-
Monkeys’ Ability to Reflect on their Thoughts May Have Implications for Infants, Autistic Children
New research from Columbia’s Primate Cognition Laboratory has demonstrated for the first time that monkeys could acquire meta-cognitive skills: the ability to reflect about their thoughts and to assess their performance. The study was a collaborative effort between Herbert Terrace, Columbia professor of psychology & psychiatry, and director of its Primate Cognition Laboratory, and two graduate students, Lisa Son — now professor of psychology at Barnard College — and UCLA postdoctoral researcher Nate Kornell.
-
Energy Use Study Demonstrates Power of Social Norms
Most people want to be normal. So, when we are given information that underscores our deviancy, the natural impulse is to get ourselves as quickly as we can back toward the center. Marketers know about this impulse, and a lot of marketing makes use of social norms. This is especially true of campaigns targeting some kind of public good: reducing smoking or binge drinking, for example, or encouraging recycling. The problem with these campaigns is that they often do not work. Indeed, they sometimes appear to have the opposite of their intended effect. Why would this be?
-
Worry too Much? You may Die Young.
There is broad consensus today that personality traits are best described by the “Big Five”: Extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience. Each of these broad measures can be broken down into smaller ones, but in general, this taxonomy appears to take in most of what we think of as personhood. When you think of someone as “steady” or “flaky” or “gloomy” or “daring,” what you’re really doing is unconsciously taking a measure of these five traits and crunching them together. So what makes a healthy personality?
-
New study shows that getting older provides positive outlook
Research conducted at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs proves not everything goes downhill when it comes to aging. Older adults exhibit a better balance than younger adults in the way they process emotional information from the environment, according to research completed by Michael Kisley, assistant professor, Psychology, along with his collaborator, Stacey Wood from Scripps College and with the assistance of students at UCCS. More than 150 participants viewed images determined to be positive (a bowl of chocolate ice cream, pretty sunsets), neutral (a chair, a fork) and negative (a dead cat in the road, a car crash).
-
Listen to your heart: Psychologists Discover a Physiological Indicator of Vulnerability to Temptation.
We’ve all had our moments of weakness when trying to control ourselves; eating that donut on your diet, losing your temper with your kids, becoming upset when you’re doing your best not to. It isn’t like we plan on these lapses in judgment. It’s more like they just sort of happen. There is scientific evidence that explains this phenomenon of everyday life. Self regulation, our strength to inhibit impulses, make decisions, persist at difficult tasks, and control emotions can be spent just like a muscle that has been lifting heavy weights.
-
Infants Are Able to Detect the “Impossible” at an Early Age
If you’ve ever been captivated by an M.C. Escher drawing of stairways that lead to nowhere or a waterfall that starts and ends at the same place, then you are familiar with what Psychologists describe as “impossible” objects and scenes. These are pictures or illusions of three-dimensional images that do not make any visual sense. Inevitably, we end up gawking at the image for several moments, attempting to make sense of the impossible. These images are, of course, mere deceptions that result from our ability to create three-dimensional objects from two-dimensional images.
