Psychology

What does chessboxing have to do with science? Let me tell you a little story... It all started last November with this tweet: There was a Twitter conversation about politics, and I suggested the candidates decide a winner over a chessboxing match. I had h ...

Article - Andrea Kuszewski - Dec 8 2011 - 11:02am

Why Aren't We Smarter?

A recent article titled " Our Brains Can't Evolve Any Further " drew my attention which ultimately lead me to the paper "Why Aren’t We Smarter Already: Evolutionary Trade-Offs and Cognitive Enhancements" (Thomas Hills and Ralph Her ...

Article - Gerhard Adam - Dec 10 2011 - 4:11am

Christmas On The Brain

Xmas time is here again. Unlike many people I have no particular aversion to the holiday season. I don’t have too many emotional scars from Christmases past. Getting presents was always fun, I liked the lights on our tree, even stringing popcorn, and these ...

Article - Michael W. Taft - Dec 12 2011 - 7:13pm

Fear Of Snakes

A recent article suggests that our fear of snakes is largely genetic because of its apparently uniform nature across all strata of people and that it was likely caused due to predation of our ancestors. As evidence of this, the author interviewed 120 of th ...

Article - Gerhard Adam - Dec 13 2011 - 10:24pm

Prejudice Is A Basic Human Need

Prejudice is just bigotry that arises from flawed ideology, right? Not so, say the authors of a new paper. They contend prejudice stems from a deeper psychological need and it is associated with a particular way of thinking. People who aren't comfor ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 29 2011 - 11:31pm

Cell Phones, Driving, And Multitasking

This December the National Transportation Safety Board of the U.S. recommended a nationwide ban on cell phone use while driving. According to NTSB member Robert Sumwalt, "This (distracted driving) is becoming the new DUI. It's becoming epidemic.” ...

Article - Michael W. Taft - Dec 31 2011 - 1:28pm

Biological Politics? Out-Of-Touch Liberals And Fear-Mongering Conservatives

It's not correlation/causation (though less and less is, since science has learned that causation is now teaching us less and less about how to actually fix things) but some in the social fields are claiming there are biological truths to stereotypes ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Jan 6 2012 - 11:22am

The GOP Primary: A Predictable Storm

Who do you think will win the Republican presidential nomination? Obsession with this question possesses the entire United States. Today a brief search on Google for “GOP primary prediction” returned close to 40 million results. Over the past few months, t ...

Article - Michael W. Taft - Jan 13 2012 - 1:55am

Redefining Autism For DSM-V

Changes to the diagnostic definition of autism will be published in the fifth edition of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders"- DSM V- but exactly what those changes will be is a key point of discussion. There are still a lo ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Jan 22 2012 - 7:53pm

How To Learn-- From Robert Bjork, Director Of UCLA Learning And Forgetting Lab

Taking notes during class? Topic-focused study? A consistent learning environment? All are exactly opposite the best strategies for learning. Really, I recently had the good fortune to interview Robert Bjork, director of the UCLA Learning and Forgetting La ...

Article - Garth Sundem - Jan 28 2012 - 5:15pm