When we talk, we naturally gesture—we open our palms, we point, we chop the air for emphasis. Such movement may be more than superfluous hand flapping. It helps communicate ideas to listeners and even appears to help speakers think and learn. A growing field of psychological research is exploring the More
To explore how the mind processes the objects mimes seem to interact with, researchers brought the art of miming into the lab, concluding that invisible, implied surfaces are represented rapidly and automatically. The work appears in the journal Psychological Science. “Most of the time, we know which objects are around us More
When you watch a mime pull an invisible rope or run into an invisible wall you as the viewer are tricked into visualizing something that isn’t there. But is it all in the mime? Or does the mind play a role? Chaz Firestone, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences More
In the late 1860s, Charles Darwin proposed that being grossed out could have an evolutionary purpose. Disgust, he wrote, was inborn and involuntary, and it evolved to prevent our ancestors from eating spoiled food that might kill them. Darwin hypothesized that the early humans most prone to revulsion survived to pass on More
… What researchers can say about our decision making process with some degree of certainty is that it can be negatively impacted by stress, especially when sustained over prolonged periods. “Stress decreases our working memory capacity, so we have fewer cognitive resources to wrap our heads around all the different More
Andrew Taylor keeps falling for drip pricing. He finds a low price on an airline ticket, car rental or hotel room — and then, once he starts the booking process, the cost rises until he reaches the final screen. But he buys anyway. “I think many of us know that More
