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How Our Brains Respond to Race
The Wall Street Journal: When Barack Obama was elected president, there was talk of how America was becoming a post-racial society. Yet the news suggests abundantly that this is not the case. Why is progress on this issue so difficult? Recent research suggests that part of it has do with learning that occurs remarkably early in life. Scientists have used neuroimaging to study the responses of our brains to faces of different races and have uncovered a disquieting result called the “other-race effect,” or ORE. ...
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Basic Ratio Capacity May Serve as Building Block for Math Knowledge
Understanding fractions is a critical mathematical ability, and yet it’s one that continues to confound a lot of people well into adulthood. New research finds evidence for an innate ratio processing ability that may play a role in determining our aptitude for understanding fractions and other formal mathematical concepts. The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Can mass trauma actually promote psychological adjustment?
The Hill: The terror attacks in San Bernardino and Paris have ratcheted upward—once again—our collective anxieties. And for the survivors of these tragedies, they have raised the specter of collateral psychological damage, such as posttraumatic stress disorder. Although the risks to survivors are indeed real, the psychological impact of these tragedies is more complicated than we realize. Most survivors of traumatic events will suffer no enduring psychological harm. More startlingly, some may actually experience direct psychological benefits from it. How do we know this?
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Narcissist in Chief? How Trump’s Ego Reflects US Culture
Live Science: With less than a month to go before Iowa's Republican primary caucus, Donald Trump remains atop the presidential candidate polls. His popularity appears unblemished despite brash statements, personal insults thrown at his opponents and rampant speculation over his perceived narcissistic tendencies. Trump surely displays enormous self-regard; in June, for example, he boasted that he'd be "the greatest jobs president that God has ever created." In September, he promised, "We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with winning." Egoism is a trait Trump seems proud of, in fact.
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People take more risks when wearing helmets, potentially negating safety benefits
Science: Helmets can reduce the risk of traumatic brain injury by almost 20%. But what if we take so many risks when wearing them that we lose the protective edge they provide? This could be the case, according to a study published this week. Researchers observed 80 cyclists under the guise of an “eye-tracking experiment,” pretending to track their eye-motion via a head-mounted camera as the participants inflated a virtual balloon. For some of the participants, the “eye-tracking devices” were mounted on helmets, while others just wore baseball caps, as can be seen in the picture of the equipment above.
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The Joy of Psyching Myself Out
The New York Times: IS it possible to think scientifically and creatively at once? Can you be both a psychologist and a writer? When you look at the world as a psychologist, you see it as a set of phenomena that can be subjected to scientific inquiry: identified, tested and either verified or discarded. When you look at the world as a writer, you see it as a set of phenomena to be captured, contemplated, transformed and set down for others to recognize and absorb. Although it’s often presented as a dichotomy (the apparent subjectivity of the writer versus the seeming objectivity of the psychologist), it need not be.
