Articles tagged with Experimental Psychology
Researchers found that people remember colors in combination of the actual color and assigned category label, with biases towards categories on borders. This discovery challenges current understanding of color memory.
Research finds that powerful individuals respond faster to unfair treatment when they're the victims, but slower to notice when others are victimized. This disparity suggests that the powerful are more empathetic towards their own experiences and less so towards others.
The researchers found that all test subjects perceived similar color shades with varying lightness but not actual colors. The perception of daylight locus is influenced by the position of the sun, causing variations in lighting conditions.
A study by MIT researcher Adam Berinsky found that correcting political rumors can sometimes increase their strength. Attempts to debunk myths often rely on partisan sources, which can lead to increased belief in the myth. The study suggests that finding neutral sources of information is crucial for combating political misinformation.
A new study shows that playing a synchronized game on a computer increased children's sense of similarity and closeness immediately after the activity. The findings suggest that time-based synchronized activities, including in music, dance and sports, could be useful tools in bringing children closer together.
A Yale-led study found that people who search for information online overestimate their knowledge base compared to those who obtain information through other methods. The effect was strong enough that even without providing a full answer, internet searchers still felt smarter.
A new study by UCLA psychologists found that almost none of their subjects could accurately draw the Apple logo from memory. Only one student correctly reproduced the logo on a blank sheet of paper.
A study by University of Chicago Booth School of Business researchers found that job candidates rated as more competent and intelligent when their voice was heard or read aloud, not just when they spoke. This is because their speech conveys fundamental thinking capacity, including reasoning and thoughtfulness.
A new study suggests that powerful individuals are more likely to be inspired by their own experiences, whereas less powerful people are equally inspired by both their own and others' stories. The researchers found that people with high power tend to prioritize themselves over others in social interactions.
Researchers found six resistive actions employed by both obedient and disobedient participants, with disobedients resisting earlier and using more diverse methods. Training in these practices could enable individuals to stand up to unethical orders, not just in extreme situations.
A new study suggests that repeatedly reflecting on a breakup can speed emotional recovery. Researchers found that participants who completed a more intensive set of tasks and measures had better overall recovery from their breakups. Reflecting on the relationship helped participants build a stronger sense of themselves as single people.
Researchers have identified a key brain region responsible for navigational skills and found that its signal strength predicts performance. The study's findings provide new insights into the neural mechanisms underlying spatial navigation, which may help explain why some individuals are better at navigating than others.
Researchers discovered that punishing children for lying can have the opposite effect, making them less likely to tell the truth. Children are more likely to lie if they're afraid of punishment than if they believe it's the right thing to do.
A new study by Katrin Rentzsch and Michela Schröder-Abé found that unrealistic views of one's academic abilities can damage a child's relationship with others in the classroom. Students who tend to feel unrealistically superior to their peers are less liked by them, even at habitual levels.
Research finds that moral suspicion from higher-ups' wrongdoing can spill down to people lower in an organization, damaging job prospects. The study suggests that emphasizing the individual's personal flaws or values rather than their organizational status can help reduce this effect.
Researchers found that leaders who prioritize others' perspectives produce better outcomes, especially when combined with power. Effective leadership involves balancing acceleration and steering to achieve successful results.
Racial and ethnic stereotypes may contribute to obesity among minority groups due to negative messages about health, self-image, and behavior. A Rutgers-led study found that exposure to hurtful messages can diminish motivation to lose weight and promote unhealthy food choices.
Researchers found that music can transform a person's psychological state and boost their sense of power. The study identified the key factor as high-bass levels, which may trigger a 'contagion hypothesis' where people mimic the feelings internally.
A team of researchers found that the articulation of vowels systematically influences our feelings and vice versa. The study revealed that words containing the long 'i' vowel tend to occur in positive emotional contexts, while those with the long 'o' vowel are associated with negative emotions.
In experiments by Yale and Harvard psychologists, more than two-thirds of people were willing to take a sustainable 'fair share' of resources, while selfish individuals consistently destroyed them. Democratic principles led to group consensus on resource allocation, ensuring the next generation's survival.
