Psychology

Pavlov's famous behavioral experiment involved a dog. Dogs want food. Maybe not so clear, according to a paper in Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Given the choice, many dogs prefer praise from their owners over food, suggests the work, which combines brain-imaging data with behavioral experiments to explore canine reward preferences. "We are trying to understand the basis of the dog-human bond and whether it's mainly about food, or about the relationship itself," says Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist at Emory University and lead author of the research. "Out of the 13 dogs…

In the United States, there used to be a belief that the next generation would always have it better. No more. A lingering economic malaise and non-stop apocalyptic jingo-ism about chemicals, food, medicine and the environment instead have young people suffering from pessimistic green fatigue. Yet social scientists have continued to contend people have an 'irrational optimism bias' - a tendency to underestimate their chances of negative experiences, while overestimating their chances of positive events. 95 percent of Harvard students believe they will be on the top 50 percent of their…

Heavy users of partisan media outlets are more likely than others to hold political misperceptions that are in defiance of facts. So if you think Republicans blocked Zika funding by withholding money for Planned Parenthood, or that Hillary Clinton is having DNC staffers whacked, it is a good indication you partake in fringe media sites. If you only think partisan media influences one side of American politics, you are probably on the other side, the survey in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication found.   "Partisan online media drive a wedge between evidence and beliefs," said…

The biggest misconception young people have about the 1960s is that they actually happened in the 1970s. The real free love/drug culture only began in the summer of 1968 - the decade after, before AIDS, was really the time to hook up. Yet many think it is happening more often now, among Millennials. The reason is obvious; premarital sex is far more accepted than ever, Tinder is a thing, and a baby born today is as likely to be born to a single mother as not. Yet in practice, Millennials are forgoing sex during young adulthood. Sort of. They learned from a former president that sex is what you…

Music can influence how much you like the taste of beer, according to a study published in Frontiers in Psychology. Their findings suggest that a range of multisensory information, such as sound, sensation, shape and color, can influence the way we perceive taste. The Brussels Beer Project collaborated with UK band The Editors to produce a porter-style beer that took inspiration from the musical and visual identity of the band. Music can influence how much you like the taste of beer, according to a study published in Frontiers in Psychology. Credit: Dr. Felipe Reinoso Cavalho The…

Osteopaths have made their way into various aspects of medicine, primarily because they are still willing to be GPs at a time when MDs are running from government bureaucracy and paperwork, but their founding precepts are still vague. And if you want vague treatment, it is best to find vague conditions. There is no more vague condition than pain. A small pilot study adds to osteopathic manipulation efforts by finding that women who experience postpartum pain are helped by osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT). Fifty nine women from St. Barnabas Hospital in Bronx, New York received 20-…

Gay youths are more likely to purge or take laxatives, use diet pills, or fast to lose weight than their straight peers, according to new research from the University of British Columbia which analyzed data from surveys of youths ages 12 to 18 that were administered every two years at public high schools in Massachusetts between 1999 and 2013. Students were asked about their sexual orientation, whether they used diet pills, refrained from eating for 24 hours or more, or vomited or took laxatives to lose or keep from gaining weight in the last month.  Disordered eating behaviors are…

Academic social psychologists, who are over 99 percent liberal, can be reliably counted on to create surveys to affirm that liberals are more intelligent, less fearful of change, likely to have prettier children - especially in an election year. In three separate surveys, the psychologists offered undergraduate students at their schools in both the Deep South and West Coast a chance to view data on three topics: the justness of the world, the efficacy of social safety nets and the benefits of social media. The students were given no advanced knowledge of what the data would tell them. Tullett…

San Francisco people won't be happy until Dallas is just like them - but they insist they need to force that change in the name of tolerance and diversity. Of course, there is nothing about tolerance and diversity that is implemented with hostile intent. Yet if people from San Francisco would get to know people in Dallas, and vice versa, rather than relying on stereotypes and caricatures, it would help their ability to form close relationships, and even make them nicer people, according to William Chopik, Michigan State University assistant professor of psychology.  Yet few want to…

Moral judgments, ideas about good or bad, remain the building block of cooperation in a large group. A rule of thumb for promoting cooperation is to help those who have a good reputation and not those who have a bad reputation, yet that determination requires time, effort and money. What about moral "free riders" who evade the cost associated with moral judgment (e.g. by not paying taxes for police and court) so are better off than those who shoulder the cost? Philosophers debate voluntary reactive policing of the moral free riders, which is costly, too, and thus can be exploited by higher…