Editor’s selections: Desire, perception, prejudice, and pain — and a touch of self-promotion
January 12th, 2010 Editor's Selections No Comments
Dave Munger selects several notable posts each week from psychology and neuroscience. He blogs at Cognitive Daily and has a weekly column on SEEDMAGAZINE.COM.
- Desire influences visual perception. The Neurophilosopher examines a study showing how our perception of distance is influenced by desire.
- Why are we prejudiced? Could it be fear? Ignorance? Desire for domination? BPS Research Digest suggests that some prejudice may simply be due to difficulty in processing information about newcomers.
- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome not caused by a single virus. The Neuroskeptic discusses the research, which perhaps shouldn’t be surprising.
- A nifty study showing how we experience the pain of others. Fascinating stuff, but what I really like about this post is that the bloggers at Body in Mind found a member of the research team and asked him to write a commentary about his own work.
Finally, as promised, a bit of self-promotion. My column on Seed on Television’s unintended consequences attracted the notice of the producers of the nationally-syndicated radio show, The Takeaway. I was interviewed this morning along with David Dunstan, one of the authors of a recent study showing a link between TV viewing time and mortality. I’ll be discussing the research on my blog Cognitive Daily later in the day, but in the meantime, you can listen to my short interview.
