Psychology
Is a person's race "fixed"? It seems not. Since race is a cultural construct, perceptions of race may shift as a result of changes to the perceiver's social goals and motivations, so it always seems a little silly for sociologists to do surveys or give Implicit Association tests and play with statistics and declare that X equals Y, but that is the state of the social sciences in the USA.
So psychologists have found, for example, that political ideology may influence the extent to which they see biracial individuals as being Black or White. Look for a lot more of this political ideology…
Can rats show regret and, if so, how would we know?
Neuroscientists at the University of Minnesota say they do and it's intriguing because regret is a cognitive behavior thought to be uniquely and fundamentally human.
"Regret is the recognition that you made a mistake, that if you had done something else, you would have been better off," said A. David Redish, Ph.D., a professor of neuroscience in the University of Minnesota. "The difficult part of this study was separating regret from disappointment, which is when things aren't as good as you would have hoped. The key to…
700 people under the age of 25 die by suicide in the UK per year. 160 young people under the age of 20 die by suicide in England each year and there are higher rates of suicide in young people in Scotland and Northern Ireland than in England and Wales.
Why? Is it economics? Copycat culture?
The National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness (Inquiry), led by Professor Louis Appleby of the University of Manchester, is carrying out an investigation to examine causes and recommend prevention strategies. The investigation will look at the role of…
A sense of entitlement appears to be linked to sexism, say psychologists who believe entitled men are more likely to endorse hostile views of women while entitled women are more likely to think women are frail and need extra care.
Entitled men were found to be more likely to endorse views of women as manipulative, deceptive, and untrustworthy — attitudes, which past psychology paperssay are predictors of violence toward women.
Before you go indicting men or women, this is a psychology paper, and so a survey of college students and people they paid to take a survey. In this case, it is…
Everything you do changes your brain, even reading this sentence. A psychologist from the University of Hertfordshire believes that clothing impacts the way we think and literally changes our brains.
We know some of this to be true; everyone has a favorite outfit they look good in and that makes them feel more confident. Professor Pine's data consists of things like asking psycology students to put on a Superman t-shirt. They declared it made them have better impressions of themselves and that they felt physically stronger. To most people, that says psychology undergraduates…
In Mexico, 21.7 percent of the population smokes. By now, smoking has been implicated in every possible condition - lung cancer, obviously, but then crazy claims like that third-hand smoke could lead to epigenetic changes that make your grandchildren obese.
Still, it's not a good idea to draw any carcinogen into your lungs but some people who start have an easy time quitting while some just can't seem to shake it. Are they weak-willed or is addiction a physical knob that can be turned? Researchers from the Mexican Institute of Respiratory Diseases (INER) believe they have developed a…
Exposing infants to a new vegetable early in life encourages them to eat more of it compared to offering novel vegetables to older children, say psychologists from the University of Leeds.
Of course, you likely knew that. Still, if true, it dispels the popular idea that vegetable tastes need to be masked or given by stealth in order for children to eat them.
In the study, the research team gave babies and children from the UK, France and Denmark artichoke puree to 332 children from three countries aged from weaning age to 38 months. During the experiment each child was given…
Want to be sexier? Ask your next potential boyfriend to meet you in a bakery.
Perfumes and scented products have been used for centuries as a way to enhance overall personal appearance and studies have shown that perception of facial attractiveness could be influenced when using unpleasant vs. pleasant odors - but it was not known whether odors influence the actual visual perception of facial features or alternatively, how faces are emotionally evaluated by the brain.
A recent small study concluded that women's faces are rated as more attractive in the presence of pleasant odors. In…
In the medical work force, women have representation no different than any other corporation. That makes sense, women have accounts for half of all medical student graduates for decades.
Yet in the top tiers of academia, they lag behind men. Is that gender bias? It is, claims Dr. Anna Kaatz and Dr. Molly Carnes of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Academics may have another answer; tenure. It is quite common for the corporate world to change jobs but tenure in academia means never having to look for a job again. Just because there has been parity in medical school enrollment for a…
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I may have once endorsed Eckhart Tolle by pointing out similarities between Tolle and Muho. Muho wrote to me that he does not know why his own meditative practice worked for him. In my eyes, such honesty and awareness about uncertainty are consistent with Zen. Tolle effectively* claims his way as the only true way for everybody.
(* "effectively" means that he does not claim so explicitly, but in effect, "effectively")
Tolle’s similarities with Muho are mainly being German and having spent years meditating in public parks. A few quotes promised that Tolle may perhaps present core messages of…