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Brandishing our inner talisman
Mexicans call it mal de ojo, and in Brazil it's olho gordo. Turks call it the Eye of Medusa and ward it off with the ubiquitous talisman called nazar. American Jews use the Yiddish phrase Keyn aynhoreh to counter the jinx. Cultures all over the world, dating back to antiquity, have some version of the "evil eye" -- the poisonous stare of those who envy others' good fortune. We recognize these beliefs as magical thinking, of course, but as with any superstition that is so widespread, belief in the evil eye raises some intriguing questions: What psychological purpose do these beliefs serve, and what are their roots in human nature?
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Alienated Youths Are More Likely to Lash Out
When people are rejected by peers, they often lash out. In children, that aggression occasionally takes horrifying directions, leading to school shootings or other deadly acts. Researchers in the Netherlands found that some children are more likely than others to lash out in response to acute peer rejection: children who already feel like outcasts. "It was inspired by the fact that we had these school shootings and wondered what the most important feature of these kids could be," says Albert Reijntjes of Utrecht University, who cowrote the study with five other psychological scientists.
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Thoughts About Time Inspire People to Socialize
Does thinking about time or money make you happier? A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that people who are made to think about time plan to spend more of their time with the people in their lives while people who think about money fill their schedules with work, work, and—you guessed it—more work. To find out how thinking about time or money makes people feel, Cassie Mogilner of the University of Pennsylvania designed an experiment, carried out online with adults from all over the United States, in which they concentrated on money or time. In this experiment, volunteers were asked to unscramble a series of sentences.
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A Thirst for Excitement Is Hidden in Your Genes
Sensation seeking—the urge to do exciting things—has been linked to dopamine, a chemical that carries messages in your brain. For a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, scientists analyzed genes in the dopamine system and found a group of mutations that help predict whether someone is inclined toward sensation seeking. Sensation seeking has been linked to a range of behavior disorders, such as drug addiction. It isn't all bad, though. "Not everyone who's high on sensation seeking becomes a drug addict. They may become an Army Ranger or an artist.
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Powerful Posturing
Study co-authored by Columbia and Harvard faculty finds that a simple posture change transforms hormone levels in a matter of minutes – and literally makes people more powerful Humans and other animals express power through open, expansive postures, and powerlessness through closed, constrictive postures. Forthcoming in Psychological Science will be a paper that reveals how open postures can actually cause one to grow in confidence and power.
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Colorblind? Or blind to injustice?
In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to the cause of racial equality, ruling 7-1 in Plessy v. Ferguson that "separate but equal" was the law of the land. The lone dissenter in that landmark case was Justice John Marshall Harlan, a former slave owner, who bitterly predicted an era of inequality and racial intolerance in America. History proved Harlan right, and we now know what followed as the Jim Crow era. Indeed it took almost 60 more years for the court to begin setting things right by discarding the "separate but equal" doctrine.
