Psychology

Proponents of climate change tend to use more conservative, tentative language to report on the science behind it, while skeptics use more emotional and assertive language when reinterpreting scientific studies, says research from the University of Waterloo. Tentative language would include words such as "possible," "probable" or "might." The terms "alarmist" and "wrong" are examples of emotional language. Using a series of computational text analysis tools to measure the use of hedging or emotional words, Srdan Medimorec and Gordon Pennycook, both PhD candidates in the Department of…

If you have walked into a hotel room in Hawaii where you are paying $400 a night and been met with a card telling you they aren't going to give you towels and sheets because they are "conserving' water, and you snorted derisively, you would be about the 10 millionth person to do so. Hawaii has no water issues, you know, and this is just a way to boost the profit line of the company at your expense. Such "greenwashing," a corporation's practice of promoting environmentally friendly programs while hiding ulterior motives, is commonplace under the guise of "sustainability" and "corporate…

Strategic voting is an important factor in Canadian electoral campaigns. "People vote strategically when they think neither their first nor their second choice has any chance of winning in their electorate. They vote for their third choice party in the hopes of blocking an outcome that would be even worse," said Jean-François Daoust, a researcher at the University of Montreal's Department of Political Science who studied the phenomenon as part of his doctoral work. He was directed by André Blais, who holds the university's Research Chair for Electoral Studies, and his findings, which drew on…

Why do babies smile when they interact with their parents? Could their smiles have a purpose? A team of computer scientists, roboticists and psychologists say they can confirm what most parents already suspect: when babies smile, they do so with a purpose--to make the person they interact with smile in return.  In addition, babies reach that goal by using sophisticated timing, much like comedians who time their jokes to maximize audience response. But there is a twist: babies seem to be doing this while smiling as little as possible. To verify their findings, researchers programmed a…

It’s been 60 years since the first TV ad was broadcast in the UK. In that time, we’ve moved from the innocent grainy black-and-white “Tingle of Health” of Gibbs SR toothpaste, to the sophisticated hyper-reality of 4K TV and beyond, in lock-step with developing communications technologies. The next 60 years will certainly see an even faster pace of change. So what can we look forward to (or not) in the realm of advertising? Between us and the horizon we can already see a dramatic move from old-fashioned “broadcasting”, through current “narrowcasting” (ever smaller, more specialist audiences…

“If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are.” Hsin Hsin Ming Almost every person who walks through my practice doorway is anxious in some way. And so they should be. While their anxiety might be blasting messages at an overly high volume, the messages themselves are worth paying attention to: abusive relationships, significant losses and workplaces that have squeezed their personal, physical and spiritual lives into a corner too small for a hamster to burrow in. Most come in hoping that the volume of their anxiety will be turned…

Are black voters more likely to vote for black candidates, regardless of political party affiliation? Not according to a paper by a scholar from the University of Cincinnati. Like academics among Democrats or small business owners for Republicans, black people are "in the bag" for one side that it doesn't really much matter if they are taken for granted or their interests are being represented. Basically, a great black Republican will not win among blacks because of the political party, regardless of qualifications, finds David Niven, a University of Cincinnati professor of political…

News that Sydney Swans star Lance “Buddy” Franklin, arguably the biggest name in the Australian Football League (AFL), is experiencing a mental health condition has garnered a lot of media attention. His story highlights not only the persistent stigma surrounding mental illness, but the potential of sport to help tackle it. Revelations about Franklin’s mental ill-health should come as no surprise, given that almost half the population experiences a mental health issue at some point in their lives, at an estimated cost of A$28 billion a year. Why, then, do we find it so hard to talk about…

Young people who identify with the goth subculture might be at increased risk of depression and self-harm, according to new research published in The Lancet Psychiatry journal. The findings show that teenagers who identified very strongly with being a goth at age 15 were three times more likely to be clinically depressed and were five times more likely to self-harm at age 18 than young people who did not identify with the goth subculture. "Our study does not show that being a goth causes depression or self-harm, but rather that some young goths are more vulnerable to developing these…

Lecithin is an ingredient that you've probably never heard of, but one that plays a vital role in the production of chocolate and many other foods. It's never been clear how this ingredient works on a molecular level, and confectioners have relied on observational methods - essentially trial and error - to perfect their recipes. Now, scientists have shown how the field of molecular dynamics (simulation on a molecular level) could be a valuable tool in understanding chocolate conching - the part of the chocolate-making process where aromatic sensation, texture and 'mouthfeel' are developed.…