Psychology

Study You Don't Need To Read- Walking Through Doorways Causes Forgetting

A study in  the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology by some folks at University of Notre Dame conducted three experiments and concluded that if you walk into a room and forget what you came to do, the doorway is responsible. The environment can li ...

Blog Post - Hank Campbell - Nov 19 2011 - 4:42pm

Of Touchdowns And Tribalism

Once when I was a little kid, a peaceful fall evening at our house was shattered by loud and insistent banging, as if someone was trying to break down our side door. My dad, who was the head coach of the high school football team, opened it to greet a man ...

Article - Michael W. Taft - Nov 23 2011 - 8:22pm

Evolutionary Psychology and A Completely New Layer of Misinterpreted Data.

A new article from the Association for Psychological Science (APS) begins with the premise that our ancestors avoided outsiders because they might carry disease.  Therefore, it apparently seems reasonable to conclude that by washing our hands and getting v ...

Blog Post - Gerhard Adam - Dec 1 2011 - 9:13pm

Chessboxing For Science

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