler and her colleagues looked at a particular kind of learning that is improved by creative thinking.