A new study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science found that standing during meetings increases physiological arousal, leading to greater idea sharing and higher quality videos. Removing chairs from the workspace can be a low-cost way to redesign office spaces and promote non-sedentary work.
Researchers found that highly suggestible women experienced a significant increase in slow-wave sleep after listening to hypnosis, resulting in improved sleep quality. The study suggests that hypnosis could be a promising alternative to sleep-inducing drugs with no adverse side effects.
A new study suggests that people's perception of free will is based on the agent's ability to make intentional and independent choices, regardless of their spiritual beliefs. The study found that participants generally attributed free will to humans with mental capacity, but not to those without.
Researchers found that exposure to alcohol-related words makes aggressive thoughts more accessible, prompting an aggressive response in ambiguous situations. The effect of alcohol-word priming on aggressive behavior is relatively short-lived, lasting around 7-15 minutes.
A study found that individuals with alcohol dependence exhibit pronounced executive control deficits, which are strongly correlated with duration of addiction and number of detoxification treatments. Executive control networks were impaired, while alerting and orienting networks showed preserved functioning.
Researchers Ayelet Gneezy and Nicholas Epley found that keeping a promise is valued highly, while exceeding it confers little benefit. Exceeding a promise may not be worth the effort as long as the initial promise is kept.
An international team of pain researchers found that male experimenters' scent, caused by pheromones secreted from armpits, can produce a stress response in mice and rats, making them less sensitive to pain. This discovery may contribute to the reliability of rodent research studies.
Researchers discovered that individuals with high self-esteem enhance their relationship with God when faced with romantic rejection threat. However, low self-esteem individuals do not leverage this resource. The study also found similar trends when threatening the individual's relationship with God versus a romantic partner.
Research from Duke University shows that interest in pursuing goals enhances performance while reducing mental exhaustion. The study found that individuals who experienced activities as enjoyable and personally significant performed better and were less exhausted than those who did not.
A study by NYU and Harvard Business School suggests that people are more likely to view members of the opposite political party as human if they perceive those individuals as threatening. The researchers used morphed faces to test this hypothesis, finding that participants were more willing to attribute human-like qualities to in-group...
A study published in Springer's journal Sex Roles found that playing with Barbie dolls can restrict girls' career aspirations compared to playing with more neutral toys. The researchers suggest that the doll's unrealistic appearance and objectification may contribute to this effect.
Rodents learn visual tasks in a fourth to sixth the number of trials when stimuli are projected onto the floor, outperforming traditional wall projections. Automated visual cognitive research tasks with neural activity recording and brain stimulation can be performed efficiently.
New research finds that matchmaking brings intrinsic happiness to the matchmaker, particularly when pairing people who are less likely to meet. This study suggests that making meaningful connections is key to reaping emotional benefits from social interactions.
A new study by the University of Manchester found that prosthetic hands are generally rated as more eerie and less human-like than robotic or human hands. However, prosthetic hands with a more human-like design were rated as less eerie.
A new study published in Psychological Science found that when we perceive someone as trustworthy, their face is perceived as more similar to our own. Researchers used morphing images and bargaining games to test this idea, finding that trust cues can extend beyond social closeness into physical characteristics.
Researchers from University of Pennsylvania found no evidence of the endowment effect in Hadza people, a hunter-gatherer society in Tanzania. The study suggests that this bias may not be universal and could have been shaped by cultural factors rather than evolutionary history.
A University of Cologne study found that washing hands after a task increases optimism after failure, but hampers future performance in the same task domain. The subjects who washed their hands were more optimistic initially, but performed similarly to those who didn't wash their hands when faced with the same challenge again.
Research by neuroscientists at SISSA found that adults' preference for their native language's word order affects language learnability. Infants as young as 8-month-old prefer artificial languages mirroring their native structure, while adults tend to stick to their native scheme.
Fluent bilinguals have both languages active at all times, regardless of conscious use. This suggests that they control parallel language activity and select intended language without conscious thought.
A new study published in Psychological Science found that physiological arousal can be beneficial for individuals who enjoy negotiation, but detrimental for those who dread it. The researchers suggest that the key is interpreting arousal as excitement rather than nervousness.
