Psychology

If a tourist doesn't know messing around with a coral reef is bad, they may try to touch them or pet turtles, but after being told by someone local that it has risks for the nature they are there to see they far less likely to do so. A new paper found that such "nudges" works well. Which would mean we often don't need government 'ignore of the law is no excuse' type shaming policies to change behavior. Obviously laws have to exist for a reason also. All of the public service announcements about dead people didn't keep morons from drinking and driving, or west coast elites from refusing to…

I inhabit rather distinct worlds so if you tell me American conservatives prefer centralized authority or that American liberals are less moral, I have some idea where you come from, and even how you vote. Yet if you are a liberal social psychologist in a large urban university you won't recognize how flawed those premises are; because 99 percent of your field believes this stuff. In the real world, conservatives absolutely do not want more deference to authority, they are skeptical of centralized power, while liberal interest in fairness and harm avoidance does not make them less moral.…

In 11 multi-method experiments involving more than 4,000 total participants designed to investigate the effect a victim's fit to the concept of a typical woman had on participants' view of sexual harassment and the consequences of that mental association, it was found that women who do not fit female stereotypes are less likely to be seen as victims of sexual harassment.  If they claim they were harassed, they are less likely to be believed. The authors claim that in Western societies, stereotypical women tend to be perceived as attractive, thin, relatively young and dressing in a…

How many emails are in your inbox? If the answer is thousands, or if you often struggle to find a file on your computer among its cluttered hard drive, then you might be classed as a digital hoarder. In the physical world, hoarding disorder has been recognized as a distinct psychiatric condition among people who accumulate excessive amounts of objects to the point that it prevents them living a normal life. Now, research has begun to recognize that hoarding can be a problem in the digital world, too. A case study published in the British Medical Journal in 2015 described a 47-year-old man…

It's well-known that infectious disease mitigation worksl if people voluntarily follow the rules and guidelines of experts but what has happened instead is resentment of what some perceive as social authoritarian decision-makers calling the shots. What would be better for everyone at risk of respiratory distress from COVID-19 is understanding why and how avoiding social contact and regular hand washing will help. Government can mandate things but we may be getting less adherence to guidelines because it is top-down rules, and in the case of some politicians hypocrisy after issuing them,…

If intelligent aliens visit the Earth, it would be one of the most profound events in human history. Surveys show that nearly half of Americans believe that aliens have visited the Earth, either in the ancient past or recently. That percentage has been increasing. Belief in alien visitation is greater than belief that Bigfoot is a real creature, but less than belief that places can be haunted by spirits. Scientists dismiss these beliefs as not representing real physical phenomena. They don’t deny the existence of intelligent aliens. But they set a high bar for proof that we’ve been visited by…

While a loud minority says there needs to be lockdowns for the foreseeable future, they are often government-funded workers whose jobs are secure - and they are not thinking about the mental health issues, including among children. Social distancing and school closures are thought to have badly affected children's mental health but there has been little hard evidence to substantiate it, largely because of a lack of good baseline data for the same children collected before the first lockdowns in March. There was no reason. Everyone believed this would be three weeks, not a year or more as…

Alternative Chinese medicine harms endangered species like pangolins, tigers and rhinos, but deniers of evidence-based medicine are often part of the same political tribe as professional conservationists. That confirmation bias about alternative medicine has limited conservation gains. The use of endangered species in traditional Chinese medicine threatens species' survival. Noting inefficacy and providing various forms of scientific evidence are not influencing decisions and behaviors. Especially because environmentalists often use the same anti-corporate tropes that convince deniers of…

Well-meaning advice for people freaking out about current events often includes encouragement to be patient, stay calm and keep the faith… but how on Earth are you supposed to do that amid the insanity of 2020? As a practicing clinical psychologist and professor who studies how to manage anxiety and tolerate uncertainty, I offer 10 suggestions to make it through this highly stressful election period. Doomscrolling is not going to help. ArtistGNDphotography/E+ via Getty Images 1. Put the phone down! While it is tempting to stay glued to your devices during this time, the never-ending…

The Swiss are famously negative about everything. The anti-science attack site Swiss Public Eye, for example, routinely undermines the science community and claim the world is doomed unless people switch to products made by their funding sources. It's a pretty bleak existence but they've bee surrounded by militant Germany, France, and Italy for much of their history. They have forts built into nearly every mountain, compulsory military service and almost as many guns as America. They have been expecting to be overrun for centuries. That despondence about other human beings and the entire…