EAST LANSING, Mich. — People may be learning while sleeping – an unconscious form of memory that is still not well understood, according to a study by Michigan State University researchers.
The findings are highlighted in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. (more…)
People’s moral responses to similar situations change as they age, according to a new study at the University of Chicago that combined brain scanning, eye-tracking and behavioral measures to understand how the brain responds to morally laden scenarios.
Both preschool children and adults distinguish between damage done either intentionally or accidently when assessing whether a perpetrator had done something wrong. Nonetheless, adults are much less likely than children to think someone should be punished for damaging an object, especially if the action was accidental, said study author Jean Decety, the Irving B. Harris Professor in Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Chicago and a leading scholar on affective and social neuroscience. (more…)
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Even temporary “breakups” can be distressing for some people – at least when it comes to their favorite television programs.
A new study examined how college-aged television viewers reacted when their favorite shows went off the air or were replaced with reruns as a result of the television writers’ strike of 2007-08.
The results revealed the important role television plays in the lives of some viewers – particularly those who use television for companionship and those who feel they have a strong “relationship” with their favorite TV characters. (more…)
It’s not just how free the market is. Some economists are looking at another factor that determines how much a country’s economy flourishes: how smart its people are. For a study published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, researchers analyzed test scores from 90 countries and found that the intelligence of the people, particularly the smartest 5 percent, made a big contribution to the strength of their economies.
In the last 50 years or so, economists have started taking an interest in the value of human capital. That means all of the qualities of the people who make up the workforce. Heiner Rindermann, of the Chemnitz University of Technology, wanted to look more closely at human capital, and particularly the factor that psychologists call cognitive ability. “In other words, it’s the ability of a person to solve a problem in the most efficient way—not with violence, but by thinking,” Rindermann says. He wrote the new study with James Thompson of University College London. (more…)
People in marginalized groups, such as the disabled or racial minorities, feel stigmatized—condemned, feared, or excluded—when other people stigmatize them. That’s obvious. But they can also feel stigma when nobody blatantly discriminates against them or says a negative word.
These folks aren’t paranoid, suggests a new study of HIV-positive people and their communities to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association of Psychological Science. Rather, they’re picking up subtle clues from their communities. (more…)
When people are feeling badly about themselves, they’re more likely to show bias against people who are different. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, examines how that works.
“This is one of the oldest accounts of why people stereotype and have prejudice: It makes us feel better about ourselves,” says Jeffrey Sherman of the University of California, Davis, who wrote the study with Thomas Allen. “When we feel bad about ourselves, we can denigrate other people, and that makes us feel better about ourselves.” (more…)
Your English teacher wasn’t kidding: Grammar really does matter. The verb form used to describe an action can affect how the action is perceived—and these subtle variations could mean the difference between an innocent or guilty verdict in criminal law, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
William Hart, of the University of Alabama, was inspired to conduct the study by research on how people think about narratives. “Research was showing that when you describe somebody’s actions in terms of what they’re ‘doing,’ that action is way more vivid in [a reader’s] mind” than if the action is described in terms of what the person ‘did.’ At the same time, other researchers had found that when people imagine action vividly, they were more likely to think the person performing the action was doing it intentionally. (more…)
COLUMBUS, Ohio — People tend to overestimate the steepness of slopes – and psychologists studying the phenomenon have made a discovery that refutes common ideas about how we perceive inclines in general.
For more than a decade, researchers thought that our judgment was biased by our fatigue or fear of falling, explained Dennis Shaffer, associate professor of psychology at Ohio State University’s Mansfield campus. We perceive climbing or descending hills as difficult or dangerous, so when we look at an incline, our view is clouded by the expected physical exertion or danger of traversing it. (more…)
