Psychology posts
- March 11, 2010
- 03:30 PM
- 8 views
When You Expect Rapid Feedback, the Fire to Perform Gets Hotter
by David DiSalvo in Neuronarrative
Let’s say that you’re preparing for an extremely important test that you and roughly 100 other classmates will be taking in a week. A few days before the test, you find out that your instructor will be going on a trip not long after the test is over and will be providing written and verbal feedback to the students within a day of the test.
This is unusual, because ordinarily the instructor waits a week or more before providing feedback. About half of the class finds out that the........ Read more »
Kettle, K., & Haubl, G. (2010) Motivation by Anticipation: Expecting Rapid Feedback Enhances Performance. Psychological Science. DOI: 10.1177/0956797610363541
- March 11, 2010
- 09:51 AM
- 24 views
The Origins of Sexual Prejudice
by Ultimo167 in Strong Silent Types
Mata et al. (2009) use social dominance orientation (SDO) theory to ponder why it is that boys in school are so prejudiced against gays. Might contact, understanding, and respect lead to more inclusive (and less homophobic) classroom settings?... Read more »
Mata, J., Ghavami, N., & Wittig, M. (2009) Understanding Gender Differences in Early Adolescents' Sexual Prejudice. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 30(1), 50-75. DOI: 10.1177/0272431609350925
Martin, C., & Ruble, D. (2010) Patterns of Gender Development. Annual Review of Psychology, 61(1), 353-381. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.psych.093008.100511
- March 11, 2010
- 05:34 AM
- 70 views
"Why do we believe", and are atheists really more intelligent?
by Daniel in Ego sum Daniel
ResearchBlogging.org editor Dave Munger has written an article for SEED magazine entitled "Why do we believe". The article summarizes recent blog entries regarding studies on the origins of religiosity. It's really worth reading to get a good overview of the subject, and what do you know he links my entry on god's will and beliefs in it.
Among the studies that are mentioned is a controversial study entitled "Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent" (link at the end of this post).
Medic........ Read more »
Kanazawa, S. (2010) Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent. Social Psychology Quarterly. DOI: 10.1177/0190272510361602
- March 10, 2010
- 11:10 PM
- 17 views
The way the worm wiggles
by sandygautam in The Mouse Trap
Image via Wikipedia
Once in a while you come across a study article that is so elegant and lucid that you have to blog about it. A not-son recent, but new to me article in PLOS computational biology by Stephens et al is just such an awesome and well written article that despite being outside my More >Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
Related posts:The 33rd edition of Encephelon online now! the 33rd edition of neuroscience carnival encephalon is now online....
Now I see it, now I ........ Read more »
Stephens, G., Johnson-Kerner, B., Bialek, W., & Ryu, W. (2008) Dimensionality and Dynamics in the Behavior of C. elegans. PLoS Computational Biology, 4(4). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000028
- March 10, 2010
- 05:10 PM
- 41 views
Can We Rely on fMRI?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Craig Bennett (of Prefrontal.org) and Michael Miller, of dead fish brain scan fame, have a new paper out: How reliable are the results from functional magnetic resonance imaging?Tal over at the [citation needed] blog has an excellent in-depth discussion of the paper, and Mind Hacks has a good summary, but here's my take on what it all means in practical terms.Suppose you scan someone's brain while they're looking at a picture of a cat. You find that certain parts of their brain are activated to ........ Read more »
Bennett CM, Miller MB. (2010) How reliable are the results from functional magnetic resonance imaging?. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. info:/
- March 10, 2010
- 12:00 PM
- 22 views
Path Integration in Humans
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
I know you’ve all been waiting for it. We’ve talked about putting ants on stilts, kidnapping baby gerbils, and hijacking a truck full of geese. All in the name of science. Ants and gerbils taught us about the limitations of the path integration system, but also how amazingly cool it is. The geese suggested that [...]... Read more »
Landau, B., Spelke, E., & Gleitman, H. (1984) Spatial knowledge in a young blind child. Cognition, 16(3), 225-260. DOI: 10.1016/0010-0277(84)90029-5
- March 10, 2010
- 05:18 AM
- 34 views
Are emotions in music universal?
