Psychology

The way we relate to other people shapes our moral life – and that's something that requires imagination. David Galindo/Flickr By Matthew Beard, University of Notre Dame Australia Creativity and imagination - it’s impossible to discuss one without reference to the other - are often discussed with regard to the great artists, thinkers, and visionaries of our world. Those are the people who are able to visualize things in a way that others simply aren’t able to. The “great creatives” myth, revealed in the frequency with which the word “creative” is followed by the word “genius”, is, however,…

In the Western world - well, outside Italy - people are told to reduce their anger or suffer its ill effects, such as stress, but new research using surveys from the US and Japan suggests that anger may actually be linked with better health.  Displays of anger are strange to people in the West, especially stoic Americans. You can chop off the arm of an American and in many cases they will tell you to have a nice day. A recent incident on a Korean Air flight bound for Seoul illustrates the distinction. Heather Cho, former vice president of Korean Air and daughter of Korean Air…

Some people are more vulnerable to addiction, but why? Chicago Public Media, CC BY-NC By Paul Hayes, London School of Hygiene&Tropical Medicine Drug use is common, drug addiction is rare. About one adult in three will use an illegal drug in their lifetime and just under 3 million people will do so this year in England and Wales alone. Most will suffer no long-term harm. There are immediate risks from overdose and intoxication, and longer-term health risks associated with heavy or prolonged use; damage to lungs from smoking cannabis or the bladder from ketamine for example. However most…

People who don't want to disappoint you and that are prone to guilt if things go wrong are the least likely to want to commit to a project - but they may be who you want on your team, because if they do commit, that propensity for feeling guilty if they let down the team makes them among the most ethical and hard-working partners, according to management academics. In a proper mix, highly guilt-prone people (i.e., people with a strong dispositional tendency to feel guilty for wrongdoings) make valuable work partners because a concern about letting others down drives them to complete at…

Pets play an important role in our social lives and they can act as catalysts for social interaction, previous research has shown, because pets often serve as "social lubricants." Although much media attention has focused on how dogs can improve the social skills of children with autism, a University of Missouri researcher recently found that children with autism have stronger social skills when any kind of pet lived in the home. "When I compared the social skills of children with autism who lived with dogs to those who did not, the children with dogs appeared to have greater social skills…

Have you made your 2015 New Year's Resolutions yet? Toni Blay By Jayashri Kulkarni, Monash University “I will definitely give up smoking – that’s my New Year’s resolution,” she stated emphatically as she thumped her fist on the table to underline her determination. “All very well”, I thought, as I sat opposite her in my medical consulting room in October. What is it about New Year’s resolutions that we find so compelling? Many of us make resolutions and many of them are broken by January 31st. Yet come the next New Year, we do it all over again, like some 365 “groundhog day” cycle we get…

By David Glance, University of Western Australia One of the characteristic features of Massive Open Online Courses is the observation that no matter how many students enroll in a course, only between 5 to 10% of them will ever complete it. Setting aside the argument of whether this actually means that MOOCs are considerably less “massive” than the name suggests, the interesting question is what is behind this high level of drop-outs and why does it seem so consistent? To investigate this phenomenon further, a colleague and I at UWA collaborated with Stanford University and looked at MOOC…

People who occupy the extreme ends of the political spectrum, be they liberals or conservatives, are less influenced by outside information bias than political moderates, according to psychologists. The research used a simple estimation task and was conducted by psychologists Mark J. Brandt and Anthony Evans of Tilburg University and Jarret T. Crawford of The College of New Jersey. They hold that because political extremists see their own beliefs as superior to the beliefs of others, they are more resistant to so-called anchor bias, even for non-political information. "Political differences…

Today is the day when a whole lot of people will be exchanging gifts that don't fit or they don't want, and maybe buying something they did want. It's the perfect time to think about gift exchanges. Gift exchanges can reveal how people think about others, what they value and enjoy, and how they build and maintain relationships. Researchers are exploring various aspects of gift-giving and receiving, such as how givers choose gifts, how gifts are used by recipients, and how gifts impact the relationship between givers and receivers.  Does anyone really 'give' any more? According to a…

The insanity defense is often an option of last resort rather than a lenient alternative to imprisonment. Douglas LeMoine By Meron Wondemaghen, University of New England What comes to mind when you hear or read about the “insanity defense”? Are the mental images of people who fake insanity to “get away with murder”? Your ideas might have been formed by films such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) or Judge Dredd (1995) or any number of episodes of crime procedurals such as Law and Order. Contrary to popular belief and depictions in popular culture, the defense hardly offers lenient…