Tag: psychology

That’s not funny…so why am I laughing?

Whenever an election is about to occur, we see stories of the “gender gap,” the difference in voting patterns between men and women. But there’s another gender gap that perhaps hasn’t had as much attention: the difference in laughing patterns between men and women. I’ve written before about laughter, but since I’ve noted sadly before …

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Decisions, decisions

Life is one long series of decisions. Today, for instance, I had to decide on a topic for this column—and decided to write about the science of making decisions. Despite what we’d like to think, research continues to show that rational thinking often has little to do with our decision-making process. As Jerry Adler pointed …

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Score one for us loners:

According to a new study, group thinking clouds decision-making: People have a harder time coming up with alternative solutions to a problem when they are part of a group, new research suggests. I think every organization should seriously look into this problem, perhaps by striking a committee. Oh, wait…

Why won’t you do what you’re told?

As a child, I always did what I was told. (Mom, stop laughing, I’m trying to make a point here.) But I can’t say I didn’t resent certain restrictions. And I’m not alone. Most people hate being told not to do something, and if they can’t see a good reason for it, may well go …

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The irrationality of political beliefs

People are irrational about politics, says this fascinating paper by Michael Huemer, and that’s why there is such enormous polarization in political belief (among people who care about politics at all, that is). Such polarization is dangerous, he points out, because it prevents us from finding solutions to problems. He offers some suggestions, which I’ve …

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Thank you. Thank you very much.

Still too busy to blog much, but here’s an interesting article on applause. Who invented it…and why? (To which the answers appear to be “Nobody knows” and “Because,” but it’s still an interesting article.)

It’s the most unhappy day of the year

Yep, today has been scientifically proven to be the unhappiest day of the year. So cheer up! It’s all uphill from here. Into a stiff breeze. On ice. On a bicycle.

It’s déjà vu all over again

It’s the strangest mental phenomena most of us ever experience: the feeling that we’ve already done or seen something that we’re really doing or seeing for the first time. This week an interesting new aspect of the phenomenon came to light: for the first time, researchers have reported a case of a blind person experiencing …

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What’s real, and what’s pretend?

My five-year-old daughter just received her first visit from the Tooth Fairy. Soon, of course, she’ll be visited by Santa Claus. Being the scientifically minded parent that I am, I’m always providing my daughter with information about things like why it’s dark now when she gets up in the morning when it used to be …

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The changing brain

We’re all getting older. (As the saying goes, it’s better than the alternative.) And as we age, we can’t help noticing that our brains don’t work quite the same way as they did when we were younger. Researchers have certainly noted this, and whether it’s because the average age of the population is going up …

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Musical preferences

You would think, music being so much a part of almost everyone’s life, that there would be a lot of scientific research on why we choose to listen to the music we do–but you would be wrong. Of the nearly 11,000 articles published between 1965 and 2002 in the leading social and personality scientific journals, …

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Choosing a mate

How many times have you heard it said that “opposites attract”? From movies to books to musicals, it’s an idea that has been drummed into our heads: Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, for instance, or Liza Doolitle and Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. But a new study has found that when men …

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