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False Memories of Self-Performance Result From Watching Others’ Actions
Psychological scientists have discovered all sorts of ways that false memories get created, and now there’s another one for the list: watching someone else do an action can make you think you did it yourself.
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Poignancy and loyalty: The ‘midnight ride’ effect
With the country on the verge of civil war, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a patriotic poem about Paul Revere, a little-known Massachusetts silversmith and minor hero of the Revolutionary War. “Paul Revere’s Ride” played fast and loose with the facts of the now famous 1775 events, but the narrative had the psychological effect the author intended. It got Americans wondering how history might have turned out differently without that heroic act—and how the country might never have come to exist. By focusing on the nation’s precarious origins, the poem bolstered nationalism at a time when it was sorely needed. “What if” thinking is always a bit tricky.
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Child’s ‘Mental Number Line’ Affects Memory for Numbers
As children in Western cultures grow, they learn to place numbers on a mental number line, with smaller numbers to the left and spaced further apart than the larger numbers on the right. Then the number line changes to become more linear, with small and large numbers the same distance apart. Children whose number line has made this change are better at remembering numbers, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Remembering numbers is an important skill—in life, which is full of social security numbers, temperatures, locker combinations, and passwords, as well as in school. For this study, Clarissa A.
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Education More Important Than Knowledge in Stopping Spread of HIV in Africa
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Simply teaching people the facts about how to protect themselves from HIV may not be enough to prevent the spread of AIDS in Africa, a new study suggests. Researchers found that villagers in Ghana who had higher levels of cognitive and decision-making abilities – not just the most knowledge -- were the ones who were most likely to take steps to protect themselves from HIV infection. These cognitive abilities are what people develop through formal education, said Ellen Peters, lead author of the study and associate professor of psychology at Ohio State University.
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Having a Male Co-Twin Improves Mental Rotation Performance in Females
Having a sibling, especially a twin, impacts your life. Your twin may be your best friend or your biggest rival, but throughout life you influence each other. However, a recent study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that having an opposite-sex twin may impact you even before you are born: females with a male co-twin score higher on mental rotation task than females with a female co-twin. Males, as young as three months of age, outperform females on mental rotation tasks, tests that require rotation of three dimensional objects in mental space.
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Clean hands, but a foul mouth!
Lady Macbeth is history's most famous washer, hands down. Plagued by guilt for plotting her king's murder, she scrubs and scours her palms and knuckles to get rid of imagined blood stains. But all the scrubbing can't cleanse her impure heart. Or mind, as psychological scientists like to think of it. Researchers have discovered in the past few years that moral purity is no mere metaphor--that we all physically embody both our malevolent thoughts and our repentance. Soap and water can literally salve our guilt, and soften our moral judgments of others, while moral transgressions can send us searching for wash cloths and disinfectants.
