Psychology

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.

Psychology

Visions For All

People who report vivid religious experiences may hold clues to nonpsychotic hallucinations.

Psychology

Pi master’s storied recall

Remembering more than 60,000 consecutive numbers takes exhaustive practice at spinning yarns.

Psychology

Kids flex cultural muscles

Young children, but not chimps or monkeys, generate collective leaps of knowledge.