The Ig Nobel Prize-winning “invisible gorilla” guys have a new book coming out. The book is about con men — about how (1) everyone can get conned, and (2) anyone can learn to not get conned so often. Dan Simons and Chris Chabris‘s new book is called Nobody’s Fool: Why We Get Taken In and […]
2007 was a stellar year for psychological essays about gassing and braking and the self. At least one such essay was published that year, namely: “Gassing, Braking, and Self-Regulating: Error Self-Regulation, Well-Being, and Goal-Related Processes,” Michael D. Robinson, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, January 2007, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 1–16. The author, at North […]
Here is the Ig Informal Lecture by the winners of the 2020 Ig Nobel Psychology Prize. The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK. In the Ig Informal Lectures, some days after the ceremony, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it. [In non-pandemic years, […]
No one has yet (as of this writing) disputed that this is the most important psychology research study published this year: “I’ll Read That!: What Title Elements Attract Readers to an Article?” Robert M. Hallock and Tara N. Bennett, Teaching of Psychology, epub 2020.The authors are at Purdue University. Here’s some detail from the study—from […]
A new list of “The 50 Most Influential Living Psychologists in the World“ includes three (3) Ig Nobel Prize winners, one (1) Nobel laureate, and one (1) member of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS). The most valuable thing about most “Most” lists, one could argue, is the arguments they can provoke. This […]
Neil Martin scared up a bunch of psychological research about how people respond to scary movies: “(Why) Do You Like Scary Movies? A Review of the Empirical Research on Psychological Responses to Horror Films,” G. Neil Martin, Frontiers in Psychology, epub 2019. The author, at Regent’s University London, UK, explains: “Despite a century of horror […]
Psychology researchers : are you looking for a novel way to illicit an acute stress response in your experimental participants? If so, a new paper in the journal Computers in Human Behavior (Volume 99, October 2019, Pages 76-85) may provide ideas. A research team from the University of Bath and Bournemouth University, UK, have devised […]
This short film, “Happiness,” by Steve Cutts, appears to sum up generations of psychology research on the topic. Its full of rats, and except fleetingly, devoid of happiness. (Thanks to Fariba Houman for bringing this to our attention.)
Jordan B. Peterson, one of the world’s great self-recognized geniuses, gets a warm appreciation in The New York Times. Nellie Bowles writes: Mr. Peterson, 55, a University of Toronto psychology professor turned YouTube philosopher turned mystical father figure, has emerged as an influential thought leader…. [He says some people want] to eliminate hierarchies, which he […]
Researchers from Utrecht University have an update on temperatures in hands that may, or may not, belong to you. Their paper, “No consistent cooling of the real hand in the rubber hand illusion,” gives an example of the importance of distinguishing body ownership: “Consider a simple task such as walking towards another person –say, this […]