When addiction research was in its infancy roughly a century ago, scientists dismissed substance abuse as a mere personality flaw. Today, addiction is widely thought to be due to complex gene–environment interactions influencing brain function, rather than a simple weakness of character. In his award address at the 2014 APS More
In the classic Star Wars film franchise, Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker kiss at least twice — before learning in a subsequent installment of George Lucas’s film franchise that they are in fact siblings. In reality, a brother and sister meeting each other — even if unaware of their genetic More
Some of the most historic experiments in psychology used methods that today are consider unethical, if not cruel. So do they still belong in textbooks? More
The New Yorker: At the turn of the twentieth century, Ivan Pavlov conducted the experiments that turned his last name into an adjective. By playing a sound just before he presented dogs with a snack, he taught them to salivate upon hearing the tone alone, even when no food was More
NPR: Dr. Frans de Waal is a biologist and primatologist known for his work on the behavior and social intelligence of primates. His first book, Chimpanzee Politics, compared the schmoozing and scheming of chimps to that of human politicians. He is a professor of psychology at Emory University and director of the More
Slate: Can your kid pass the “marshmallow test”? And what does it mean if he can’t, but a parrot can? The marshmallow test is pretty simple: Give a child a treat, such as a marshmallow, and promise that if he doesn’t eat it right away, he’ll soon be rewarded with a second More
