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Your reaction to this confusing headline reveals more about you than you know
The Washington Post: In the wake of San Francisco's devastating 1906 earthquake, as survivors sifted through rubble and fires raged, the city's men and women responded to the chaos in an unusual way: by getting married. The magnitude 7.9 quake demolished the city, killed 3,000 people, and left hundreds of thousands homeless. But in the 10 days after the disaster, marriages in San Francisco and Alameda County surged to four times the normal rate. The Oakland Tribune observed "young couples scrambling about among the ruins trying to find where marriage licenses were issued," and The Louisville Courier-Journal remarked that couples were being "earthquaked into marriage." ...
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How Winning Leads to Cheating
Scientific American: We live, for better or for worse, in a competition-driven world. Rivalry powers our economy, sparks technological innovation and encourages academic discovery. But it also compels people to manipulate the system and commit crimes. Some figure it’s just easier—and even acceptable—to cheat. ... Similarly, participants who had simply won a lottery did not end up cheating when they reported the outcome of the dice roll but participants who had outplayed their peers in a trivia competition (again, controlled for selection bias) did later overclaim their winnings.
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The Fascinating Science Behind ‘Talking’ With Your Hands
The Huffington Post: If someone has ever made fun of you for making elaborate hand gestures while talking -- or you've seen footage of yourself speaking, only to be horrified by your flailing forearms -- don't be too concerned. According to psychologists, those gestures probably are helping you express your thoughts more effectively. "Hand gestures are really a powerful aspect of communication, from both the speaker's and the listener's end," Dr. Carol Kinsey Goman, body language expert and author of The Nonverbal Advantage: Secrets and Science of Body Language at Work and The Silent Language of Leaders, told The Huffington Post. ...
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PBS Doc “Memory Hackers” Shows The Future Of Memory Manipulation
Fast Company: Total Recall, Inception, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Once the realm of science fiction, advances in technology, neurochemistry, and cognitive science are redefining what memory is, enabling us to erase old memories and implant new ones. The Nova documentary Memory Hackers, premiering tonight on PBS, recounts the scientific breakthroughs over the last 70 years that have lead to our current understanding of where and how long-term memories are formed, stored, and recalled. ... "We stumbled upon Julia Shaw’s research through a graduate student," says Bicks.
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What journalists get wrong about social science: full responses
Vox: I recently asked several psychologists and social scientists a simple question: "What do journalists most often get wrong when writing about research?" Here are their responses. ... W. Keith Campbell, professor, University of Georgia Given the tight deadlines and the complexity of much of the work, I think the media generally try to and mostly succeed at covering psychology well. Short, fast turnaround stories are generally hyped or set into a narrative. But it is supposed to be news/entertainment and not a scientific journal. And, frankly, it is often we psychologists and our university media people who (over)simplify and hype the research in the first place. ...
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Americans Recognize ‘Past Presidents’ Who Never Were
A memory study suggests that a majority of Americans incorrectly think that Alexander Hamilton was a US president, and many believe the same about Benjamin Franklin, Hubert Humphrey, and John Calhoun.