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
While there are plenty of theories on how music and emotion might be related (see Juslin & Västfjäll, 2008 for a overview), there is still little empirical support to decide on how far music and specific associated emotions - such as happiness, fear, sadness or anger - are merely a result of association and/or culturally determined, or in fact shared and a result of brain mechanisms that we all share. Last year Current Biology published an interesting study on the recognition of three basic em........ Read more »
Fritz, T., Jentschke, S., Gosselin, N., Sammler, D., Peretz, I., Turner, R., Friederici, A., & Koelsch, S. (2009) Universal Recognition of Three Basic Emotions in Music. Current Biology, 19(7), 573-576. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.02.058
Juslin, P., & Västfjäll, D. (2008) Emotional responses to music: The need to consider underlying mechanisms. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31(05). DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X08005293
- March 10, 2010
- 05:09 AM
- 34 views
Bridging the intention behaviour gap: Planning, self-efficacy, and action control in the adoption and maintenance of physical exercise
by PhD Blogger in Exercise Psychology
In this paper from 2005 Sniehottaet al. examine why although some people develop an intention to change their health behaviour many do not follow through from intention to action. The gap between the intention and behaviour has been called the ‘‘intention–behaviour gap.’’ The authors examine factors which can be used to reduce the gap. They examine action planning, perceived self-efficacy, and self-regulatory strategies to investigate what effect these can have on reducing disparity........ Read more »
Sniehotta, F., Scholz, U., & Schwarzer, R. (2005) Bridging the intention-behaviour gap: Planning, self-efficacy, and action control in the adoption and maintenance of physical exercise. Psychology , 20(2), 143-160. DOI: 10.1080/08870440512331317670
- March 10, 2010
- 12:31 AM
- 45 views
The remote rural community that thinks letting someone die is as bad as killing them
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
In recent years cognitive scientist Marc Hauser has gathered evidence that suggests we're born with a moral instinct. This moral intuition has been likened to the universal grammar that Chomsky famously suggested underlies our linguistic abilities - certain principles are set in stone, whilst the precise parameters can be set by culture. Thousands of people from multiple countries and different religions and demographic backgrounds have given their verdict on fictional scenarios presented online........ Read more »
Abarbanell, L., & Hauser, M. (2010) Mayan morality: An exploration of permissible harms. Cognition. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2009.12.007
- March 9, 2010
- 05:30 PM
- 38 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 9, 2010
- 09:10 AM
- 31 views
Chronic stress, neurogenesis and depression
by sandygautam in The Mouse Trap
Image via Wikipedia
Chronically stressful life events have been shown to lead to depression. Chronic stress leads to hyperactivity of HPA axis leading to more glucocorticoids (cortisol) in the human body. This excess cortisol in term is proposed to underlie the affective symptoms of depression. Also, depressive people have been found to have up to More >Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
Related posts:Depression, Neurogenesis and Spatial navigation We all know that hippocampus is the s........ Read more »
Sapolsky, R. (2001) Depression, antidepressants, and the shrinking hippocampus. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(22), 12320-12322. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.231475998
Czeh, B. (2001) Stress-induced changes in cerebral metabolites, hippocampal volume, and cell proliferation are prevented by antidepressant treatment with tianeptine. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(22), 12796-12801. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.211427898
- March 9, 2010
- 09:04 AM
- 47 views
Sleep deprivation impairs emotion recognition
by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles
The ability to read emotions is an important part of the human experience; the only way to successfully navigate through complex social environments. It comes in handy especially if you don the title of psychotherapist or professional poker player. Without it, you become socially inept. You enter the world of the autistic individual.Thanks to Charles Darwin we now know that it’s not just the eyes that are “the windows to the soul”. He first wrote about the subject of facial expressions in ........ Read more »
van der Helm E; Gujar N; Walker MP. (2010) Sleep Deprivation Impairs the Accurate Recognition of Human Emotions. SLEEP, 33(3), 335-342. info:/
Ekman P, & Friesen WV. (1971) Constants across cultures in the face and emotion. Journal of personality and social psychology, 17(2), 124-9. PMID: 5542557
Steadman, L. (1980) : Kuru Sorcery: Disease and Danger in the New Guinea Highlands . Shirley Lindenbaum. American Anthropologist, 82(3), 692-694. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1980.82.3.02a01130
- March 9, 2010
- 02:15 AM
- 39 views
Personality and Retirement
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
Who retires gracefully, who adjusts to retirement easily and who doesn’t. Which personality traits play a part in successful retirement?
The five factor model of personality or the Big Five can be used to see how personality traits are linked to how people adjust to retirement. It has been done in the past for other life [...]
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Robinson, O., Demetre, J., & Corney, R. (2010) Personality and retirement: Exploring the links between the Big Five personality traits, reasons for retirement and the experience of being retired. Personality and Individual Differences. DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2010.01.014
- March 8, 2010
- 10:42 PM
- 26 views
Brain Change Patterns in Developing Children
by Livia in Reading and Word Recognition Research
Accessibility Level: Intermediate-Advanced
What changes in the brain as children mature? Are there patterns in the way the changes occur? Do some regions mature more quickly than others?
