Scientists and doctors have been studying placebos for more than half a century. These inert “sugar pills” remain highly controversial, yet they are widely used in clinical treatment today—especially in the area of pain management. So-called “placebo analgesia” has been observed again and again not only in the pain clinic More
CNN: It was hot at 3 a.m. in a small town in North Carolina, and there wasn’t a lot for a group of teenagers to do. So, Hillary Tillotson, her brother and three other guys sneaked under a fence to go swimming at a private pool down the street. Only More
Hangover, the low-budget comedy hit of 2009, tells the story of Phil, Stu and Alan, twenty-something buddies who wake up in a Las Vegas hotel room the morning after a booze-drenched bachelor party for their friend Doug. None of them remembers a single detail from the night of partying, and More
Psychologists have known for a long time that after you make a choice, you adjust your opinion to think better of the thing you chose. Now a new study has found that this is true even if you don’t know the options that you’re choosing between. People change their minds More
The idea that people are either conscious of something or they’re not seems like common sense. However, research into the development of the prefrontal cortex — the area of the brain responsible for executive function — shows that this assumption is not necessarily true. APS Fellow Philip Zelazo, from the More
New research appearing in the May issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that being put in a low-power role may impair a person’s basic cognitive functioning and thus, their ability to get ahead. In their article, Pamela Smith of Radboud University Nijmegen, and More