A NYU study explores the connection between political ideology and racial categorization, revealing that conservatives are more likely to identify mixed-race individuals as Black. The research suggests that this phenomenon is linked to system-justifying biases and a desire to maintain traditional social boundaries.
H. Julia Hannay, a clinical neuropsychologist and pioneer in experimental neuropsychology, received the Lifetime Distinguished Career Award for her groundbreaking research on cognitive functions in children and adults, brain injury, and rehabilitation.
Researchers found that playing action videogames for a short time enhances visual search skills in complex scenes. Players showed improved performance on tasks such as finding targets among distractions. The benefits of gaming on visual search were comparable to those seen with driving games.
Research suggests that highly powerful individuals often ignore constraints, but low-power team members can serve as a check. The study found that powerful people are less likely to consider risks, while their lower-powered colleagues are more aware of potential pitfalls.
A new study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found that priming participants with a belief in moral realism led to increased charitable donations, suggesting that considering objective moral facts can motivate people to behave better.
A new UC Berkeley study suggests that women's domestic power reduces their desire for career advancement. Women who control household decisions reported lower life goals than those who shared decision-making with their spouses. This effect is specific to women and not observed in men.
Researchers at UC Berkeley discovered that those in authority positions are quicker to recover from mild rejection and seek out social bonding opportunities. The study found that subordinates report lower self-esteem when rejected by their bosses compared to supervisors.
Researchers found that feeling inferior in social status leads people of all races to crave expensive products. Whites who imagined themselves in low-status positions rated high-status goods more positively than those in higher positions.
A study by Ohio State University researchers found that writing down thoughts and then disposing of the paper can reduce their influence on mental judgments. Participants who threw away the paper showed no difference in their attitudes towards positive or negative thoughts, suggesting that physical action influences thought use.
A study published in Journal of Consumer Research found that people vary widely on the level of detail required for understanding a product. Explanation fiends require more details to feel informed, while explanation foes feel confident with superficial explanations. Understanding what consumers want is crucial for marketers.
Researchers at University of Bristol found that participants drank more slowly from curved 'beer flute' glasses than straight-sided glass containing lager, suggesting curved glasses compromise ability to gauge liquid levels and pace drinking. This could have positive impact on reducing intoxication and excessive drinking.
Researchers found that confident consumers pay more attention to high-level product features and abstract benefits, while less confident consumers focus on concrete details. This shift in attention is attributed to psychological confidence affecting consumers' perception of information relevance.
A new UH experiment evaluates whether changing perpetrator communication skills can improve arguments and reduce abuse. The study found that interventions worked to decrease aggressive behavior, contemptuous behavior, and criticism.
Researchers propose a new explanation for Milgram's findings, suggesting that participants' behavior is driven by their patterns of social identification. Conditions that encouraged identification with the experimenter led to increased obedience, while conditions that encouraged identification with the learner led to decreased obedience.
Researchers discovered that vampire jumping spiders prefer female mosquitoes with blood-fed abdomens over other insects due to their distinctive antennae. The spiders can identify the females by their antennae even when they are too small to be seen, and this unique ability may play a crucial role in their prey classification process.
Research reveals that death anxiety makes atheists more unconsciously receptive to religious beliefs, while religious individuals strengthen their beliefs at both conscious and unconscious levels. This study contributes to understanding why religion endures as a fundamental aspect of human culture.
A new study from MIT neuroscientists found that sharing stories about one's life with members of the opposing group improves attitudes and reduces prejudice. The benefits were greatest for members of the less empowered group, who reported improved attitudes towards the other group after sharing their own perspectives.
A new study published in the Journal of Consumer Research found that creating psychological distance can reduce cognitive difficulty and anxiety in choice situations. By manipulating abstract thinking and body postures, researchers discovered that leaning away from a screen or task can make decisions feel less difficult.
Researchers found that even with explicit knowledge of probabilities, people tend to make suboptimal choices when relying on experience-based estimates. Despite extensive practice, participants in the study made similar mistakes as those without any training, suggesting a distorted appreciation of probability remains.
A new study by Rotman School of Management researchers reveals that treating time as money can undermine well-being. The study shows individuals who perceive their time as monetizable tend to experience greater impatience and lower satisfaction during leisure activities compared to those who do not.