Psychology

Greenpeace Versus Shell Via Lego: The Building Blocks Of A Successful PR Campaign

Stick 'em up. Credit: Me2, CC BY-NC-SA By Toby Miller, Cardiff University ...

Article - The Conversation - Oct 12 2014 - 11:16am

Believe In Science? You're Easier To Fool Than You Think

Do you believe in science? Most people do. Some even say they 'accept' science, since that sounds less faith-oriented than 'believe', but ask most science-accepting atheists and fundamentalist Imams about adaptive radiation in evolutio ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 15 2014 - 2:32pm

Not The Christian Thing To Do: Reminding People Of Religious Belief Reduces Hostility

Muslim terrorists and the Klu Klux Klan share one thing in common; they claim to be religious even though the ideas they promote (and in the case of the former, the actions they take) are not very nice. The fringes get all of the attention but most religi ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 19 2014 - 10:46am

'Extreme Altruists' Are Motivated By Gut Instinct

Intuitive processes may underlie decisions of those who help others while risking their own lives. Credit: AAresTT/Shutterstock By Penny Orbell, The Conversation If you noticed a person in grave danger would you act first and think later in order to save ...

Article - The Conversation - Oct 16 2014 - 12:01pm

The Ineffectiveness of Opioids for Chronic Pain

Let me first say that I am not a medical doctor. However, as the founder and CEO of an addiction treatment center, I sit on the front-lines of the prescription painkiller epidemic. From this vantage point, by working with addicts and their families and th ...

Blog Post - Richard Taite - Oct 15 2014 - 10:27pm

Siblings Make Boys Prosocial

In modern culture, boys are often slighted; girls get billions devoted to their welfare while boys are the default excuse for whatever is wrong. Almost every television show that has a tough woman has her disclaiming, 'I grew up in a house full of bo ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 16 2014 - 9:38am

Play Action Video Games, Boost Your Sensorimotor Skills

A new study has found that people who play action video games such as the "Call of Duty" or "Assassin's Creed" seem to learn a new sensorimotor skill faster than non-gamers do. Sorry, Bungie, "Destiny" was not out when t ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 18 2014 - 9:42am

Seasonal Affective Disorder- Depression Linked To Serotonin

Some people suffer from 'winter blues' while others have no issue. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) affects people as daylight levels drop in autumn. At Northern European latitudes (for example all of Scandinavia, Glasgow and Moscow) around 1 p ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 20 2014 - 7:00pm

The Optimism Of Depressed People

Even depressed people are essentially optimistic- they believe that tomorrow will be better, even though that belief probably won't lead to better outcomes. That is true optimism. A paper in Clinical Psychological Science says that middle-aged adults ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 21 2014 - 8:56am

Perception Of Hatred Fuels Conflicts Between Democrats And Republicans

There are some things that Republicans and Democrats share in common with Palestinians and Israelis and lots of other groups where human conflict seems intractable. A new sociology paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says that seeming ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 21 2014 - 6:00pm