39 posts · 7,978 views
Twenty-2-Five focuses on findings in Decision Making Theory, Perception and Social Psychology from an Economists perspective. Research is often presented with an outlook towards how a better understanding of human behavior might improve economic theory, and how economic theory might provide a general language for the social science.
Daniel Hawes
39 posts
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- March 9, 2010
- 05:30 PM
- 56 views
Trust in the Face(width)
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
It seems odd, but stable facial cues, such as the width-height ratio of a man's face, may be decent predictors of trustworthiness. Less strange is that we apparently use face-width when intuitively judging a strangers' trustworthiness...... Read more »
Stirrat, M., & Perrett, D. (2010) Valid Facial Cues to Cooperation and Trust: Male Facial Width and Trustworthiness. Psychological Science, 21(3), 349-354. DOI: 10.1177/0956797610362647
- March 4, 2010
- 03:45 PM
- 47 views
Don't Know Where The Time Went? Guess You Were Having Fun...
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
We all know the feeling that time flies, when we're having fun. Turns out, this also works in the other direction...Another nice incidence of bidirectional information processing.... Read more »
Danckert JA, & Allman AA. (2005) Time flies when you're having fun: temporal estimation and the experience of boredom. Brain and cognition, 59(3), 236-45. PMID: 16168546
- February 22, 2010
- 05:34 PM
- 87 views
When We Want Something More Although We Like it Less
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
Wanting something and liking something are two separate things, and it is not uncommon that people develop strong "wants", or "must haves" for things they don't particularly like.
Indeed, it is possible that certain events increase our want for an object, while simultaneously decreasing how much we actually like the object. According to a recent research report this can happen in particular, when things become seemingly hard to obtain: When something we've been t........ Read more »
Litt, A., Khan, U., & Shiv, B. (2009) Lusting While Loathing: Parallel Counterdriving of Wanting and Liking. Psychological Science, 21(1), 118-125. DOI: 10.1177/0956797609355633
- February 16, 2010
- 10:34 AM
- 72 views
Do Price Tags Have a Taste of Their Own?
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
Expert wine tasters can supposedly tell the difference between a cheap wine and a more expensive one. But research shows that a measurable portion of the actually perceived taste difference is solely due to a neurological response to knowing the wine's price tag. So I have to ask: What is the Taste of $90?...... Read more »
Plassmann, H., O'Doherty, J., Shiv, B., & Rangel, A. (2008) Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(3), 1050-1054. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0706929105
- February 9, 2010
- 11:00 AM
- 104 views
Giving When God Is Watching
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
Altruistic behavior is one of the great unsolved problems of social science research. What I find particularly fascinating is the huge effect that very subtle cues can exhibit on people's giving behavior...or not so subtle cues, like when you're made to feel God might be watching you...... Read more »
Shariff, A., & Norenzayan, A. (2007) God Is Watching You: Priming God Concepts Increases Prosocial Behavior in an Anonymous Economic Game. Psychological Science, 18(9), 803-809. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01983.x
HALEY, K., & FESSLER, D. (2005) Nobody's watching?Subtle cues affect generosity in an anonymous economic game. Evolution and Human Behavior, 26(3), 245-256. DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2005.01.002
- February 3, 2010
- 10:10 AM
- 100 views
Girls and Math - Part II : Teacher Anxiety
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
A study in PNAS looks at the link between teacher anxiety and the gender gap in math achievement...... Read more »
Beilock, S., Gunderson, E., Ramirez, G., & Levine, S. (2010) Female teachers' math anxiety affects girls' math achievement. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(5), 1860-1863. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0910967107
- February 2, 2010
- 12:22 PM
- 137 views
Girls and Math - Part I
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
I want to take a look at Gender and Math Achievement over the next couple of days, and this study seemed the natural starting point. Why all of this? Because hearing "girls are just not good at math" makes me cringe...... Read more »
Hyde, J., & Mertz, J. (2009) Gender, culture, and mathematics performance. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(22), 8801-8807. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0901265106
- February 1, 2010
- 12:20 PM
- 103 views
Sharing Among Children - The Effect of "Currency"
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
Here's how children play the Dictator Game when given stickers of different "value"...... Read more »
Peter R. Blake; David G. Randbc. (2009) Currency value moderates equity preference among young children. Evolution and Human Behavior. info:/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2009.06.012
- January 27, 2010
- 07:46 PM
- 144 views
Finding Fair Lineups
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
You might never find yourself in the situation (although I might for not being able to figure out rb.org posting), but in case you were wondering how to make lineups fairer for suspects with distinct features, here's the deal...+find the anagrams... Read more »
Zarkadi T, Wade KA, & Stewart N. (2009) Creating Fair Lineups for Suspects With Distinctive Features. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS. PMID: 19883492
- January 25, 2010
- 09:02 AM
- 111 views
Money Makes Rejection Less Painful
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
According to one of my least favorite Beatles songs, Money Can't Buy (Me) Love, but according to one of my most favorite studies to come out last year, money does go a long way in reducing the pains associated with social rejection. Indeed, the mere thought of money seems to reduce people's perception of physical pain...so I had to blog about it.... Read more »
Zhou, X., Vohs, K., & Baumeister, R. (2009) The Symbolic Power of Money: Reminders of Money Alter Social Distress and Physical Pain. Psychological Science, 20(6), 700-706. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02353.x
- January 15, 2010
- 06:15 AM
- 191 views
Care for Some Sexy Toilet Paper? - Sex in Advertising
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
Sex doesn't always sell, and there are gender differences to when it does...... Read more »
