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In Iowa, Voting Science at Work
The New York Times: OF the two winners of the Iowa caucuses, who’s the better behavioral scientist, Ted Cruz or Hillary Clinton? To judge from their campaigns’ respective “get out the vote” efforts, both politicians seem to have studied up on recent research in the field. Let’s start with Mr. Cruz. His campaign sent a mailer to the homes of Iowans pressuring them to show up to their caucus locations. The mailer noted “low expected voter turnout” in their area, gave them a grade for their past voting participation and disclosed the grades that the campaign had assigned to the recipients’ neighbors. Read the whole story: The New York Times
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Near Wins, And Not Quites: How Almost Winning Can Be Motivating
NPR: Monica Wadhwa had a thing for lottery tickets. As a teenager in India she was obsessed with winning a fortune. Until one day, when she actually came very close to winning, and inadvertently learned that a "near victory" can be incredibly motivating. We'll hear her story on this week's episode of the podcast. Then, Daniel Pink is back for another round of Stopwatch Science! He and Shankar share a bunch of interesting research about the science of what motivates us to reach our goals. ... In a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Thomas Gilovich and his colleagues looked at videotape of silver and bronze medalists from the 1992 Summer Olympics.
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Faces of Black Children as Young as Five Evoke Negative Biases
A new study suggests that people are more likely to misidentify a toy as a weapon after seeing a Black face than a White face, even when the face in question is that of a five-year-old child. The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “Our findings suggest that, although young children are typically viewed as harmless and innocent, seeing faces of five-year-old Black boys appears to trigger thoughts of guns and violence,” said lead study author Andrew Todd, an assistant professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Iowa.
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When your football team wins, you eat healthier food
The Washington Post: By the time the Super Bowl is over Sunday night, you may have munched on a few too many nachos and chicken wings, and you might be almost as sick of cheap beer as you are of expensive TV ads. But if you’re a fan of the Denver Broncos or the Carolina Panthers, the game’s effect on what you eat could linger into Monday, too. Our research has found that people eat worse than they normally do on the day after their football team loses, and better than usual on the day after their team wins. They eat even more junk food if their team loses a close game. ...
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How high-fives boost team performance
Sports Illustrated: Can the number of high-fives, hugs and chest-bumps a team exchanges impact its win-loss record? Michael Kraus, a professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management, joins the show to discuss his study on the correlation between physical touch and performance among NBA teams, and how lessons from those findings can be taken off the court and into our business and personal relationships. Read the whole story: Sports Illustrated
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Clinical Psychological Science: The Economics of Losing a Loved One: Delayed Reward Discounting in Prolonged Grief Fiona Maccallum and George A. Bonanno Prolonged grief (PG) is a syndrome marked by intense and prolonged bereavement and is accompanied by significant impairment. Researchers still have much to learn about PG, including how it influences decision making. People who had lost a parent, partner, or sibling in the past 1 to 3 years were assessed for prolonged grief, life experiences, depression, and life orientation (whether they were more optimistic or pessimistic in their expectations).
