Psychology

Imagine you're navigating a three-dimensional maze. Believe it or not, in this situation, both men and women think. Only, women think with the distinctly human right prefrontal cortex, while men use the rat-brain navigational instincts of their left hippocampus (according to fMRI studies). Basically, what this means is that while men efficiently snuffle around the corridors, rationally and analytically memorizing each branching path, women look at the map. And if the map is unclear, they ask directions (not to reinforce a pop stereotype, or anything). Interestingly, before a London cabbie…

This has been hitting the news a lot over here.  I'll probably write more about this as I read/think more about it.  I'm just free-writing my ideas now so don't consider this my definitive position, and of course I welcome any constructive thoughts and criticisms you have. Here's the story thus far.  GDP is a flawed measure of societal progress; but, it used to be fantastic.  When a country's basic needs are less well met, GDP is a great indication of how well people are doing.  When a country is rich, things beyond survival come into play, which GDP doesn't pick up…

Some researchers have proposed that, because people can get through money certain things they can get through acceptance, money might act as a substitute for social acceptance. Since social distress and physical pain seem to have similar underlying mechanisms, a few interesting experiments have been done to test this idea. One study reports six experiments, which I'll summarise briefly here. Money and pain might be linked (not just through paper cuts) Rejection Participants got together in groups of 4. They spent 5 minutes breaking the ice, then were led to separate rules and asked who…

In my post about the somewhat wretched dating website HotOrNot.com, I wrote about researchers' determination that all humans value the same standards of beauty. Really, no matter if you're hot or plain, you recognize a set standard of hotness—your self-image is subject to your creative delusions, but there's an inviolable piece of humanity that knows the truth about others. And so the obvious question is what about poultry? Specifically, are turkeys turned on by hot models? Today, of all days, I'm sure you can see the importance of this research. To answer this question, researchers in…

Let's have some fun and pick apart a paper (try saying "pick apart a paper" 10 times fast!) The question is, did the 9/11 terrorist attacks impact the character of Americans?  I mean that personally not just in political attitudes towards this or that.  It's a tough question to answer empirically.   "What do you mean by character?" is the obvious first hurdle.  Peterson and Seligman (2003) had a go, using their VIA model.  They have a website, authentichappiness.com, where people can take a VIA self-report strengths test.  I've discussed this model previously,…

If you were a young person watching "The Empire Strikes Back" and saw Darth Vader clearly being more powerful than everyone else yet not being all that evil - and with Yoda telling Luke how much easier the 'dark side of the force' was, you may have wondered why more people didn't choose it.   Behaving badly required less effort and had no obvious repercussions; Han Solo was going to get the girl anyway and she turns out to be your sister. Behaving badly is common when it's easy, says a new study, especially if you don't feel like you did anything wrong.  You might never cheat on a…

It seems like many autism-related sites have ads on them for our kids, promising all sorts of results. How do we evaluate the claims of these products and prevent ourselves from (1) wasting precious financial resources, and (2) putting our precious children in harm's way? There are some key things that one can look for that indicate woo and pseudoscience. We don't have to be experts in a field; we just have to know how to evaluate claims and evidence. Look at this ad located at the Autism File: Tip off number 1: Natural. Natural implies better, safer, but has no particular…

Gad Saad, who likes to link evolution to consumption and marketing phenomena, says the length between the second and fourth finger is an indicator of high levels of prenatal testosterone and therefore risk-taking and potential financial success in adult men. His hypothesis suggests that alpha males may take greater risks in relationships, in sports and in the financial markets, which we all sort of knew because that is the origin of the term 'alpha male'.    Saad, Concordia University Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and Darwinian Consumption as well as a…

When my husband and I first realized in 1994 that we were entering the world of special needs parenting, there were very few books as guidelines. When autism entered our vocabulary, the first thing I read was Bruno Bettelheim's The Empty Fortress. Do you know how badly that sucked? Sonrise soon followed. Fortunately, I also happened upon Lorna Wing's work, but even that was woefully short on detailed information and hope. The nineties were not easy years to be a parent of kid(s) on the spectrum. The internet was in its infancy, there were few families in the communities we…

In the Iowa Gambling Task, a participant is presented with four, facedown decks of cards. He or she can flip over cards from any deck. Most cards earn a reward and some cards incur a penalty. Of the four decks, some are better (contain more reward-earning cards) than others. Over time, participants should learn which decks are best and start flipping cards only from the highest-paying decks. The test is thought to measure the emotional component of learning, or intuition—based on reward and punishment, participants begin to "feel" which decks are best and worst. Admittedly this is cool in…