A new study found that only seven percent of white college students showed no racial bias, with nonbiased individuals less likely to form negative associations in general. Nonbiased individuals were more resistant to classical conditioning, which can lead to racial bias in society.
Decreased inhibitory ability in late adulthood can lead to prejudice, social inappropriateness, depression, and gambling problems. Poor inhibition also predicts increased rumination, leading to depression. Scheduling social activities earlier in the day may help mitigate these issues.
A recent study investigated how judges and jurors make collective decisions, revealing that simple voting procedures are often preferred over more nuanced approaches. The findings suggest that groups tend to favor quick decisions, even if they lead to inconsistent outcomes.
Research reveals that subtle racism is more damaging than overt hostility, impairing cognitive capacity and mental effort. Black volunteers who witnessed unfair but ambiguous hiring decisions performed worse on the Stroop test, indicating they were using all their mental resources to make sense of the unfairness.
Researchers found that synesthetes' experience brighter colors when seeing or thinking of frequently used digits. This effect is not limited to synaesthetes, as non-synaesthetes also associate more luminous colors with common digits.
As infants grow, their visual and auditory systems fine-tune to relevant distinctions, but also lose the ability to discriminate irrelevant stimuli. Environmental input helps refine these neural connections, enabling infants to better perceive salient inputs.
New study reveals that overlearning vocabulary through repeated drilling results in no long-term retention, while massing all study on a single topic into a single session reduces long-term retention. Breaks of at least a month between study sessions also improve learning outcomes.
Researchers tested 19-month and 22-month-old infants on a wet toy to see if they could identify it based on verbal description. The study suggests that before age 2, infants can update their knowledge through verbal interaction, expanding their understanding of the world.
A study suggests that people tend to remember bad times more vividly than good times. This phenomenon is linked to increased activity in emotion-processing regions of the brain. The findings have implications for understanding autobiographical memory, eyewitness testimony, and posttraumatic stress disorder.
Researchers have identified two techniques to improve people's ability to accurately evaluate their learning: rereading or summarizing text, and focusing attention on key details. These methods demonstrate promise for helping individuals learn complex materials more efficiently.
Researchers found that Shuar participants could distinguish infant-directed speech from adult-directed speech with 73% accuracy, indicating a universal understanding of vocal emotional communication. This study provides support for the notion that baby talk conveys similar intentions across cultures.
A study by Louise Hawkley and John Cacioppo found that loneliness accumulates over time and contributes to increased stress, chronic inflammation, and poorer sleep quality in older adults. The researchers also discovered that lonely individuals exhibit a heightened state of arousal and are less likely to seek help when stressed.
In two experiments, participants over-predicted regret and disappointment after unsuccessful negotiations and receiving grades. The study suggests discounting post-decisional emotions can improve decision-making.
A new study published in Psychological Science examined how an animal's rearing environment influences its navigational strategy. The researchers found that while the ability to use geometry for navigation is innate, the use of geometric cues depends on both genetic and environmental factors.
Researchers found that our tendency to categorize people into in-groups and out-groups leads to difficulty recognizing faces of individuals from other racial groups. A study by Miami University psychologists suggests that mere social categorization is enough to elicit an own-group bias in face recognition.
Researchers found that 13-month-old infants could attribute mental content and exhibit puzzlement when caterpillars didn't follow expected behavior in animations. This suggests the presence of mental structures for predicting others' behavior from a young age.
A recent study published in Psychological Science found that autistic children excel in fluid intelligence tests, such as the Raven's Progressive Matrices, which assess problem-solving skills and abstract thinking. In contrast, they often struggle with language-based IQ tests like the WISC.
A new study published in Psychological Science found strong support for consensus among instant runoff and three classic voting methods: Condorcet, Borda count, and Plurality. This contradicts past research that highlighted worst-case scenarios and the mathematical impossibility of a single universally 'best' election method.
Researchers used the Stroop task to test grapheme-color synesthetes, finding that opponent incongruent colors made it difficult for them to respond quickly. However, memories of objects associated with those same colors were not affected by color change. These findings suggest that synesthetic colors are perceived in a realistic way.
Researchers found that guilt initially drives withdrawal motivation but transforms into approach motivation when an opportunity for reparation presents itself. Participants who received negative feedback on racist responses showed increased guilt and approached anti-racist behaviors.
Researchers found that alcohol can both increase and decrease aggression depending on where attention is focused. Drunk individuals were less aggressive when their attention was divided between tasks, while sober individuals exhibited low-level aggression due to natural attention towards provocations.
New research reveals counterfactual thinking in readers is about undoing choices, while actors alter problem-solving processes. This challenges previous theories on the nature of this psychological mechanism.
Recent studies have shed light on the origins and purpose of pride, a complex emotion linked to achievement-oriented ideas like accomplishment and confidence. People who feel authentic pride tend to score high on extraversion and genuine self-esteem.
A new study published in Psychological Science found that watching actors smoke in movies can increase the likelihood of smoking among viewers. The research suggests that exposure to smoking in film can lead to greater implicit associations between smoking and oneself, making it more normal behavior.
