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Why Climate Change Threats Don’t Trigger An Immediate Response From Human Brains
AILSA CHANG, HOST: So I turned to Dan Gilbert. He's a psychologist at Harvard, and he focuses on the human mind, not climate change. But it turns out those two things are totally connected when it comes to explaining why people don't do more about the environment. He wrote about this all the way back in 2006, but what he said then still holds up today. Gilbert argued that climate change lacks four fundamental features that typically trigger an immediate response. And those features all start with the letter I, so bear with us. ... DAN GILBERT: The human brain, you've got to remember, is a fantastic threat detector. The problem is that the brain is especially attuned to threats from agents.
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New Research in Psychological Science
A sample of research on distortion in visual perception, how children learn spelling, and a replication of a study on predicting suicide attempts.
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Holiday Parties Make You Squirm? Here’s How To Conquer Social Anxiety
Whereas people with generalized anxiety experience fear-driven worries about life circumstances, those with social anxiety see themselves through a distorted lens of self-doubt, shame and a fear that others are scrutinizing and judging them harshly, researchers say. ... Research by clinical psychologist David Moscovitch, a professor at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada, suggests that social anxiety disorder's fears loosely fit into four broad categories: worries about perceived flaws in physical appearance, perceived flaws in social skills and behavior, perceived personality flaws, and a perceived inability to conceal all that anxiety.
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4 Common but Harmful Myths About how Your Brain Works
The brain is endlessly fascinating. Despite the amount of time we spend thinking, few of us learn much about the way our minds and brains work. As a result, there are some persistent myths about the brain. It is worth highlighting them, because you’ll think more effectively if you work with your brain rather than against it. ... A potential danger of labeling yourself as right-brained or left-brained is that you will ignore the information that you get from either your intuitive or effortful system.
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Five APS Fellows Elected to Society of Experimental Psychologists
A Guggenheim Fellow and a co-founder of a widely influential psychological theory are among four APS Fellows newly elected to the Society of Experimental Psychologists (SEP), the oldest and one of the most prestigious honorary societies in scientific psychology. APS Fellows Diane Beck, Charles Brainerd, Steve Sloman, Joshua Greene, and Fei Xu, along with three other psychological scientists, have been selected as 2020 SEP Fellows. In addition, Vanderbilt University researcher Jennifer Trueblood, named an APS Rising Star in 2015 and a 2020 APS Janet Taylor Spence Award recipient, is receiving the SEP Early Investigator Award.
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ERC Consolidator Grants Offer €600 Million to European Scientists
The European Research Council (ERC) has announced the winners of its Consolidator Grant competition. A total of €600 million was awarded to 301 researchers from across Europe. The Consolidator Grant allows scientists to establish research teams and continue their career at an EU institution.
