Psychology

Magicians have delighted audiences for centuries with magic tricks. What is little known is that they subtly influence decisions. A master like Apollo Robbins can even tell you what he is going to do and you still won't know he is doing it. Yet there has been little systematic study of the psychological factors that make magic tricks work. A team of Canadian researchers has combined magic and psychology to demonstrate how certain contextual factors can sway the decisions people make, even though they may feel that they are choosing freely. "We began with a principle of magic that we didn't…

If you are insecure or craving attention and need to feel better about yourself, chances are Facebook is your friend, according to surveys done by psychologists. According to analysis of two surveys of nearly 600 people ages 18-83, people who are generally insecure in their relationships are more actively engaged on the social media site. They are frequently posting on walls, commenting, updating their status or "liking" something in hopes of getting attention. That leads the psychologists to conclude there are two kinds of insecure people who rely on Facebook: people who are…

Distraught Seattle Seahawks fans after their team lost the Super Bowl. Jason Redmond/Reuters By David G. Myers, Hope College “The worst call in Super Bowl history,” read a headline in my hometown Seattle Times after Seahawks' head coach Pete Carroll seemingly threw the game away with his ill-fated decision to pass – rather than run – as the game clock expired. Actually, Carroll made two end-of-half decisions in Sunday’s Super Bowl, both questioned by the NBC announcers. The differing outcomes of the decisions – and the resulting reactions by pundits and fans – offer potent examples of a…

Browsing Facebook has become a daily activity for hundreds of millions of people. Because so many people engage with the website daily, researchers are interested in how emotionally involved Facebook users can be with the social networking site and how regular use can affect their mental health. Now, journalism scholars at the University of Missouri did a survey of more than 700 college students and found that Facebook use can lead to symptoms of depression if the social networking site triggers feelings of envy among its users. Margaret Duffy, a professor and chair of strategic…

One in three people say they would risk living a shorter life instead of taking a daily pill to prevent cardiovascular disease, according to new research. The scholars surveyed 1,000 people (average age 50) via the Internet hypothetically asking how much time they were willing to forfeit at the end of their lives to avoid taking daily medication. They were also asked the amount of money they would pay and the hypothetical risk of death they were willing to accept to avoid taking medications to prevent cardiovascular disease. The survey showed: More than 8 percent of participants were willing…

Peter Sarsgaard stars as the psychologist Stanley Milgram in the new film "The Experimenter". BB Film Productions By Kathryn Millard, Macquarie University Why have the landmark psychology experiments of the post-war era proved so enduring? Designed as dramas about human behavior, experimenters drew on theatrical techniques and tailored their results for cinema – results that, though skewed, have become embedded in the collective subconscious. The two best known experiments of this sort are Obedience to Authority (1961-3) devised by Stanley Milgram and the Stanford Prison Experiment (1971)…

There’s no scientific definition of picky eating, but parents know it when they see it.  Sharon Donovan, a University of Illinois professor of nutrition, says that picky eaters do exhibit definable preferences and mealtime behaviors. The analysis showed that kids deemed picky eaters by their parents did react differently to common foods and behaved differently at mealtime than kids whose parents said their kids weren’t choosy. The differences were significant and occurred across 16 assessed behaviors, according to Soo-Yeun Lee of the University of Illinois. The two-week study…

Teenagers who own smart phones spend more time online – including during the night, which may affect their sleep. A new University of Basel study on more than 300 students reports that teenagers' digital media use during the night is associated with an increased risk of sleep problems and depressive symptoms.  Though they only became ubiquitous around 2007, most teenagers nowadays own smart phones. Due to wireless Internet connections and cheap data rates, teenagers with smart phones spend more time online and communicate with their peers for less money – for example via WhatsApp – which…

Risky sexual behaviors such as casual sex, lack of condom use and a high number of sexual partners have been linked to poor health outcomes, including obviously an increased incidence of sexually transmitted infections, in the effects part of the psychological sex equation, but what causes that risky behavior? Evolutionary psychologists have one explanation while other psychologists have a different one while most of culture has an explanation different than both. Porn stars have low self-esteem, it is said, yet it turns out most of them have great self-esteem compared to the public, And…

We are all familiar with the following scenarios: a woman and a man are having a conversation. She is warm and friendly and clearly interested in the conversation. He interprets her behavior as sexual interest. Or she is warm and friendly and clearly interested in the conversation and he thinks she is just being friendly and then she wonders if he's gay. Same behavior, different interpretations.  Men and women misunderstand each other a lot and psychologists in the Department of Psychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) believe that we are…