A recent study published in Psychological Science found that spontaneously recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse are corroborated about 37% of the time, similar to continuous memories. In contrast, memories recovered in therapy were never verified. These findings suggest that therapy can lead to suggestion and distortion of memo...
A study found that a highly reactive autonomic nervous system paired with family stress leads to increased maladaptive personality change in children. The interaction between biological characteristics and family adversity is associated with longitudinal changes in childhood personality.
A new study shows that human infants are able to recognize abstract rules in language as early as seven months old, with a stronger drive to understand speech patterns. Infants can generalize learned rules from speech to non-linguistic stimuli, suggesting an innate ability to learn language.
Research by John Jost suggests situational and dispositional variables affect ideological leanings, leading to conservative vs. progressive leaders and opinions. Current political realities and data from the American National Election Studies support this finding.
Research by University of Virginia psychologist James Coan explores how social contact regulates emotional responses to life's stressors. This study provides insights into the benefits of social connection for overall health and well-being.
Daniel Gilbert, a leading expert on affective forecasting, will discuss his research on how people make judgments about their future happiness. His lecture aims to answer the question of why we often mispredict what will make us happy in the future.
The APS 19th Annual Convention examines how scientific investigations can lead to stigmatization of certain populations. Panelists discuss historical examples of 'stigma from science' in studies of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and culture.
Research on targeted interventions suggests meaningful change is possible in key aspects of personality. Carol Dweck's keynote address presents an array of studies on the mechanisms underlying change and proposes a view of personality that encompasses these shifts.
A study found that reaction time slows down during the night and reaches its lowest point in the early morning, affecting cognitive processing stages. The central-slowing hypothesis suggests that this slowdown contributes to impaired driving performance and increased risk of traffic accidents in the early morning.
Researchers found that subjects' brains showed increased activity at event boundaries, even in mundane events, suggesting a universal process of segmenting continuous text. This discovery sheds light on how humans comprehend everyday activities and may reflect a general network for understanding event structure.
Children's false memories increase with age under certain circumstances, according to a new study. The researchers found that older children were more likely to assert they had heard a word before if it had a closely related meaning.
A study by Columbia's Primate Cognition Laboratory found that monkeys can acquire meta-cognitive skills, reflecting on their thought process and assessing performance. This ability has far-reaching implications for understanding cognitive development in infants and autistic children.
A study by UC Riverside researchers found that individuals who lip-read a speaker's face are better at identifying words in noisy sentences when they hear the same speaker again. This suggests that watching a person speak can create a familiar pattern of speech characteristics, making it easier to recognize and hear them later.
Researchers found that people tend to deviate from the norm in one direction before adjusting back when given information about their deviation. This 'boomerang effect' can offset positive behavioral changes and render marketing strategies ineffective.
Researchers found that adults exhibit a 'curse-of-knowledge bias' when reasoning about false beliefs, with their own knowledge influencing their ability to reason. Additionally, age affects false memory development, with children showing improved performance at older ages. The study also discovered a circadian rhythm in central process...
A study of over 1600 men found that increased neuroticism and worry were linked to higher mortality rates from cancer and heart disease. However, the study also suggests that reducing stress and anxiety can lead to improved survival rates.
Research by Michael Kisley and Stacey Wood found that older adults exhibit a better balance in processing emotional information, as they tend to pay equal importance to both positive and negative images. This change in emotional priorities develops gradually from age 18 to 80.
A new study found that college students experience mind-wandering almost one-third of the time, with individual results varying widely. Higher working memory capacity was linked to better focus during concentrated activities.
A study published in Psychological Science found that heart rate variability (HRV) is associated with self-regulation and can predict vulnerability to tempting situations. Researchers measured HRV in participants who resisted or gave in to temptation, revealing a link between HRV and perseverance.
Researchers found that infants looked significantly longer at impossible figures, indicating they can detect some three-dimensional features at a young age. This ability provides insights into the development of mechanisms for processing pictorial depth cues.
Rough and tumble play in animals has been linked to improved social competence and coordination. The study found that deprivation of peer interaction led to impaired movement coordination and perception of social cues in rats. These findings suggest that horseplay is essential for the development of social skills in humans.
A new study reviews recent research suggesting that adaptation to changing life circumstances is not as universal as previously thought. The study found that people adapt quickly to marriage, but take longer to recover from divorce or unemployment. Additionally, individual differences play a significant role in adapting to life events.
New research reveals that shyness in children may be linked to the interaction between genes and stressful family environments. A genetic variant associated with stress sensitivity is more prevalent among shy children raised by stressed-out parents.
Researchers found that goalkeepers stood marginally left or right of the goal centre 96% of the time. Penalty takers were more likely to direct the football to the side with more space, suggesting a possible strategy for goalkeepers to influence penalty kick direction.
Research suggests that the ability of humans to use social cues in cooperative situations may have evolved since the human lineage split from chimpanzees. In contrast, domestic dogs display an innate ability to solve social problems without prior training. This capacity is thought to be linked to the process of dog domestication.
A new study published in Psychological Science presents a twist on the conventional understanding of narcissism. Researchers found that narcissists actually view themselves positively in agentic domains, such as status and dominance, but not in communal domains like kindness and emotional intimacy.