-
Good News: You’ve Got a Better Brain Than You Think
TIME: If babies could gloat, they would. The rest of us may have it all over them when it comes to size, strength and basic table manners, but brain power? Forget it. The brain you had at birth was the best little brain you’ll ever have. The one you’ve got now? Think of a Commodore 64—with no expansion slots. That, at least, has been the conventional thinking, and in some ways it’s right. Our brains are wired for information absorption in babyhood and childhood, simply because we start off knowing so little. At some point, though, absorption is replaced by consolidation, as we become less able to acquire new skills but more able to make the most of what we do know.
-
The Price of Certainty
The New York Times: It’s alarming to see how polarized politics have become in the United States. The wider the gulf grows, the more people seem to be certain that the other side is wrong. Certainty can be a dangerous thing. Two years ago, I met the social psychologist Arie Kruglanski while researching a documentary about extremism. Dr. Kruglanski, a professor at the University of Maryland, studies what motivates people to join terrorist groups like ISIS. My producing partner, Eric Strauss, and I had fascinating conversations with Dr. Kruglanski about the psychology of binary thinking, and decided to make a short film about his work instead Read the whole story: The New York Times
-
Higher Status People Are Meaner Drivers
Frustrated drivers are more likely to lash out aggressively at vehicles they perceive as having a lower social status.
-
Scientists Explore How Nutrition May Feed Mental Health
A special section in Clinical Psychological Science highlights the different approaches that psychology researchers are taking to understand the many ways in which nutrition and mental health intersect.
-
Studying Perception of Animate Versus Inanimate Objects With LEGO Blocks
Animate objects, such as animals and humans, hold a special sway over humans’ attention. For example, when presented with two scenes (one containing an animal and one not), people will preferentially orient to the one containing the animal. People are also faster and more accurate at detecting change in animate objects compared with inanimate objects The privileged attention of animate objects compared with inanimate objects makes sense from an evolutionary viewpoint, as it has historically been — and continues to be — important to quickly determine if one is seeing a friend or foe, a predator or prey. In a 2016 study, Mitchell R. P.
-
RAND Summer Institute Announces Two Conferences on Aging
RAND announces its two annual RAND Summer Institute conferences that address issues facing our aging population: The Mini-Medical School for Social Scientists on July 10–11, and the Demography, Economics, Psychology, and Epidemiology of Aging conference on July 12–13, 2017. The conferences will convene at the RAND Corporation headquarters in Santa Monica, California and are sponsored by the National Institute on Aging and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Behavioral and Social Scientists Research. Qualified Institute applicants must hold a PhD or have completed two years of a PhD program and be actively working on a dissertation.
