Category: psychology
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How Cats Control Human Culture
I’ll admit I may have overstretched myself slightly with this sensationalist title. What it should say is, “How the Toxoplasma Gondii Brain Parasite May Influence Human Culture“; but that’s not nearly as fun. Toxoplasma gondii is a single-celled brain parasite spread by cats. Our feline companions are its preferred home and […] like most parasites,…
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The Senseless Censorship of Swearing
Expanding on concepts from his latest book, The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker discusses swearing and the superfluous censorship of today’s media. [S]wearing is not just a puzzle in cognitive neuroscience. It has figured in the most-famous free-speech cases of the past century, from Ulysses and Lady Chatterley to those of Lenny Bruce and George…
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Are All Children Capable of Academic Success?
Charles Murray, author of the controversial book The Bell Curve, tackles the question of whether all children are capable of academic success. Murray argues that IQ is the strongest influence on academic success and that some children simply aren’t equipped to excel at the highest levels, no matter how excellent the schooling they receive. The…
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On Child Prodigies and Late Bloomers
David Galenson is famous for his theory of artistic creativity: classing artists as either Conceptualists or Experimentalists depending on whether or not their greatest achievements come at a young or old age. Malcolm Gladwell’s upcoming book, Outliers, is on the topic of high-achievement and in a recent New Yorker article discusses Galenson’s work on the…
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Instinctual vs. Rational Decision–Making
Squeezing the article into a tenuous comparison between Obama and McCain, The Boston Globe has a nonetheless interesting article on recent research into the benefits of, and the differences between, instinctual (gut) decisions and methodical (rational) ones. The crucial skill, scientists are now saying, is the ability to think about your own thinking, or metacognition,…
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On Bias, Rhetoric, and Cognitive Dissonance
Author of The New York Times’ Consumed column, Rob Walker, dissects a Weekly Standard article discussing the first presidential debate between Obama and McCain to answer the question: what’s the difference between rhetoric and cognitive dissonance? Both can result in points of view that are so biased that they have no connection to reality. But…
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Loud Music Increases Alcohol Consumption
When Gueguen et al. manipulated the music volume in a bar in the west of France, their suspicions were confirmed: louder volumes correlate with higher alcohol consumption. [T]urning the music up so loud that people are forced to shout at each other doesn’t have quite the same beneficial effect on social interactions. Because everyone is…
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The Asexual Couple
As part of The Guardian’s First Person series, Paul Cox, 24, explains how he and his wife found love and happiness as an asexual couple, despite not being physically attracted to each other. In a fascinating post touching on many topics in her area of expertise, Dr Petra Boynton—a psychologist specialising in sex and relationships…
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Drugs for Optimising Morality
This month’s British Journal of Psychiatry has an interesting essay on ‘moral pharmacology’. Mind Hacks picks up the story: [Sean Spence] argues that while most attention has been focused on ‘smart drugs’ and cognitive enhancement, medication is already being subtly used to improve ethical behaviour and we should prepare for a revolution in ‘moral pharmacology’.…
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Top 10 Online Psychology Experiments
PsychCentral has compiled a list of the top 10 online psychology experiments. Thoughtfully, the list is of the top 10 long term experiments, meaning that they will be online for a long time to come. Here’s the list, but check PsychCentral’s original as each experiment is described in some depth: You Just Get Me Bad…