Dahl, D., Sengupta, J., & Vohs, K. (2009) Sex in Advertising: Gender Differences and the Role of Relationship Commitment. Journal of Consumer Research, 36(2), 215-231. DOI: 10.1086/597158
- December 29, 2009
- 10:41 AM
- 160 views
Interpreting Dreams
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
Many people hold Freudian notions of their dreams as meaningful messages. Indeed, the idea that dreams communicate messages from the subconscious, or even from a higher power, is deeply entrenched in our culture through religion, art and literature. This post takes a look at a recent study of how laypeople make sense of their dreams, and how dreams affect the decisions we make during the day...... Read more »
Morewedge, C., & Norton, M. (2009) When dreaming is believing: The (motivated) interpretation of dreams. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(2), 249-264. DOI: 10.1037/a0013264
- December 22, 2009
- 07:00 AM
- 164 views
Using Private Knowledge To Anticipate How Others View Us
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
Some knowledge about yourself is private knowledge that only you possess. Clearly, other people will not be able to use your private knowledge, when they formulate a judgment about something you did. So why do researchers find that people use their private knowledge as input, when anticipating how others view them?...... Read more »
Chambers JR, Epley N, Savitsky K, & Windschitl PD. (2008) Knowing too much: using private knowledge to predict how one is viewed by others. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS, 19(6), 542-8. PMID: 18578843
- December 9, 2009
- 11:48 PM
- 206 views
Parasites in the Brain
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
"In 1896, the Scientific American published an article, Is Insanity Due to a Microbe?''," and thus started a lively discussion on infectious causes of schizophrenia, epilepsy and other diseases of the mind...... Read more »
da Silva RC, & Langoni H. (2009) Toxoplasma gondii: host-parasite interaction and behavior manipulation. Parasitology research, 105(4), 893-8. PMID: 19548003
- December 8, 2009
- 10:08 PM
- 137 views
Cardiovascular Fitness is Linked to Intelligence (in Young Men...Young Swedish Men...and Lab Mice)
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
It's ok already! I will lace up my running shoes: First a University of Princeton team shows that exercise lets lab rats produce neurons with improved stress response (i.e. they don't respond), and now a group of Swedish neuroscientists is telling us that improved cardiovascular fitness actually makes young men smarter...... Read more »
Aberg MA, Pedersen NL, Torén K, Svartengren M, Bäckstrand B, Johnsson T, Cooper-Kuhn CM, Aberg ND, Nilsson M, & Kuhn HG. (2009) Cardiovascular fitness is associated with cognition in young adulthood. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. PMID: 19948959
- December 7, 2009
- 04:58 PM
- 225 views
Emotions Interfere in Theory of Mind
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
Annikas' friend brings her back some chocolate, and places it into the blue cupboard. Annika sees this and then goes out to play. While Annika is gone, her friend eats some chocolate and then places it into the red cupboard. Later, when Annika comes back and goes about getting a piece of chocolate, where will she look for it?
If you are a two year old, you will expect Annika to look for the chocolate in the red cupboard, simply because you know that is where the chocolate is. If you are a ........ Read more »
Converse, B., Lin, S., Keysar, B., & Epley, N. (2008) In the mood to get over yourself: Mood affects theory-of-mind use. Emotion, 8(5), 725-730. DOI: 10.1037/a0013283
- December 4, 2009
- 06:10 PM
- 212 views
Creativity Lives far From Home...(feat. Aliens!)
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
Current research on creativity has brought forth such fascinating studies as to the effect of eye movement exercises on creativity, and the degree to which thoughts of love make us more creative (while thoughts of lust do not), but the degree to which foreign country experiences influence creativity has until now remained the domain of folk psychology, according to which traveling broadens our horizon, and is more or less a necessary prerequisite for sophisticated artisitry and other creativity........ Read more »
Maddux, W., & Galinsky, A. (2009) Cultural borders and mental barriers: The relationship between living abroad and creativity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(5), 1047-1061. DOI: 10.1037/a0014861
- December 3, 2009
- 09:54 AM
- 261 views
How Dark is Barack Obama?
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
During the 2008 primaries, the Clinton campaign was accused of altering footage of Barack Obama to darken his skin tone. Supposedly, this would activate negative stereotypes of Americans towards Black people; possibly following the same logic that Time magazine applied in 1994 when it darkened the face of O.J. Simpson for its cover.
Whether or not this type of (subtle) manipulation actually suffices to swing people's decisions for something as important as an electoral vote is questionable (it ........ Read more »
Caruso EM, Mead NL, & Balcetis E. (2009) Political partisanship influences perception of biracial candidates' skin tone. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. PMID: 19934033
- December 2, 2009
- 04:25 PM
- 259 views
Benford's Mathemagical Law
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
A wide range of naturally occurring number collections show a very distinct pattern: They more often feature a "one" as their first digit than any other number. This distributive feature has been described as Benford's law. Benford's law is an intriguing classic well worth (re-)appreciating; especially since it is often misunderstood...... Read more »
Fewster, R. (2009) A Simple Explanation of Benford's Law. The American Statistician, 63(1), 26-32. DOI: 10.1198/tast.2009.0005
- November 23, 2009
- 07:53 PM
- 237 views
Genes Don't Make You Racist
by Daniel Hawes in Ingenious Monkey | 20-two-5
In conditioning experiments, humans learn the fear of snakes more easily than they learn to be afraid flowers., and there is an evolutionary story to be told for this.
In a similar experiment, participants show strong outgroup bias in learning fear responses based on other people's skin color; which has sometimes been cited as support for the innateness of negative predispositions towards people who are "different" from ourselves. Luckily, a scientifically more appealing, explanations exist........... Read more »
Tiago V. Maia. (2009) Fear Conditioning and Social Groups: Statistics, Not Genetics. Cognitive Science, 33(7), 1232-1251. info:/10.1111/j.1551-6709.2009.01054.x
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