Psychology News Round-Up (2/28)
By Dave Nussbaum
Molly Crockett (@mollycrockett) explains how pre-commitment can help us when willpower fails, in a cleverly titled Wired article called ‘Precommitment got this piece written on time.‘
“Controlling our impulses might be difficult, but we are able to curate our surroundings to prevent temptations from derailing our long-term goals. My inner slacker would much rather be perusing Facebook than writing this article — but thanks to my internet-blocking software, I just made my deadline.”
- Eric Horowitz in Pacific Standard on the psychological case for raising the estate tax: “At some point in the not-too-distant future we’ll need to revamp our tax system. When that time comes it would be wise to have a few decision-making researchers in the room.”
- In this Sunday’s Gray Matter section of the New York Times, Lisa Feldman Barrett makes the casethat despite widespread assumptions to the contrary, “human facial expressions, viewed on their own, are not universally understood.”
- On the Data Colada blog, Joe Simons (@jpsimmon) settles a debate about bathing habits of hotel guests by collecting data. I learned only to take baths in really nice hotels.
- Science of Relationships (@ScienceOfRels) explains the “Marriage Hack.” Using emotional reappraisal to consider their marital conflicts through the eyes of a third party, married couples were able to improve the health of their relationship, compared to couples in a control condition who did not use the technique.
Tweets
Can you boost your self-control? Maybe. Is glucose involved? Hell no. http://t.co/GA2cgybKSd
— Michael Inzlicht (@minzlicht) February 21, 2014
Bridging the Compassion Gap http://t.co/9C8lkgrejc
— Linda Skitka (@LindaSkitka) January 8, 2014
Nice perspective by @wrayherbert on research by my lab. "Racial threat will nudge whites toward conservative views" http://t.co/GIBYyF17kx
— Jennifer Richeson (@jaricheson) February 25, 2014
How Scientists Can Get the Media's Attention by @TroyHCampbell feat. @ChrisCMooney from #SPSP2014 http://t.co/Jd4DRGRUMY #scicomm @SPSPnews
— :InDecision: (@InDecision_Blog) February 26, 2014
Here’s how to fix the relationship between journalists and academics: http://t.co/whtpw99AA4
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) February 28, 2014
RT @NPRinskeep: Why did your boss reject that brilliant idea? @HiddenBrain may have the answer: http://t.co/D2m8Ee6qmG @MorningEdition
— Shankar Vedantam (@HiddenBrain) February 26, 2014
My first-draft impressions of the NSF workshop on replicability of research results: comments welcome! http://t.co/Skc4Xk8lqf
— David Funder (@DavidFunder) February 26, 2014
Are voters rational? | Political Psychology | the InMind blog | In-Mind http://t.co/SjaInEX6CP
— hansijzerman (@hansijzerman) February 24, 2014
Cool new study by colleagues @paulbloomatyale & george newman in @BoingBoing http://t.co/HqJ5timPSr #proudcolleague #gratutiousslackervidftw
— Laurie Santos (@lauriesantos) February 25, 2014
