Psychology
- Psychology
Word-detecting baboons are a tough read
New models offer contrasting views of monkeys’ ability to identify frequently seen letter pairs.
- Psychology
Too little money, too much borrowing
A contested study suggests that poverty contracts attention and detracts from financial decisions.
- Psychology
Delaying gratification is about worldview as much as willpower
Preschoolers’ social expectations influence how long they’re willing to hold out for extra goodies.
- Neuroscience
Teens can keep their cool to win rewards
An unexpected experimental result suggests adolescent impulsivity is not inevitable.
- Science & Society
Banks err by confusing risk, uncertainty
Too much information prompted bad currency projections by international money firms, a psychologist contends, and may have blinded them to the global financial crisis.
- Animals
Face Smarts
Macaques, sheep and even wasps may join people as masters at facial recognition.
- Psychology
Psychopaths get time off for bad brains
In a survey, judges tended to say they would reduce sentences for criminals defended with biological evidence.
- Psychology
Thirtysomethings flex their number sense
A mental feel for estimating amounts maxes out later in life and may influence math achievement.
- Humans
Depolarizing climate science
A study out this week attempts to probe why attitudes on climate risks by some segments of the public don’t track the science all that well. Along the way, it basically debunks one simplistic assumption: that climate skeptics, for want of a better term, just don’t understand the data — or perhaps even science. “I think this is sort of a weird, exceptional situation,” says decision scientist Dan Kahan of the Yale Law School, who led the new study. “Most science issues aren’t like this.” But a view is emerging, some scientists argue, that people tend to be unusually judgmental of facts or interpretations in science fields that threaten the status quo — or the prevailing attitudes of their cultural group, however that might be defined. And climate science is a poster child for these fields.
- Psychology
When good moods go decisively bad
Positive feelings may lead seniors to weigh fewer options and make poorer choices in some situations.
- Psychology
Two heads sometimes better than one
Group decisions rise or fall based on what the most confident member knows or doesn’t know.
- Psychology
Autism rates rise again
Related developmental disorders affect 1.1 percent of U.S. 8-year-olds.