Last time, we talked about a paper by Schlaggar et al that examined brain differences between children and adults during a word generation task. A study published in Cerebral Cortex by Brown and colleagues
... Read more »
Brown, T. (2004) Developmental Changes in Human Cerebral Functional Organization for Word Generation. Cerebral Cortex, 15(3), 275-290. DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhh129
- March 8, 2010
- 03:45 PM
- 129 views
Life Without Serotonin
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Via Dormivigilia, I came across a fascinating paper about a man who suffered from a severe lack of monoamine neurotransmitters (dopamine, serotonin etc.) as a result of a genetic mutation: Sleep and Rhythm Consequences of a Genetically Induced Loss of SerotoninNeuroskeptic readers will be familiar with monoamines. They're psychiatrists' favourite neurotransmitters, and are hence very popular amongst psych drug manufacturers. In particular, it's widely believed that serotonin is the brain's "happ........ Read more »
Smaranda Leu-Semenescu et al. (2010) Sleep and Rhythm Consequences of a Genetically Induced Loss of Serotonin. Sleep, 33(03), 307-314. info:/
- March 8, 2010
- 12:24 AM
- 41 views
We're slower at processing touch-related words than words related to the other senses
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
People are slower at responding to tactile stimuli than to input from the other senses. It's not immediately obvious why this should be. It's unlikely to be for mechanical reasons: the retina in the eye is slower at converting input into a neural signal than is the skin. Psychologists think the answer may have to with attention. Perhaps we're not so good at keeping our attention focused on the tactile modality compared with the others. Now Louise Connell and Dermot Lynott have added to the pictu........ Read more »
Connell L, & Lynott D. (2010) Look but don't touch: Tactile disadvantage in processing modality-specific words. Cognition, 115(1), 1-9. PMID: 19903564
- March 7, 2010
- 04:33 AM
- 29 views
Let's Make Scotland More Active!
by PhD Blogger in Exercise Psychology
I thought i would post the Scottish Physical Activity strategy to demonstrate that a good strategy requires effective implementation. The document Preventing Overweight and Obesity in Scotlandidentified that Scotland was the third most obese country in the world after the USA and Mexico. This may actually be progress as until the report we were usually named as the second! Let's Make Scotland More Active is actually a very good strategy document. It was published in 2003 but progress has bee........ Read more »
The Scottish Government. (2003) Let's Make Scotland More Active. Government Paper. info:/
- March 6, 2010
- 10:18 PM
- 63 views
Brain Scans Confirm: Men Like Curves in Women
by Wayne Hooke in The Psychology of Beauty
Platek & Singh (2010) report that stimuli depicting optimal waist-hip ratios (~0.70) activate the “reward center” in men’s brains; while stimuli depicting body mass index do not. They conclude that BMI preferences are therefore more culturally determined and, by suggestion, that WHR preferences are the result of evolved psychological mechanisms. I will point-out at the [...]... Read more »
Fliessbach, K., Rohe, T., Linder, N., Trautner, P., Elger, C., & Weber, B. (2010) Retest reliability of reward-related BOLD signals. NeuroImage, 50(3), 1168-1176. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.01.036
MCCABE, D., & CASTEL, A. (2008) Seeing is believing: The effect of brain images on judgments of scientific reasoning☆☆☆. Cognition, 107(1), 343-352. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2007.07.017
Steven M. Platek, & Devendra Singh. (2010) Optimal Waist-to-Hip Ratios in Women Activate Neural Reward Centers in Men. PLoS ONE. info:/10.1371/journal.pone.0009042
Singh, D., & Randall, P. (2007) Beauty is in the eye of the plastic surgeon: Waist–hip ratio (WHR) and women’s attractiveness. Personality and Individual Differences, 43(2), 329-340. DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2006.12.003
- March 6, 2010
- 09:45 PM
- 45 views
Climate communication: Is fear collective action a winning strategy?
by Phil Camill in Global Change: Intersection of Nature and Culture
In a previous post from my series on why people don’t engage climate change, I described my interpretations of work by Susanne Moser and Lisa Dilling1, which suggested that the use of fear can be a poor way to motivate behavioral changes to deal with climate warming:
Challenge 6: Fear can change perception but not willingness [...]... Read more »
Martijn van Zomeren, Russell Spears, Colin Wayne Leach. (2010) Experimental evidence for a dual pathway model analysis of coping with the climate crisis . Journal of Environmental Psychology. info:/10.1016/j.jenvp.2010.02.006
- March 6, 2010
- 08:31 PM
- 49 views
Nativism and Empiricism
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Nativism and Empiricism
Do we come into the world with an innate understanding of the world, like baby geese seem to (for navigation)? Are the incredible navigational skills of ants and gerbils and other animals learned with experience, or are those animals born with those cognitive constructions of the world? What about for humans?
The fourth fifth [...]... Read more »
Pascalis, O. (2002) Is Face Processing Species-Specific During the First Year of Life?. Science, 296(5571), 1321-1323. DOI: 10.1126/science.1070223
Landau B, Gleitman H, & Spelke E. (1981) Spatial knowledge and geometric representation in a child blind from birth. Science (New York, N.Y.), 213(4513), 1275-8. PMID: 7268438
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